Heart of Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Mrs Sinclair Stevenson

Page 61

THE LIFE OF MAHAVIRA
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counterpart: 'A man sitting idle brings ruin to pass.' 1 Many men doubtless had become monks through a constitutional aversion from honest labour, and the climate and leisure, whilst increasing this distaste for work in them, would be apt to create it even in those who had entered the order from the highest motives. Altogether the worldold employer of the unemployed could find fair scope for his mischievous energies amongst them !2 And so before long Mahāvira found the discipline of Pārsvanātha's monks too lax, and after a year he left them, to wander alone in a state of absolute nudity.
The question of clothes was a crucial one amongst the Jaina. Mahāvīra apparently felt that the complete ascetic must have completely conquered all his emotions, shame amongst others. A true monk would not feel either heat or cold, and so would not need the protection from the weather offered by clothes, and he would be so indifferent to mere appearance as to be unconscious as to whether he wore raiment or not. Being rid of clothes, one is also rid of a lot of other worries too: one needs no box to keep them in, no materials to mend them with, no change of raiment when the first set is dirty or outworn, and, still more impor. tant to a Jaina, no water is needed in which to wash them.
On this point Mr. Benārsi Dāss makes some rather interesting remarks in his lecture on Jainism, and throws an astonishingly new light on an old story.
Jaina monks', he says, "are naked because Jainism says that as long as one entertains the same idea of nakedness as we do, he cannot obtain salvation. One cannot, according to Jain principles, obtain Moksa, as long as he remembers that he is naked. He can only cross over the ocean of the world after he has forgotten that he is naked.... As long as a man thinks and knows that he is naked, that there is something like good and evil, he cannot obtain Moksa. He must forget it to obtain Nirvāņa. This is very well illustrated by the wellitott at ate atão.
& The Brāhmans had tried to avoid some of the more obvious abuses by restricting entrance to the fourth asrama to men of mature years, who had passed through a long course of preparatory discipline.
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