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268
Studies in lodian Philosophy
At a first glance, his performance in bringing these Țddhis in these early two stages of śukla dhyāna strikes us very strange.1 Rddhis or the supernatural powers of this and that kind make their fashionable appearance, for instance, in the Bhagavatisātra, which are generally conditioned to be possessed by the spriritually advanced monks, but they are the heretics who practise them. These rddhis are well-known among the other systems of thoughts (e.g. abhijñā of the Buddhists and giśvarya of the Sārkhyas) to be the actual capacities brought about by the dhyāna-yoga practice or penance on the advanced level of spirituality, and they commonly regard that the users of such capacities cannot advance to the stage of achieving liberation.
The Yogasūtra, of which Chapter III is devoted to the supernatural powers attainable by a yogi through the operation of samyama, says in its III. 50 that kaivalya is revealed to the yogi who has overcome the worldly desire to the attained capacity as such.Then, Umāsvāti's performance mentioned above is not at all strange. Nay, he gives us a hint for further penetrating into the mechanism of śukla dhyāna and the relevant concepts which are to a great extent based on the established ideas relevant to the ascetic practice in those days.
The performers of the 1st and the 2nd stages of sukla dhyāna are the sages on the 11th and 12th gunasthānas, i.e. upaśāntakasāya-vitarāga chadmastha and ksiņa-kasāya-vitarāgachadmastha, The 11th gunasthāna forms the upaśama śreņi, and the sage who climbs the ladder is destined to fall to the bottom of the 1st stage of mithyātva due to the activation of his kasāyas which have been so far suppressed. The 12th gunasthāna forms the ksapaka śreņi, and the sage who climbs this ladder straightaway from the 10th guṇasthāna necessarily ascends to the 13th gunasthāna by destroying the total kaşā. yas. The Jainas obviously borrowed the concept of these gunasthānas from the Buddhist classification of Eight Arya Pudgalas, wherein the sakņdā gāmi corresponds to the sage on the 11th gunasthana, the anāgāmi to the sage on the 12th
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