Food And Freedom

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas

Page 15

Food and Freedom
175
It is no agument to say that his omniscience removes the kevalin from the necessity of eating, because it is perfectly clear from experience that omniscience can have nothing to do with ordinary bodily activity. If it were the case that hunger increases in direct proportion to decrease in knowledge, then a child (bāla) would be likely to be very hungry.99 The omniscience which the kevalin possesses is ultimately beyond the senses and cannot be regarded in the same light as hunger; 100 it comes about through the destruction of the harming karmas and is of no consequence for the operation of the flesh and blood audārika body.101 Just as a lamp needs oil or a stream needs water, so the human body needs food. 102
As a consequence of this insistence on the fundamental identity of the physical structure of the chadmastha and the kevalin, the Svetāmbaras are able to reject the possibility of the indefinite existence of the kevalin without food which is the necessary impliction of the Digambara standpoint.103 Jaina tradition held that some kevalins had been able to live for long periods of time, from six months to a year, without food, but it is an entirely different matter to say that the kevalin could, because of his exalted status, exist without food for as long as he wished.104 The theoretical maximum period for the duration of the kevalin state is conventionally described as being 'ten million pūrva years less a fraction' (desonapūrvakoți), 105 an almost unimaginable length of time, and if there were to be just one instance of the possessor of an audārika body existing for such a long period without food, then the whole edifice of causality would collapse, since it is an obvious fact that food causes the continued existence of the body. 106 Moreover, if physical existence without food, which effectively amounts to non-death, was to be accepted as the equivalent of the kevalin's other miraculous attainments, such as his purity of body, then there would be very little point in the notion of final release since he could go on in virtual perpetuity. 107 Scriptural references to Rşhabha, the first tirthankara, existing for a year without food, in fact refer to his period as a chadmastha and accounts of his fasting during the kevalin stage obviously imply that he ate at other times.108 The general enjoinment on the Jaina monk to fast on certain occasions does not mean that eating is a fault (dosa), for it could equally be argued that activities such as sitting and speaking are in their turn faults because there exist particular ascetic vows which entail their temporary abandonment. 109 Nor need eating imply excessive contact with the objects of the senses, which is the function of matijñāna, an inferior kind of cognition which the kevalin should have transcended, for, if the kevalin is completely unaffected by the wonderful sights, sounds and smells which, tradition is unanimous, continually surround him, then it would be ludicrous to suppose that he could be seduced by a mere taste on the tongue.110 Even in the very act of eating his omniscience is still not prejudiced, for if a chadmastha who has mastered clairvoyance (avadhi) does not suffer any impairment of his powers while taking a meal, then how could a kevalin?111