Jain Journal 1980 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 23

YOGA-TRIPLET
SUZUKO OHIRA
The word yoga ordinarily denotes the cessation of mental activities, but the Jainas use it in the technical sense of action committed by the media of mind-speech-body. And this yoga-triplet plays an important role in various fields of Jainism. For instance, it forms the so-called trividham trividhena along with karana-triplet. It constitutes the content of gupti. It is the basic cause of āsrava in karma theory, and it is counted as one of the 14 mārganāsthānas. Beside all these, the concept of upayoga is surely involved with the concept of yoga, and even the series of atomic groups called sevenfold vargaņās is formulated centered around the triplet of mind-speech-body. Since yogatriplet expresses merely the divisions of action, it could not develop itself more than a technical concept as such. However, it is important enough to note that it came to exert its capacity in the wide range of fields in Jainism. Then how did this concept of yoga come into being in the Jaina school ? This question may deserve a study in order to understand how it came to attract the Jaina theoreticians in various subject fields, which is attempted in the following.
The later so-called karana-triplet, action committed by oneself, action committed by the other for his sake, and approval of the action committed by the other for his sake, makes its consistent appearance in the Ācāra I, wherein the later so-called yoga-triplet is marked by its absence. On the other hand the Buddhists considered karma or action in terms of three media of action by mind-speech-body, which makes its consistent appearance in the earliest Buddhist texts such as the Suttanipāta, Dhammapada, etc. The term yoga in this technical sense or the triplet of mind-speech-body minus naming it yoga starts to occur in the Sūtraksta I onwards, but the word yoga in non-technical sense frequently appear in the Acāra I, Sütraksta I, Uttara (early chapters) and Daśavaikālika which belong to the earliest canonical stage in due sequence. And the Jaina concept of tivihenam karana-joenam makes its first appearance in its full-fledged form in explaining five mahāvratas along with rātri-bhojana-viramaņa as the 6th vow in the Daśavaikālika IV. And this chapter which deals with the 6th vow and is composed