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general review is here being attempted on the basis of the earliest portion of the Ardhamāgadhī Jain canonical literature.
Ācārya Mahāprajña has done a tremendous work in this direction during the period in which he meticulous edited the Jaina agamas and rediscovered the lost Jain meditation techniques. Because of the sources emphasis upon insight he called the practice ‘Prekṣā(insight) meditation'. Though this technique is based on ancient wisdom as well as modern science. So its benefits are now being demonstrated through modern scientific knowledge.
Until recently, many scholars believed that Jainism did not possess its own original meditation technique. The reasons for this are two folds:
1. As mentioned above, Jainism abandoned (lost) its meditational
practices in the favour of alternate body discipline and therefore, later Ācāryas such as Haribhadra, Subhacandra, Rāmasena, Hemacandra etc., who wrote on meditation in Sanskrit and did
so in novel ways. 2. Today, the study of original Jain texts is not common due to the
relative lack of training in Prakrit among scholars, who generally
rely upon secondary sources for the Prakrit material.
A comprehensive study of Jain Agams reveals the weighty treatment of the subject. My effort in this article will be to illuminate the originality of Jain meditation. The discussion will be concentrated mainly on Ardhamāgadhī Jaina Agamas. In Acārānga sūtra, one of the oldest Agama and first in the series of Jain Amga (main) has sufficient material on meditation. This Agama reveals the techniques of meditation, which were followed by Lord Mahāvīra himself.
We can assume that the technique of meditation, available in Acārānga, is the oldest and original one. The path practiced and preached by Lord Mahāvīra was purely spiritual with the knowledge of self' as the starting point and ‘self-realization' as the final end. Meditation is the vital instrument for self-realization.
The Acārānga Sūtra gives a detailed account of Lord Mahavira's meditation we will discuss it here in detail:
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