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JAINA MONASTIC JURISPRUDENCE
41
company of heretics, every member of the order had to report it to the guru.
Every precaution was taken that this reporting and condemnation was not formal or superficial. For instance, the Thanangasutta (484a) lays down that a monk should not so report his transgression as to create pity or a feeling of sympathy in the mind of the senior that would tend to lessen the harshness of the prayaścitta inflicted on him. So also monks were not to approach such a senior as was well-known for his leniency, instead of one's own senior. Reporting only the major transgressions, or those seen by somebody, or only the minor faults, or in such a way that the senior fails to hear it properly, or doing so in a very noisy way, or confessing the same fault before different ācāryas, or confessing before a person who is not competent in monastic discipline and its rules, or doing so before a guru who had done the same type of transgression-all these were not allowed. Not only that, such methods were taken to be transgressions by themselves. It will be clear from these details that in the formulation of confession no scope was left for the transgressor either to avoid the responsibility of his faults or the proper expression of these. Another point worth notice is that the senior himself must be a person of ideal integrity and good moral conduct who would not try to lessen the facts of the actual transgression committed. At the most, he was allowed to permit the transgressor to undergo punishment in suitable parts. Moreover, he did not expose before others the nature of transgression committed by a monk in order to save his becoming the target of criticism and humiliation by the co-monks. Here is, therefore, the example of the foresight on the part of the framers of monastic laws, in the working of human mind.
The next prayaścitta, the 'pratikramana' or the condemnation of transgression also formed an item of daily routine. The Bhagavati sutta and the Mūlācāra are unanimous in stating that this condemnation of transgression became a compulsory item of daily monastic routine during
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