Food And Freedom

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas

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Food and Freedom 173
able to perceive such, from the chadmastha's point of view, invisible things as the five fundamental entities.78 In other words, the thirteenth gunasthana, the state of being a kevalin-with-activity, is the environment where the harming karmas, which cloud knowledge and insight and to which the chadmastha is still subject, are extirpated and have no effect.
A further indication that the kevalin's status is far beyond that of the chadmastha is the former's possession of thirty-four miraculous attributes or 'eminences' (atisaya)." Four of these are inborn, inasmuch as they are the result of name-karma formed in the previous existence,80 and reflect the purity of the kevalin's body: physical beauty and fragrance, fresh breath, flesh and blood as white as cow's milk and invisible eating and evacuation of food; eleven arise from the destruction of the harming karmas and demonstrate the kevalin's ability to influence for the better his immediate surroundings, while the remaining nineteen are divine reflexes of his attainment of omniscience. But these attributes, impressive though they may be, merely serve as adjuncts to the basic fact that the kevalin 'knows and sees' (jāņai pāsai) in a manner completely different from the chadmastha.81
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On the basis of these factors, there would seem to be very little grounds for equating the kevalin and the chadmastha in any way. However, the Svetämbaras hold that, despite these differences, the physical structure of the two figures is essentially the same. The Pannavaṇāsutta, one of the subsidiary canonical texts (upanga), which was almost completely incorporated into the highly prestigious fifth anga, the Bhagavaïsutta, describes in its twelfth and twenty-first chapters the nature, structure and function of a series of bodies of which, for the purposes of the debate on the kevalin, the significant one is called audarika (Ardhamāgadhi orāliya), that is, the gross, earthly body. All creatures possessing senses, with the exception of gods and hell-beings, from the lowest earth-being to the tirthankaras themselves, have an audärika body of flesh and blood born from the womb which, while varying in size and form, has the same basic structure as other audārika bodies.84 The variations between audarika bodies depend upon name-karma, the most powerful type of body being given the designation 'with structure (held together) by bolts, collars and mortices' (vajraysabhanārācasamhanana) which allows the kevalin to withstand the fierce bodily heat generated by his hard ascetism.85 Nonetheless, despite the vast differences in spiritual attainment and strength of body, the kevalin and the chadmastha are physiologically the same (with the exception of the three attainments (atisaya) of the kevalin: his skin and blood as white as milk, his eating and evacuation of food are invisible and his hair does not grow); if the chadmastha's body operates or is sustained in a certain way, then so logically must be the kevalin's.86
Mere possession of an audärika body, however, is not sufficient grounds for eating, nor need it be assumed that there must occur, in some way, diminution