Facets of Jaina Religiousness in Comparative Light

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

Page 73

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FACETS OF JAINA RELIGIOUSNESS pleting verses, the Sādhus (are my) refuge.108 With enrity and opposition abandoned, continually without perfidy, having calm beauty on their faces, a mass of approved virtues, with delusion destroyed, the Sådhus (are my) refuge. With bonds of affection broken, providing no abode for love, desirous of happiness which is free from love, pleasing the minds of good men, delighting the soul, the Munis (are my) refuge. With senses and emotions cast aside, with the delight and happiness of union with wife and home abandoned, not distinguishing between joy and grief, with carelessness gone, the Sādhus (are my) refuge. Free from faults, e.g. injury, having shown compassion, having the wisdom and brilliance of the Self-created one, following the ageless, deathless path, having the merit of good deeds, the Sādhus (are my) refuge. Free from the mockery of love, free from the filth of the Kali age, with theft abandoned, free from evil, passion, and amorous pleasure, the Sādhus (are) adorned with virtues like jewels. Since teachers and others are well established in Sādhuhood, and thence they are Sädhus, being included in the term 'Sādhus' therefore those Sādhus (are my) refuge."109
The above verses show that the sadhus are friendly, learned and virtuous people, who have renounced worldly life and possessions. Their epithet jia-loa bandhuņo, 'friends of the world of living beings' (verse 31) suggests that they are not anti-world, but spiritual friends of the people in the world.
One authority describes these holy personages thus : ananta-jñānādi suddhātma svarūpam sādhayanti iti sādhavaḥ pañcamahāvratadharāḥtriguptiguptāh aștādaśasilasahasra dharāś caturasiti-sata-sahasragunadharāś ca sādhavaḥ.10 This means that the sādhus are those who strive to realize the pure self which is of the nature of infinite knowledge etc; they are upholders of the five great vows and they are protected by threefold protection; the sādhus are upholders of eighteen thousand types of ethical conduct (śīla), and they are endowed with eighty-four hundred thousand kinds of virtues. These unusually large numbers of virtuous qualities are symbolic of the preeminently ethical character of sädhus who are believed to be 'good' in thought, speech, and act. Another text states that they are called sädhus who are freed from worldly occupations, given to four kinds of meditations (ārädhanā), without knots (nigganthā) and devoid of infatuation (nimmohā).111
The sādhus practise renunciation (vairāgya) to its highest limit; they are often sky-clad, but they are merciful; they are known as nirgrantha, free-from knots, because
TL
108.
109. 110. 111.
Part of this translation of verse 34 is not intelligible to us. The text has khir' asava-mahu a sava sambhinna-ssoa kutha-buddhi a cărana veuvvi-pay' anusărino sāhuno saranam, Translation by K.R. Norman. Dhavalațāka I. 1.1, p. 52. Niyamasara, verse 75.