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KARMA AND THE
class, and often from a money-lender's family. This helps us to understand how difficult some ascetics find it to get rid of greed, and, whilst professing to give up everything, contrive by hook or crook to retain their fortune, sometimes, as we have noted, even keeping it in paper money hidden on their persons, to the great disgust of their fellow Jaina. Those who manage absolutely to destroy every trace of greed will pass straight to the twelfth stage, whilst others have to pause at the eleventh.
When a man has attained to the eleventh stage, Upasantamoha gunasthanaka, he has reached a really critical point, where everything depends on how he deals with the sin of greed. If he destroys it, and it becomes quite extinct, he is safe; but if it only remains quiescent, he is in a perilous state, for, like a flood, it may at any moment burst its dam, and the force of its current may carry the soul far down the slope he has been climbing, depositing him on either the sixth or seventh step, or even on the lowest. On the other hand, if he deal successfully with greed, he becomes an Anuttaravāsi Deva and knows that he will become a Siddha after he has undergone one more rebirth as a man.
xii. KṣiIf a man be on the twelfth step, Kṣinamoha gunasthānaka, namoha he has won freedom for ever not only from greed but from thanaka. all the ghatin karma,1 and though the aghatin karma2 still persist, they have little power to bind the soul: in fact, so limited is their power, that at death a soul passes at once through the two remaining stages and enters mokşa without delay. The Digambara believe that at this stage the first two parts of pure contemplation (Śukladhyāna) are developed. If a man who reaches the stage of Sayogikevali gunasgikevali thanaka preaches, and forms a community or tirtha, he thanaka. becomes a Tirthankara. He first (according to the Digam
xiii. Sayo
gunas
xi. Upaśāntamoha
gunasthanaka.
1 i. e. those difficult to destroy, or according to another interpretation those which destroy omniscience: Jñanavaraṇīya, Darśanavaraṇiya, Mohaniya and Antaraya. Cp. p. 184.
2 i. e. those easy to destroy, or those which do not destroy omniscience: Vedaniya, Ayu, Nama and Gotra.
