Doctrine of Liberation in Indian Religion

Author(s): Shivkumarmuni
Publisher: Munshiram Manoharlal Publisher's Pvt Ltd New Delhi

Page 57

THE DOCTRINE OF THE SELF
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Two other verses in the Uttarādhya yanasūtra stress the same teaching :
"Subdue yourself, for the self is difficult to subdue, if yourself is subdued, you will be happy in this world and in the next. Better it is that I should subdue myself by self-control and penance, than be subdued by others with fetters and corporal punishment”.61
Nearly similar thoughts are found in the Buddhist texts. It is said in the Dhammapada that :
"Irrigators guide the water (wherever they like); fletchers bend the arrow; carpenters bend a log of wood; the sages subdue themselves".62
In yet another verse the supreme importance of self-conquest is declared thus :
“If one man conquers in battle a thousand times a thousand men, and if another conquers himself, he is the greatest of conquerors”.63
The Jaina teaching is in perfect agreement with this ideal. We read the following in the Uttarādhyayanasūtra :
"Though a man should conquer thousands and thousands of valiant (foes), greater will be his victory if he conquers nobody but himself”.64
The stress on the protection and purification of consciousness (citta) found in the Buddhist texts, is comparable to the stress on the protection and purification of the self in Jaina texts. Compare, for example, the following two verses :
“Whatever a hater may do to a hater, or an enemy to an enemy, a wrongly-directed mind will do us greater mischief”.65
“A cut-throat enemy will not do him such harm as his own perversity will do him; the man without pity will feel repentance in the hour, of death"66
The Jaina scriptures dwell at length over the nature of the self. Describing the immateriality and eternality of the self the
61. Ibid., I. 15-16; SBE, vol. XLV, p. 3. 62. Dhammapada, verse 80. 63. Ibid., verse 103. 64. Uttaradhyayanasūtra, IX, 34; SBE, vol. XLV, p. 38. 65. Dhammapada, verse 42. 66. Uttaradhyayanasūtra, XX. 48; SBE, vol. XLV, p. 106.