Heart of Jainism

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

Page 86

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MAHĀVĪRA'S PREDECESSORS
an antinomian position, but also one of absolute fatalism, in which he declared that all things were absolutely fixed and so man was relieved of all moral responsibility. Now he brought forward another doctrine, that of re-animation, by which he explained to Mahāvīra that the old Gośāla who had been a disciple of his was dead, and that he who now animated the body of Gośāla was quite another person; this theory, however, deceived nobody, and Gośāla, discredited in the eyes of the townspeople, fell lower and lower, and at last died as a fool dieth. Just before the end, however, the strange duality of his nature again asserted itself, and, acknowledging that all that Mahāvira had said against him was true, and that he had left the truc faith and preached a false one, he directed his own disciples to drag his body through the town by a rope for people to spit at, and to bury him with cvery mark of shame. This command they naturally did not carry out, nor would it have been necessary for us so long after his death to have discussed this unhappy man, but for the profound effect his life had on the formulation of Mahavira's doctrine.
Gośāla is of importance to those of us who are trying to understand Jainism for two reasons: the sin and shame of his life emphasized the need for stringent rules for the order; and the doctrine of absolute fatalism was shown to result in non-moral conduct. Jainism avoids this determinism, as we shall see later, by teaching that, though karma decides all, we ourselves can affect our past karma by our present life.
1 Some Jaina believe that, because he so sincerely repented before his death, he went not to hell, but to one of the Devaloka, i.e. heavens, and is now, at the time of writing, in the Twelfth Devaloka, from which he will pass in another age to be a Tirthankara.