Mahavira Jain Vidyalay Suvarna Mahotsav Granth Part 1

Author(s): Mahavir Jain Vidyalaya Mumbai
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

Page 602

ON SAMLEKHANÁ OR SUSPENSION OF ALIMENT : 141
persuasion, correctly stresses the purpose and justification of life to consist in the opportunity it affords for self-purification (taportham āyuh).
There is a passage in Acariya Buddhaghosa's Samantapāsādika", the Atthakathā on the Pali Vinaya Pitaka, where the question of the suspension of food and drink by a Buddhist monk is discussed and approved. Should a monk stop taking food and medicine if he is afflicted with long-drawn disease and finds his body incapable of surviving even if carefully tended and nourished, and his attendants tired and exhausted ? The answer is in the affirmative. A monk is also allowed to stop taking food and medicine if he finds his disease acute and is convinced of the impossibility of survival and the attainment of spiritual elevation appears to him as a fait accompli. Even a monk who is not sick is permitted to do so provided he has developed detachment from fear of the world and considers begging of food as hindrance and handicap and desires to apply himself exclusively to meditation. Here meditation is the vis a tergo which compels him to suspend world by activities. The relevant text embodying the verdict runs as follows:
Yassa pana mahā-ābādho cirānubaddho, bhikkhū upatthahantā kilamanti jigucchanti "kadā nu kho gilānato muñcissāmā” ti attiyanti. Sa ce so "ayam attabhāvo pațijaggiyamāno pi na titthati, bhikkhū ca kilamantī" ti āhāram upacchindati, bhesajjań na sevati vastati. Yo pana "ayam rogo kharo, āyusamkhārā na titthanti, ayam ca me visesădhigamo hatthapatio viya dissatī” ti upacchindati vaţtati yeva. Agilānassā pi uppanna-samvegassa ahārapariyesanan nama papanco, "kammatthānameva anuyuñjis
sāmī" ti kammatthānasisena upacchindantassa vattati.
In modern times, Mahatma Gandhi gave a new meaning to this practice of fast unto death. He undertook such fasts for self-purification and acquiring spiritual strength. Injustice of any kind is not to be tolerated. But injustice cannot be removed by another sort of injustice. Violence, according to the Mahatma, is a form of injustice and as such is not to be resorted to for the removal of injustice in any field of life, social, political or moral. One has to set an example of non-violence and self-purification for convincing the aggressor of the
2 Malatīmadhava, I. 7. 3 Pp. 463-4, Nālandā Edition.