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SVASTI - Essays in Honour of Prof. Hampa Nagarajaiah
hastādibhedena bahuprakāraḥ kayo yathaikaḥ paripālaniyaḥ tathā jagadbhinnam abhinnaduḥkhasukhātmakam sarvam idam tathaiva (Bodhicaryavatāra 8.91)
Of what use is the dry liberation, which dwindles into insignificance before the oceans of the ecstacies of the creatures being freed?
mucyamăneșu sattveșu ye te prämodyasagarāḥ
tair eva nanu paryāptam mokṣenārasikena kim || (8.108)
Obviously this trend became more prominent in the Mahāyāna school. The Bodhisattva's only wish is to do good to others." The Jainas however, emphasized more the negative precepts of non-injury. On a minute observation, they realised that the idea of helping the helpless is neither compatible with the high standards of detachment and asceticism nor with the concept of absolute non-violence itself. Any worldly help to a man would imply attachment on the side of one who gives it and the propagation of mundane activities on the side of one who receives it.20 It seems somewhat strange why the Buddhists should not have criticized the Jainas for holding such a restricted and negative view of non-violence and why the Jainas should have spared the Buddhists for allowing flesh eating, even though holding themselves to be the votaries of non-violence.
The Jaina view of non-violence led to an idea of supra-moral plan of ethics. The moral plan of life, which is vyavahära dharma, admits of a distinction between the good and the bad. But this is not the ultimate aim of ethics. The niscaya dharma consists of transcending the duality of good and bad. The good and the bad, says. Kundakundäcārya, are both like the shackles of gold and iron respectively, and as such, both of them bind us to the physical world." No doubt that the intermediate path of morality is to be preferred to the path of immoral practices, because as Pūjyapāda says, is it not better to wait in the cool shade rather than in the hot sun?22
Lord Buddha must have also thought only sila or conduct is insufficient as he has recommended samadhi also. In Buddhism also, all acts, whether good or bad are considered impure from the point of view of meditation." Buddhism, however, could never have gone to the extreme of considering even the virtuous activities as a hindrance to liberation. The Jainas argued that the virtuous action leads to wealth, wealth to pride, pride to infatuation and infatuation to sin and, therefore, let there be
19 Jātakamālā, 5.3.
20 Cf. Muni Nagarāja Ahimsa-paryavekṣaṇa, pp. 29-32.
21 Samayasära, 146.
22 Istopadeśa, 3.
23 Radhakrishnan, S., Indian Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 162.
