Basic Principles Of Jainism

Author(s): Narayan Lal Kachhara
Publisher: Narayan Lal Kachhara

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perverted. The loss of faith is due to the incurrence of the kashayas whose subsidence is essential to the manifestation of the insight. Truth has no meaning or value to him. A wrong believer does not belief in the noble doctrine preached by the jinas. This is a stage of spiritual blindness which is due to the darshanamohaniya-karma. A wrong or perverted believer is like a blind man who does not see what is good and beautiful or what is bad and ugly.
2) Sasadana (Downfall)
This stage, which is otherwise known as Sasadan samyakdristi, contemplates a fall from the stage of right faith. A person may attain the stage of right faith by instruction and right understanding. But if he is overcome by passions or wrong thought activity, he may slip down from the upper rung of the ladder to which he might have climbed. During this down fall, the soul has neither right belief nor wrong belief. In this stage, the soul is said to have operative thought-activity (audarika bhava). This is a transitory stage but the evolution has to commence again by destruction of the deluding Karma.
3) Samyak-mithya dristi (Mix of right and wrong beliefs)
This is a stage in which a person holds right and wrong beliefs mixed together. It is due to indecision or a wavering state of mind, indicating spiritual oscillation between right faith and wrong faith. Such a person neither sticks up to right belief nor gives up wrong belief. This is also a transitory stage. If the fight faith revives as a result of Punya or fresh knowledge received from a preceptor, the person may march to the next higher stages or the soul may as well revert back to the stage of wrong belief.
In all the first three stages the destructive Karma (ghati, darshanmohaniya) is still present but it is a question of degree. The right belief is not destroyed but is clouded by wrong belief. The mixed thought activity cannot be split up into two parts just as it is not possible to separate the sugar juice from the curds when both are mixed together. This mixed stage is wavering. impure and unsteady; it is however a cause of the destruction of Karmas.
4) Avirata Samyaktva (Vowless right belief)
The soul in this stage possesses right faith and also knowledge of truth and falsehood: but it is not observing the vows (rules of self-discipline, see chapter 13) due to the operation of partial-vow preventing passions (apratyakhyanavarna kashaya). The right faith in this stage is of three kinds: i) Upasama samyaktva: it may arise in a soul, which had never any right belief before, as result of the four passions which create erroneous beliefs and wrong beliefs. Right faith may awaken after it had become deluded as a result of the Karmas. It might as well be that a soul has already right belief and may advance further by destroying the kinds of Karmas as are responsible for beliefs of the kinds mentioned in the first three stages. It is possible that a soul may slip down to the three lower stages for one antar muhurta; if there is no fall, it might advance to the second kind of right belief. ii) This is called Ksayopasama-samyaktva. This is a
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