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Jaina Voluntary Death as a Model for Secular End-of-life Care
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realizations attained from the progressive mastering of restrained conduct. The list is sometimes compressed into two types, or three, and both the Bhagavati Arādhanā and Uttarādhyayana-Niryukti enumerate and describe seventeen types of death. Mata Jnanamati gives a middling-length list which shows "death having five varieties:
(1) Extreme Prudent's Death (Panơita-pandita Marana) (2) Prudent's Death (Pandita Maraña) (3) Fool-Prudent's Death (Bāla-panạita Maraña) (4) Fool's Death (Bāla Maraņa) (5) Extreme Fool's Death (Bāla-bāla Maraña)S"
Often the highest type of death is a reserved designation for the death of a liberated being, or a death which results in liberation from saṁsāra, the cycle of existence. The worst type of death is described by Mata Jnanamati as "the death of a wrong-faithed living beings and death by suicide and accident etc6." It would problematic in modern bioethics, where even the word 'accident' has been replaced by terminology such as 'collision', to associate events causing sudden death with foolishness. This would be unfair to a pedestrian struck by no fault of their own. Additionally, 'wrong-faith' needs to be qualified because such logic would not survive outside of a Jaina context if it meant 'Non-Jaina. Betraying the above description of the worst type of death are other indications in Jaina thought which show that, in fact, the last moments of life continue to hold the redemptive opportunity to improve one's death by way of supplementary purification practices, such as confession. A sudden, traumatic death would, indeed, make dying more problematic. However, even if there is little time to prepare and only mere moments of consciousness remaining, Jaina death practice allows for the continued potential to transform the mind.
