Harmless Soul

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

Page 44

30 Harmless Souls
Indeed, it is clear that the monks went out of their way to avoid the conditions which might lead to such a relationship.
To summarise, we may suppose that meritorious action and a better rebirth on earth or in heaven as a result of it were concepts familiar to the householders with whom the early Jaina ascetics had their minimal contact; such ideas were part of the general cultural furniture. And although the earliest Jaina doctrine apparently denies the possibility of these consolations to the householder, nevertheless, Jaina mendicants had to take that general cultural view into account when regulating their own relations with lay persons. While their ties with the laity remained so loose, however, it was not necessary for them to make any systematic doctrinal concessions to that view. For the real possibility of a better rebirth for an ordinary lay person to be theoretically established, some doctrine of intention or motive as being, at some level, more karmically significant than action alone would have been required. And as we have seen, in the earliest texts motive is regarded either as totally irrelevant or only important in so far as it helps to engender or inhibit action. (Ideas such as the Buddhist one that there can be karmically wholesome or recommended action [punya-karma] are, of course, entirely absent, as is the related idea that individual monks and the Sangha in general are the 'unsurpassable field of merit' for the laity.)75
Only in Suyagaḍamga 2 (intermittently) and the Uttarajjhayana are there enough references to the selfrestrained householder who achieves rebirth in heaven or as a human to give the impression that this possibility is becoming doctrinally established.76 This is not to claim that there are no references whatsoever to merit and a better rebirth in the very earliest texts; when they do occur,
75See Buddhist Dictionary, 'puñña', p. 80; cf. Collins p. 219.
76 See, for example, Suy. 2.1.13, 2.1.17, 2.2.60ff., 2.2.74, 2.2.78, 2.5.16, 2.7.36, and Ut.. 5.19ff., 7.20ff., 10.15, 12.12-17, 21.94, 36.5053.