Book Title: Jaina Psychology
Author(s): Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Sohanlal Jain Dharm Pracharak Samiti Amrutsar

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Page 180
________________ ACTIVITY AND ITS CONTROL 163 of the live nivumas observed by Patanjali in his Yoga-sūtra. The Buddbist also recognizes the value of austerity to a certain extent. He rejects the idea of rigorous bodily mortification. We learn from the Lalita-vistara that various forms of bodily torture, self-maceration, and austerity were common is Gautama's time (which he rejected). Some devotees, we read, seated themselves in one spot and kept perpetual silence, with their legs bent under them. Some ate only once a day or once on alternate days, or at intervals of four, six or fourteen days. Some slept in wet clothes or on ashes, gravel, stones, boards, thorny grass, or spikes, or with the face downwards. Some went naked, making no distinction between fit or unfit places. Scme smeared themselves with ashes, cinders, dust, or clay. Some inhaled smoke and fire. Some gazed at the sun, or sat surrounded by five fires, or rested on one foot, or kept one arm perpetually uplifted, or moved about on their knees instead of on their feet, or baked themselves on hot stones, or submerged themselves in water, or suspended themselves in air'. Of these and similar other practices, we shall see, what is accepted and what is rejected by the Jaina. According to the Jainas, there are two types of austerity: physical and mental or external and internal. Physical austerity is of six sub-types: fasting, decreased diet, collecting alms, giving up of delicious diet, mortification, of the flesh, and separation.2 Mental austerity is also of six sub-classes: expiation, humility, service, study, renunciation (of the body), and meditation.3 Fasting is of two kinds: temporary and ending with death. Temporary fasting is either such in which a desire for food is present or such in which there is no such desire. Fasting which ends with death is of two varieties with regard to the motions of the body: with change of position and without its change. The meaning of decreased diet is familiar to us. He who takes i Buddhism, pp. 228-9. 2 Anasanamunoyariya bhikkhāyariyā ya rasapariccão. Kāyakileso samlinaya ya bajjho tavo hoi. Uttarādhyayana-sútra, XXX, 8. 3 Pāyacchittar vinao veyāvaccam taheva sajjhão. Jhānam ca viussaggo eso abbhintaro tavo. Ibid., XXX, 30. 4 Ibid., XXX, 9: 12.

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