Basic Jain Culture Non Possession

Author(s): Padamchand Shastri, N L Jain
Publisher: Veer Seva Mandir Trust

Page 22

Accordingly, when a liberatable person wishes to move towards his soular welfare after realising worldly sadness and goes to preceptor to get initiated, the acharya should instruct him on the vow of disengagement and to be free from karma-influxing and karma-bonding sinful activities. He should not ask him to accept any vow. However, a tradition has developed in such a way that the acharya asks him to adopt vows and vows are offered to him. In contrast, the canors state that a vow means dis-engagement and non-possessivenes. It does not mean engagement. The statement, that a particular individual has adopted major or minor vows, is just a language of pragmatism. It means that the individual has dis-engaged himself from the specific sins. It does, however, not mean that he has either got freed from the tendency of engagement or he has become engaged in sacredness.
This is not only my statement. The acharyas themselves have characterised the vow in terms of dis-engagement in many texts 20 which mean that a vow (dis-engagement) means
(i) Desistance from five sins.
(ii)
Volition of total dis-engagement.
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(iii) Desistance from all options of auspicious or inauspicious volitions of attachment and aversion etc.
(iv) Partial restraint.
(v) Total restraint.
(vi) Abstinence from sins
(vii) Total abstinence.
(viii) Non-origination of volitions of attachment etc. (ix) Desistence from injury to vitalities, or renunciation. (x) Release from violence etc.
All these characteristics of vow have prominence of abstinence, restraint or desistence. There is no prescription for engagements in non-violence etc. as is normally stated that one is adopting the vows