Ratnakarandaka Shravakachar

Author(s): Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp Printers

Page 59

Verse 13
faeces, saliva and many other similar impurities, how can the body, asks the āchārya, be regarded as clean? Let him who would laugh at the dirty condition of the body of the Jaina saint remember that, in its true nature, his own body is but a basket of stinking unsightly filth covered over with leathern parchment. There is yet an important distinction between his body and that of the saint which consists in the fact that, while his own carcass is filled, to the full, with the refuse resulting from unrestrained sense-indulgence, the saint's contains less filth, both quantitatively and qualitatively, owing to the control which he puts on his senses. The difference between their bodies is then reduced to this that the saint's is actually the purer of the two, though the other appears to be more attractive outwardly. And, so far as the purity of the soul is concerned, the man who scorns the saint is nowhere as compared with him whom he likes to scorn, since the very fact of ridiculing a true saint is an indication of gross ignorance and sin. The dirty, untidy appearance of a muni (ascetic) is a necessary step in the path of progress, and is unavoidable at a certain stage. As a matter of fact, the attainment of nirvāṇa is consistent only with a complete absorption in one's own ātman (soul), and necessitates the withdrawal of attention from the physical body and the outside world, so that the Jaina householder, who is expected to be a pattern of cleanliness, is enjoined to gradually train himself to neglect his fleshy 'prison', the body of matter, and to study the well-being of his soul. The ascetic, who has renounced the world and who wishes to reach the goal in the shortest space of time, naturally lays all the stress he can on spiritual meditation, and can ill afford to waste his time on studying such useless and progress-obstructing matters as the attractiveness of his person. Neither is he a loser in the long run, for the destruction of his ghātia karmas at once raises him
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