Food And Freedom

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas

Page 11

Food and Freedom
171
effect within that same man in whom a succession of auspicious karmic matter is now accumulating without interruption.62 So the kevalin does not experience hunger. There is no need to insert a negative into TS 9.11 as some Digambara manuscripts do. Hunger and the other ten afflictions can be said to exist metaphorically within the kevalin on the analogy of meditation; for just as the term 'meditation may be applied to the kevalin who has removed all the hindrances to knowledge, whose knowledge is complete and who, because he possesses the rewards arising from the destruction of the dust of karma, no longer practises deep concentration, so the kevalin may metaphorically be said to experience the eleven afflictions because there still exist material (dravya) afflictions which result from feeling-producing karma, although there no longer exist spiritual (bhāva) afflictions involving the actual experience of hunger etc.63 In other words, the kevalin does not experience any psychological or spiritual distress from hunger.
Elsewhere, commenting upon TS 2.4, Akalarika describes 64 exactly how the kevalin's body is supported: after completely destroying the type of karma called 'gain-hindrance' (lābhāntarāya),65 the kevalin gives up eating, and then matter (pudgala) which is the cause of the maintenance of bodily strength, not common to other men and peculiar to the kevalin, extremely auspicious, fine (sūkşma) and infinite, comes into contact with his body at every instant. This is called 'gain which arises from the destruction of karma' (kşāyikalābha).
Akalarika's basic position is clear: feeling-producing karma may still exist in the kevalin but it certainly cannot give rise to any effect, whether hunger or anything else, for that would require the presence of the harming karmas. 66 Since the main precondition of the kevalin's state is that he has got rid of the harming karmas, he therefore cannot experience hunger and so does not need to eat.
The evolution of this Digambara standpoint must have taken some period of timę, doubtless being debated many times in gatherings of monks prior to its articulation by the commentators on the TS, but it can probably be assumed that it was the prestige of scholars such as Pūjyapada and Akalarika which prompted a formal Svetāmbara response as embodied in the texts which have come down to us. Between the eighth and ninth centuries AD, there were three writers in particular who attempted to repudiate the Digambaras and confirm the canonical claim that it was proper and necessary for the kevalin to eat. Abhayadeva (8th century) in his commentary (vyākhyā) on the fifth century Siddhasena Divākara's Sanmatitarka? (= SMTV) treats the subject of whether the kevalin eats in the context of a broader discussion of the structure of kevala knowledge, 68 thus viewing it from an epistemological perspective. The famous canonical commentator Sīlārika (9th century) deals with the problem in his explication (tikā) of the mnemonic verses (nijjutti) which introduce the third section of the second book of the Suyagadamgasutta“ (=