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358
THE ESSENCE OF JAINA SCRIPTURES
should entirely forgo it.
Now he teaches an exception, to the effect that for some person in some circumstances at some time in some way some appropriation is in fact not to be rejected:
III.22. That wherethrough negligence does not attach to the user either in taking or in leaving it [things], the shramana who has considered time and place may use it. (222)
That every appropriation must be rejected, since the self-substance is without any second, material, substance, is the main rule.
But here we have an exception, that by virtue of particular time and place some [appropriations] are not rejected. For, when a shramana who has undertaken a rejection of all appropriations cannot, although desirous of attaining the highest self-restraint in indifference, succeed in this, because his energies have failed owing to particular time and place, then, taking to a diminished self-restraint, he has recourse to appropriations, merely as external means. And the appropriation so resorted to is not only not a negligence through being an appropriation; on the contrary, it is a rejection of a negligence. A negligence is that which does not occur without impure psychic-attention; but this, accepted in order to avoid a negligence in the matter of taking and leaving, e.g. of taking food and voiding of excrements (nirhara), which are means for the life of the body,-itself required as an auxiliary means for the modification called the shramana-state,-is in every respect a rejection of negligence, since it does not occur without pure psychic
attention.
Now he teaches the characteristic nature of an appropriation which is (rightly) not rejected:
III.23. An appropriation which is (really) not objectionable and is not desired by people who lack self-restraint, and which does not beget infatuation, etc., a shramana should accept, but sparingly. (223)
That appropriation which is altogether unobjectionable, because it does not lead to bondage; which is not desired by people without self-restraint, because it is unusual except in the case of self-restraint; which does not beget infatuation, etc., because it takes place without an evolution such as attachment, is not rejected.
Therefore an appropriation of a nature as described may be accepted, but no other, however small, having a nature different from that described.
