Sannyasa Dharma

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 59

SANNYASA DAARMA
the rule of non-bathing the saint does not indulge in the worldly man's fastidious occupation of cleansing the teeth.*
TAKING FOOD STANDING.T-This is to prevent the growth of a feeling of attachment for the place or the people in the sõdhu's mind. He stays at the householder's (layman's) place only so long as is necessary to take his food. He may linger there. after, but only for the purpose of imparting religi. ous instruction, if requested to do so. The food he takes is placed on his hand ; he will not touoh plates, or saucers, or cups or any other kind of utensils, whether they be valuable or otherwise. All these he renounced long before he entered sannyāsa; and he will not own or possess them on any condition, not even temporarily by way of a loan of their user.
TAKING ONLY ONE MEAL A DAY.This is a mild form of fasting which is necessary to crush out bodily longings and cravinge. As a matter of fact the saint is expected to resort to mucb severer forms of fasting, imposing upon himself restrictions even with regard to the food he is to take when not fasting. It must be understood that the riddance from the undesirable “gtatalà 7 9797 HT:1
सपोरं नरक यति व्याघ्र भक्षश्चतुर्यगम् ॥ स्मृतिरत्नाकर [Tr. Whoever cleanses his teeth on the day of fasting, descends into terrible hell, and is devoured by a wild beast in all the four periods of time.]
+ Cf. " The Yogi should not sit down to eat."--The Occult Science in India, by Louis Jacolliot, p. 83.
48