Facets of Jaina Religiousness in Comparative Light

Author(s): L M Joshi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 15

FACETS OF JAINA RELIGIOUSNESS
stop the course of all defiling tendencies; it is a measure of samvara, an agency of moral restraint. In this sense also anuprekşā is a kind of conscious mental activity and an intellectual awareness directed towards securing freedom from karmas. According to the commentators, "reflecting on the nature of the body and so on is anupreksā" (śarīrādinām svabhāvānucintanam anuprekşā).18 It is possible that these commentators are hinting at themes like anitya, aśuci etc. by referring to śarīrādinām svabhāva. But they have clearly not elaborated the meaning of anuprekşā in the sense in which its twelve themes are listed at Tattvārthasūtra, IX. 7.
Although some of the anuprekşä themes are connected with dharmya-dhyāna and śukla-dhyāna, they are not discussed by Umāsvāti, Pujya pada, and Akalanka in the context of four kinds of dhyāna mentioned in the Tattvārthasūtra, IX. 28. The Sthānāngasútra, which mentions four types of dhyāna, associates four anuprekşās with dharmya-dhyāna, viz. egānuppehā, añiccāņuppehā, a saraņāņuppehä, and samsārānuppehā. 19
According to Svāmī Kārttikeya anuprekşā means “reflection on the right principles” (sutatta cintā aṇuppehā).20 Subhacandra explains sutattva-cintä as reflection on or thinking of the entities such as the self and so on, sutattvacintă ātmādipadārtānām cintā cintanam anuprekșa bhavet).21 At the beginning of his commentary on Kärttikeya's treatise, he elucidates the meaning of anuprekşā in the following words - anu punaḥ punah prekşanam cintanam smaranam anityādi svarüpānām iti anupreksa nija nija nāmānusārena tattvānucintanam anuprekşā iti arthah.22
Subhacandra thus gives us three meanings or three synonymous terms, viz. prekşaņam, cintanam and smaranam, and adds, punah punaḥ to each of them. In other words, he means to say, punaḥ punaḥ prekṣaṇam, punaḥ punaḥ cintanam, and punch punaḥ smaranam. We have to understand that anuprekşā is a process involving both thought and vision, mind and the eyes. It is a process of repeatedly viewing or examining, of repeatedly thinking or considering, and of repeatedly recollecting or remembering, a series of facts of phenomenal existence. These facts of phenomenal existance are the themes of 'soteriological reflection and their traditional number is twelve (dvādaśa, duvālasa, bārasa).
Schubring refers to them as pessimistic reflections" which is a less elegant expression than Winternitz's "meditations" and Jacobi's "pondering",23 The anuprekşās
18. Sarvärthasiddhi on IX. 2, p. 312; Tattvārthavārtika on IX. 2, p. 591. 19. Țhānam (in Angasuttani, vol. I, Ladnun edn.), IV. 1. 68, p. 602. 20. Kārtikeyānupreksa, verse 97. 21. Kārttikeyānuprekșa-țīka (Upadhye's edn.), p. 48. 22. Karttikeyānupreksa-jika (Upadhye's edn.), p. 1. 23. Walther Schubring, op. cit., p. 307; Maurice Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, Eng. Tr.
vol. II, p. 577; Hermann Jacobi, Jaina Sūtras, Part II, pp. 159, 165.