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382
The Unknown Pilgrims
has reached a certain level of consciousness of being 39 As for the last two stages, they appertain to the state of the kevalin.
The results and fruits of the first two stages of sukla-dhyāna are the same, but there is a progression as regards the intensity of these results, meritorious karmas bringing about samvara and samvara nirjarā.40
The Dhyanaśataka gives some concrete and very vivid comparisons. Dhyana is compared to the water which washes the stains out of garments, the fire which removes rust from iron, the sun which dries up mud from the earth. Stain, rust and mud are like karmic matter.41 Again, dhyāna is likened to some medical treatment which heals a sick person, to a fire which, fanned by the wind, burns wood, to wind which disperses clouds.42 The ascetic who practises dhyāna sincerely and regularly comes gradually to that purified state of being, that constant recollectedness in which he is no longer affected by any sort of affliction caused by the passions, not by external factors such as cold or heat.43
e) The Tattvånuśåsana or Dhyanaśastra of Ācārya Råmasena
This work, of the Digambara tradition, is almost entirely devoted to dhyāna.44 It is not, certainly, the only text, nor the most ancient on
39 Strictly speaking, since we have defined dhyāna as mental concentration, we should add that from the 2nd stage of sukla-dhyāna onwards this definition is discarded
40 Cf. Dhyan Sat 93-94.
41 Ibid., 97-98.
42 Ibid., 100-102.
43 Ibid., 103-104.
44 Out of 259 padhyas, only the first 32 do not address themselves directly to dhyāna. This treatise probably dates from the end of the Xth c.; Ācārya
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