Food And Freedom

Author(s): Paul Dundas
Publisher: Paul Dundas

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180
Paul Dundas
Since the kevalin has great ascetic power, there is no contradiction in his existing without eating, just as there is no contradiction in him facing in all geographical directions simultaneously (caturāsya) and other such miraculous attainments. Evidence for this can be found both in ordinary life where it is obvious that there is no difference in bodily condition between someone who eats on five occasions and someone engaged in meditation who eats a lesser number of times, or between someone who eats every day and somebody who omits to eat for several days, and also in traditional lore which asserts that the kevalin Bahubali maintained excellent physical condition without eating for a year. In fact, the main determining factor for the existence of the body is lifekarma and life-karma alone; food, if taken, is merely a subsidiary factor even during the chadmastha period. As Akalarika had already pointed out, matter perpetually flows into the kevalin's body to ensure that it does not diminish in size and therefore there is no way of proving that the kevalin cannot exist for vast periods of time without eating. 143
Prabhācandra then returns to feeling-producing karma and reiterates the early Digambara assertion that it would be incapable of independently giving rise to any unpleasant experience such as hunger unless it were accompanied by deluding karma. He gives two similes to illustrate this. Just as when the general of an army falls in battle and his army as a consequence has no power, so in the same way, when the deluding karma is destroyed, the non-harming karmas, such as feeling-producing, lose their efficacy. Again, here echoing Akalanka's simile in his commentary on TS 9.11, just as when poison is rendered harmless by a doctor and has no effect, so feeling-producing karma cannot bring about an effect when deluding karma has been destroġed by the fire of intense meditation (sukladhyāna). The kevalin cannot experience hunger because there is no delusion (moha) in him which might serve as its cause, and without a cause there can be no effect. 144 If the karma were to bring about an effect irrespective of the spiritual status of the person being affected, then all sorts of disagreeable things, sexual temptation and so on, would come about for the person on the religious path; as the mind would be disturbed, meditation could not be performed and so the important transition through the eighth, ninth and tenth stages (kşapakaśreni) could not be made in order to bring about the destruction of delusion. But, in reality things of an impure nature do not afflict the kevalin who is subject only to the pure. The kevalin is like a powerful king who has just captured a neighbouring country: the wicked inhabitants who still survive cannot go on performing wicked actions while the good inhabitants continue to perform their activities without hindrance. The kevalin destroys impure things and preserves pure things, as the king punishes the guilty but not the innocent. 145
Hunger, as its name suggests, involves desire (Prabhācandra uses the desiderative noun from bhuj, bubhuksā) and as such is no different from the