Jain Agam Sahitya

Author(s): K R Chandra
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 67

N. M. Kansara
43
which would uitimately weaken the most essential willpower of the aspirants for spiritual life. This was inevitable, since Lord Malāvīra stood for a highly strict and severely disciplined moral life as the only adequate means for liberation from the wheel of transmigration. It is only as an expedient of encouragement for weaker souls already entangled in the worldly life that he has provided for the compromise formulae of twelve-fold way of the life of a householder, wherein, too, the ideal constantly kept in the forefront is that of an ascetic (samaņa), a houseless one. The Upanişadic teachings, too clearly lay down that the eligibility for the path of liberation, called by them as 'devayāna', call for a life of solitude, penance and faith, demanding total extinction of the desire for wealth or possessions, for progency or continuance of tradition and lineage, and for fame or indulgence to one's ego. In view of these broad fundamental facts of life, there is hardly any worthwhile differrence in the teachings of both these traditions of Indian spirituality. Whatever difference we come across in the later texts is more of the nature of intellectual hairsplitting rather than of any new discovery in the field.
REFERENCES
1. Cf. Viyāhāpannattisuttam, Parts I-III. Ed. Pt. Bechardas Jivaraj
Doshi. Publ. Shri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya, Bombay, 1974-82. 2. VPS., pp. 479.20; 494,17. 3. Ibid.. p. 144.18. 4. Ibid., p. 361.16. 5. Ibid., p. 718.15. 6. Ibid., p. 948.16. 7. Ibid., p. 725.11, 8. Ibid., p. 610.18. 9. Ibid., p. 14.13.