Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 115

108
1.
2.
PADMANABH S JAINI
and energy of their own. They are bent this way and that by their fate, by the necessary conditions of the class to which they belong, by their individual nature, and it is according to their position in one or other of the six classes that they experience ease or pain.
It is not surprising that the rigid fatalism of Makkhali Gosāla was severely condemned by the Jains and the Buddhists, who found in it a total rejection of the efficacy of karma. The main thrust of their attack was no doubt directed against the doctrines it implied, namely (1) 'salvation through transmigration'-samsāreņa suddhi as the Buddhist text aptly puts it3, and (2) salvation for all
3.
"There are fourteen hundred thousands of the principal sorts of birth, and again six thousand other, and again six hundred. There are eighty-four hundred thousand periods during which both fools and wise alike, wandering in transmigration, shall at last make an end of pain (dukkha). Though the wise should hope: 'By this virtue or this performance of duty, or this penance, or this righteousness will I make the karma (I have inherited) that is not yet mature' -though the fool should hope, by the same means, to get gradually rid of karma that has matured-neither can do it. The ease and pain, measured as it were, with a measure, cannot be altered in the course of transmigration; there can be neither increase nor decrease thereof, neither excess nor deficiency. Just as when a ball of string is cast forth it will spread out just as far, and no farther, than it can unwind, just so both fools and wise alike, wandering in transmigration exactly for the allotted term, shall then, and only then, make an end of pain."1
Digha-nikaya I, pp. 53-4.
For a complete bibliography and an exhaustive treatment of this doctrine, see Basham. History and Doctrine of the Ajivikas. (See fn. 3 p. 107).
(a) "ittham kho me, bhante, Makkhali Gosalo sanditṭhikam
samaññaphalam puṭtho samano samsārasuddhim byākāsı"
Digha-nikaya I, 54.
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