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Jaina View of Life
According to the Jainas, in the thirteenth stage of Guņasthāna called sayoga-kevali all the passions and the four types of Ghāti Karmas are destroyed. One is free from the bondage of mithyātva, pramada and passions. However, it is not free from yoga and empirical activity and is still not free from embodied existence, as the four types of non-obscuring Karma, like vedaniya which produces feeling, āyu which determines the span of life, nāma determining the physical structure and the gotra responsible for one's status in life are still operating. One is not free from bodily existence, because the āyu karma is still to be exhausted. But there is no influx of karma. In this stage we find omniscient beings like the Tirthankaras, the Ganadharas and the Sāmānya kevalins. They attain the enlightenment, but still live in this world, preaching the truth that they have seen. This stage may be compared to the Jivanmukti described by the Sāmkhya and Vedānta systems of thought. It is like the upādhiseşa-nirvāņa of the Buddhists. It may also be likened to the apratis-shita-nirvāņa of the Mahāyānists. Such a perfect being may appear to be active in this world in many ways, yet, at root, he is inactive. He is like a man assisting a magician in a magical show, knowing that all that is shown is merely an illusion of the senses. He is unaffected by all that happens.89 When Gautama, the Buddha, attained enlightenment, he wanted his enlightenment not to be known to others. But Brahmā inspired the Buddha to be the teacher of mankind. This is the stage of sayoga kevalin or jivan mukta. So did the Tirtharkaras, Gañadharas and Sāmānya-kevalins preach the sublime knowledge to the people of this world. Zimmer compares this attitude of the Kevalins to the function of a lamp. Just as the lamp lights the room and still remains unconcerned with what is going on in the room, so the self enacts the role of lighting the phenomenal expersonality solely for the maintenance of the
39. Vedāntasära, 219.
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