Jain Spirit 1999 07 No 01

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 62

SHADES OF GREED
maintaining one's body and health, and the primary safety for one's existence, may not be the same as one is capable of wanting. This desire for the excess amount of provisions, whether of food, or means of pleasure, or instruments of defence, can so overwhelm a person that it will necessarily translate into actions that cannot but be destructive of the legitimate interests of others.
BY PADMANABH S. JAINI UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
An eminent authority on Jainism, Prof. Jaini provides a simple yet profound analysis of the Jain principle of Aparigraha or Non-possessiveness.
Here, these leshyas are comparable to six men who in the course of their travels are lost in a forest with nothing to eat. Seeing from a distance (probably, as in a mirage) a tree laden with fruits, each person entertains a different thought. The first person Thinks, "I shall cut this tree from the base of its trunk, "while the second one thinks, "I shall cut it where it begins to branch. "The third one thinks, "I shall cut a branch from it', and the fourth one, "I shall cut a twig." The fifth one thinks, "I shall pick enough fruit from the tree to eat", but the sixth one thinks, "I shall pick up those fruits that have fallen on the ground. The picture illustrates the above verses.
Jain texts enumerate four instincts (samjnas) universally found in all forms of life including the vegetable kingdom. Craving for food (ahara-samjna) is the most primary of these instincts. No being other than the liberated soul is exempt from it. This desire for food sets up competition between one living being and another, which gives rise to the second instinct, namely that of fear (bhayasamjna). The consumption of food sets in motion the third of the instincts, the desire for reproduction (maithuna-samjna), which produces further desire for food. This, in turn, produces a craving to accumulate things for future use, the instinct called parigraha-samjna, which invariably goads the souls towards volitional harmful acts (himsa) inspired by attachment and aversion (raga and dvesha). The Jains therefore see the craving for food and other requisites as the very root of all bondage, the uprooting of which is essential for the elimination of the other passions.
The Jains have a technical term used to describe this type of mental world of greed and other passions: leshya, a certain psychological stain with which a soul in bondage can be identified at any given time. These leshyas are seen as colorations, as for example, in the English expressions "red with rage" or "green with envy". Depending upon the grades of greed, the Jains have marked six shades, naming them as black (krishna), blue (nila), grey (kapota), yellow (pita), pink or lotus coloured (padma), and shinn ing white, like the moonlight (shukla). Generally speaking, the denizens of the hells and animals have the former three unwholesome (ashubha) colours while the gods in the heavens have the latter three wholesome (shubha) colours. However, humans are capable of experiencing all six shades of anger, pride, deviousness, and most of all the passion of greed. It is this last passion that produces ambitions to appropriate the possessions of others and the delusion that one thereby has control over others.
While the physical needs as well as their capacity to fulfil them varies from one being to another - and within humankind between one human and another - there is no limit to what the mind may indulge in wanting, securing, and defending. One may eat only so much food, yet one might wish to accumulate enough to keep a storeroom filled with provisions. What is legitimate, therefore, for
It is to be noted that in the above story the physical violence against the tree has not yet started, and yet these six men have entertained different varieties of desire that will define their instinct for possession (parigraha-samjna). While the Jains stress the importance of non-violence in action, they at the same time emphasise that the desire for possessions, which starts at the mental level, is the seed of evil, and the seed of samsara. The Jain spirit is manifest only when an aspirant searches the soul for the grades of greed and moves from the darker shades into the lighter ones.
A beautiful passage in a Jain text called Gommatasara Jivakanada (circa tenth century, verses 507508) illustrates these shades of greed in the following metaphor.
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Jain Spirit. July - September 1999