Jinamanjari 2001 04 No 23

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 46

and a prerequisite to accepting lay and monastic vows. What is under scrutiny is whether śrīmad's, and hence his followers' conception of self-realisation differs from what Jains generally understand by the term.
According to śrīmad samyak darśana is an actual, personal experience of the soul as a phenomenon separate from the body. The empirical, infallible knowledge accompanying the experience of samyak darśana is the basis of religious authority. Although theoretical understanding has its place, it is open to misinterpretation which can lead to false beliefs and practises that will not assist the aspirants towards their initial goal of self-realisation, or their final goal of mokşa. Samyak darśana, as śrīmad perceived it, required a level of internal purity, not found in intellectual understanding, to overcome the deluding.
Initiated Jain ascetics are objects of worship and authorised to give religious discourses to the laity. Their religious authority is assured by samyak darśana which is the fourth guṇasthāna and the prerequisite to the initiation as an ascetic, which is the sixth gurasthāna. However, śrīmad feared that not all ascetics were self-realised according to his definition of it as an internal, empirical experience of the soul. His own disciple Lallu is an example. Lallu was a respected, senior muni who had physically renounced such things as wife, children, home, but who had not internally renounced these things, he still desired them. Śrīmad perceived that the external renunciatory exhibits of asceticism no longer guaranteed internal renunciation, that initiation did not guarantee an ascetic as self-realised. Samyak darśana had become an attribute coincidental with diksa, rather than a prerequisite internal state. The pure message of Mahāvīra was threatened. Jainism's religious authority was jeopardised and many aspirants were following, according to śrīmad's criteria, 'false' gurus because of the number of ascetics initiated before they had attained the required internal state of samyak darśana.
śrīmad's interpretation of samyak darśana as an internal process lead to his anti-sectarian attitude. 'Sectarian' refers to specific groups of Jains who are identified by beliefs or actions that are not unanimously shared by all Jains, such as the
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