Jainthology

Author(s): Ganesh Lalwani
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 76

it is; only there should be no impediment in its way. External conditions, such as the organ of sight and the presence of light, are useful only indirectly and jñāna results automatically when the obstacles are removed through their aid. That the knowledge which a jiva actually has is fragmentary is due to the obscuration caused by karma which interferes with its power of perception. As some schools assume a principle of avidya to explain empirical thought, the Jainas invoke the help of karma to do so. This empirical thought is sometimes differentiated from the jiva, but its identity with the latter is at the same time emphasized so that the jiva and its several jñānas in this sense constitute a unity in difference.14
(2) The fact that these moments of "vision of knowledge" are associated with death experiences enables on to look at the Jaina practice of sallekhanā or "voluntary self-starvation"15 in a new light. Could it not be suggested that the Jaina practice is an effort to achieve this "vision of knowledge" on a lasting basis through a controlled and regulated dying instead of the haphazard manner in which one usually takes leave of this world. It should be noted that sallekhana is not suicide in the usual sense of the word. Rules for carrying it out are laid down and it is "allowed only to those ascetics who have acquired the highest degree of perfection".16
(3) According to the view usually met with, the liberated beings in Jainism are said to reside on a slab at the top of the universe. The evidence adduced by Dr. Moody suggests that this may be too gross a view of the matter. One is reminded here of the remarks of one of his interviewees: ".....this is a place where the place is knowledge".17 If this is so, then the word siddhasila18 the abode of the perfect ones must be understood figuratively and not literally.
There are, to be sure, some differences between the "vision of knowledge" as experienced by Dr. Moody's subject and the Jain concept of
14 M. Hiriyanna, op. cit., pp. 158-159.
15 R. C. Zaehner, ed., op. cit., p. 261.
16 Upendra Thakur, A History of Suicide in India: An Introduction (Delhi : Munshiram Manoharlal, 1963), pp. 104-106.
17 DJ. Raymond A. Moody, Jr., Reflections On Life After Life, p. 14.
18 See Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson, The Heart of Jainism (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal 1970 (first published 1915), p. 217.
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