________________ Jaina Meditation pation. This is in brief the plan of the Yagabindu.? Next we come to Haribhadra's famous work Yogadrstisamuccaya. The author here distinguishes eight stages of yogic development The work records a quite novel plan of classification of yogic stages. The most important feature of spiritual development is acquisition of samyagdrsti (love of truth). The soul undergoes gradual purification and along with the purification its dTsti (love of truth) becomes progressively steady and reaches consummation in the realization of the truth. This gradual development of the drsti has been classified into eight stages, viz. mitra, tara, bala, dipra, sthira, kanta, prabha and para. Before coming to the description of these drstis we shall refer in brief to the threefold yoga with the description of which the Yogadrstisamuccaya opens. A qualified yogic practitioner passes through a number of stages before he reaches the highest stage of the practice. Sometimes even in spite of bis knowledge and will, he falters in his practice on account of spiritual inertia (pramada). This faltering practice is called icchayoga. 3 The practice of one who has revealed spiritual energy and does never falter in his yogic practices, strictly follows the scriptural injunctions, and has developed penetrating insight is called sastrayoga. The practice of one who has fully mastered the scriptural injunctions and has developed the power to transcend them is called samarthyayoga. This latter yoga, again, is of two kinds, viz. (1) that which is accompanied with the disso. ciation of all the acquired virtues (dharma-samnyasa), and (2) that which effects the stoppage of all activity (yoga-samnyasa). The first kind occurs at the time when the soul undergoes the process of apurvakarana for the second time in the ninth stage of spiritual development, while the second occurs in the last stage of spiritual development which is immediately followed by final emancipation. These, viz. icchayoga, sastrayoga and samarthyayoga are the three broad divisions of all the possible stages of yoga. The eight drstis which we shall now describe are only the elaboration of these three. Drsti means attitude towards truth. This attitude is wrong and 1 Ibid., 366-7. 2 Upadhyaya Yasovijaya has followed this plan in his Dvatrimsikas No. 12 to 18 as contained in the Dvatrimsad-dvatrimsika published by Sri Jaina. Dharma-prasaraka Sabha, Bhawnagar. 3 YDS, 3. 4 Ibid., 4. 5 Ibid., 5. 6 Ibid., 9. 7 Ibid., 10. 8 Ibid., 12.
