Harmless Soul

Author(s): W J Johnson, Dayanand Bhargav
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 26

12 Harmless Souls
action.22
In the Upalisutta of the Majjhima Nikāya (56), which describes the conversion of Upāli, a lay disciple of Mahāvīra, by the Buddha, a dispute arises over whether the sins of the mind, as the Buddha teaches, or the sins of the body, as the Nigantha Nataputta (Mahāvira) contends, are the heaviest. The Buddha asks Tapassi (a Jain) how many kinds of acts 'effect and start Demerit, according to Nataputta the Nigantha'. Tapassi replies: 'It is not his usage, Gotama, to employ the term "acts"; he speaks of "inflictions" (daṇḍa)' (namely, those of body / deed, word and mind).23
Each of the three kinds of danda is agreed to be distinct from the other two. Mahāvīra is reported by Tapassi to state that, of the three, those of deed (kāyadaṇḍa - i.e. of body) are the heaviest. But the Buddha replies that those of mind are the heaviest; and rather than 'danda', he prefers to use the term 'kamma'. Thus, according to the Majjhima Nikaya, the Jains give a negative gloss to the word for activity itself. (Although, as Jacobi points out, the word kamma occurs in the Jaina sutras too, in the sense of 'deed';
22 See p. 47ff., below.
23 Pāli: kati pana Tapassi Nigaṇṭho Nātaputto kammāni paññāpeti pāpassa kammassa kiriyāya pāpassa kammassa pavattiyā ti... Na kho āvuso Gotama āciņṇam Nigaṇṭhassa Nātaputassa kammam kamman-ti paññāpetum, dandam danḍan ti kho avuso Gotama ācinnam Niganthassa Nataputtassa paññāpetun ti - Majjhimanikāya 1, 372.
The sense of danda here would seem to be 'hurtful physical acts', i.e. 'violence'. Cf. Dhammapada 129:
sabbe tasanti dandassa sabbe bhāyanti maccuno | attānam upamamṁ katvā na haneyya na ghataye ||
'All men tremble at violence, all men fear death. Likening others to oneself, one should neither kill nor cause to kill.'
According to Chalmers (PTS ed. of MN, p. 267), Buddhaghosa 'says that the Jain idea was that citta (the mano-daṇḍa) did not come into bodily acts or into words, which were irresponsible and mechanical, like the stirring and soughing of boughs in the wind'.
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