Facets of Jaina Religiousness in Comparative Light

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

Page 33

FACETS OF JAINA RELIGIOUSNESS
II. iv. EKATVĀNUPREKSĀ
That every soul is ultimately utterly lonely is the theme of the fourth anuprekşā. The metaphysical pluralism underlying the Jaina system of faith postulates reality of an infinite number of souls. Each embodied soul or self is born alone, grows old alone, suffers from illness and fear alone, and dies alone. It goes to heavens and enjoys pleasures alone; it goes to hells and suffers pain and grief alone. Each embodied soul is entirely responsible for its happiness and suffering, good and evil, liberation and bondage. No one else accompanies an individual soul in its course of traversing across millions of embodied existences.
This thought of loneliness should be viewed as enunciating the principle of individual liberty and individual responsibility extending to a person's transhistorical existences. One may prepare to go to hell or to go to heaven; one may work one's way through the cycle of becoming or one may mobilize all one's resources to effect one's release once for all.
Our texts paint a grim picture of every single person's lonliness and stress the need of winning ultimate Release.40 Somadeva speaks in loud terms of deceptions that delude men and women engaged in acquisitive and possessive ventures :
"You yourself alone undergo birth and death to suffer consequences of your own deeds. In happiness or misery you have no companion. Only a group of parasites surrounds you to make their living. Even this body, born with you, will not accompany you at death, let alone your external possessions. Why do you suffer all the more from these delusive bonds like wife and children, wealth and home, originating and ceasing every moment ?''41
Hemacandra makes the painful comment that the wealth acquired through sinful means by a person is enjoyed jointly by members of his family; but that sinner alone suffers in hell the evil consequences of his sinful deeds.42
The essence of ekatvabhāvanā is briefly indicated in the scriptures thus : "When a monk thinks thus--I am myself alone; I have no body belonging to me; I do not belong to any body'-then he should know clearly that he himself is alone,” ego ahamamsi, na me atthi koi, na yāhamavi kassai, evam se egāgiņameva appāņam samabhijanijjā.43
40. See Kārtrikeyānuprekșa, w. 74-79; Praśamaratiprakarana, verse 153; Jhanārņava on ekatva,
vv. 1-11; Sarvärthasiddhi on IX. 7. 41. Yašastilaka, II. 219-220. 42. Yogaśāstra, IV. 69. 43, A yāro (Angasuttani, vol. 1), VIII. 6. 97, p. 64.