History of Jaina Monachism

Author(s): S B Deo
Publisher: Deccan College Research Institute

Page 11

S. B. DEO
A survey of the ideas about mokşa as enunciated by the Buddhists, Jainas and different schools of Brāhmanism may be said to bring one fact to prominence. It is the positive aspect implied in liberation which consisted of the realisation of the freed state of the soul through the destruction of passions and desires.
The means to attain Liberation :
It was, therefore, to attain to this state of self-realisation which automatically freed one from the ever-dynamic cycle of birth and rebirth, that people took to the rigorous life of monkhood. Moreover, a sannyasta life was the proper mode to approach the ideal as it consisted of poverty, nonattachment and indifference to body so essential for the knowledge of the self. Hence Indian monachism insisted on monkhood or nunhood as the only way30 leading towards liberation.
Essentials of Indian Monachism :
Monastic life being the pre-requisite of liberation, religion in India has played a very important part. "It has constantly attempted to evolve and propogate certain ethical standards for the good behaviour of man as a constituent of society."31 With the basis of these ethical standards, it has evolved a planned system of life which when perfectly followed led one towards monkhood. These attempts of a carefully planned scheme may be said to be revealed in the theory of the four āśramas of Brāhmanism, and the uvāsaga padimas32 of Jainism. The former as well as the latter prepared the way for the practice of life of rigour and of least dependence on society so characteristic of monkhood.
It may, at the same time, be noted that this scheme was elastic. The stages in it were not watertight compartments but the result of a gradual and a logical process of evolution. Householdership and monkhood were not diametrically opposite to each other but the ideal and the restrained practice of the former led one to the initial stages of monastic life.
30. 'Buddhānam santike patthentassā'pi pabbajjalinge thitasseva samijjhati no gihilinge thitassa'-Nidānakathā (BHAGWAT), p. 20.
31. UPADHYE, Bșhatkathākośa, Intr. p. 7.
32. Padimās are "the standards that a layman (upāsaka) is expected to observe. They are eleven in number and are completed in five years and a half. The object in practising these pratimas seems to be to gradually attain the state of a monk as the name of the last pratimă (samanabhūyapadimā) suggests" -For details, see Uvasagadasão, P. L. VAIYA, notes, pp. 224-29; also Daśaśrutaskandha.