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354
The Unknown Pilgrims
reduced to a minimum? The answer is that we must view aparigraha in the context of the sādhvis life-style, where all is envisaged as taking place within the caturvidhasamgha in accordance with the basic doctrine and with an ever-present vision of the goal to be attained. 66 The śrāvakas and śrāvikās play an important part, enabling the sādhvis to live both a life of detachment and also a life in contact with society. We may take as just one aspect of this, the question of a dwelling. The sădhvis do not possess a fixed abode of any sort, even as a group, but the samgha - and here the various communities may vary - puts at their disposal either subsidiary buildings of temples or upāśrayas, which are places where the śrāvakas and śrāvikás betake themselves for their spiritual exercises, or even dwellings belonging to the śrāvakas in the case of the Terāpanthis who have neither temples nor upăśrayas. Thus, as regards this matter of a lodgement, aparigraha consists in being anagāri, without a house; next, is means at each step of the way to ask permission from the local śrāvakas to lodge in an upāśraya or some other spot, to fix with their consent the number of days one will stay there and not to borrow books from the library of the local samgha except by permission. As one passes through villages where there is no Jaina community it may involve requesting hospitality from the inhabitants.67 The foregoing has to do with vyavahāra which may be valueless without niscaya, for the leading of a wandering life is not an end in itself; rather to be anagări is to strive towards a state of total dis-possession and interior stripping. Acārya Kundakunda with his penetrating insight expresses it thus: the jiva (ātman) is knowledge, in the sense of fullness of consciousness of being;68 everything else, the body, objects etc., is foreign to it; the one and only 'possession of the jiva (ātman) is the jiva (ātman) itself. Aparigraha is to have no desire for or attachment to anything that is not the jiva and thus it is even to have no desire for the dharma if dharma is understood in the sense of punya which, though belonging to those categories of activities that are meritorious and virtuous, does not form an integral part of the jiva. He who has knowledge knows
66 Cf. Part III for the putting into practice of the doctrine in daily life.
67 Cf. AS II, 7. 68 ...ņāņam aham ekko...PSa II, 99.
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