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The śramaņi: The Worker
485
sādhvis, certainly those who followed the camp, continued in their efforts.
There are also, in the other sampradayas, sādhvis who are awake to the same reality and who both make the initial effort and also persist in it, but these are isolated cases, such as that of Sadhvi Ratnaprabhā Sri. For the last several years she has remained in meditation nightly from midnight to four in the morning, murmuring the Namaskāramantra and fasting three days out of four, a strict fast in which she only takes water. She explains in this regard that the choice of vairāgya implies the total purification of the ātman, which is brought about through dhyāna and tapas; that the simplest and most efficacious form of dhyāna is the repetition of the Namaskāra-mantra in recollectendess and silence, and that this concentration, if sustained, brings about in the heart, the mind and the body a gradual purification. When she is asked how, in this state of continuous fast, she can observe all the rules and walk throughout the vihāras, she replies smilingly: "In the strength of the ātman." 36
In the biographies the word dhyāna is used, but with no explanation. In collections of pravacanas given by sādhvis, dhyāna is mentioned quite frequently and brief explanations are given, though these latter indicate a certain lack of training and experience.
Some sādhvis have taken an interest in classical yoga and practise the recommended āsanas.37
What is quite certain is that many of the sādhvis would like to receive a grounding in this discipline of dhyana, which is basic to the ideal to which they aspire. It is to be hoped that some of the ācāryas and guruņis will launch an initiative towards renewal.
36 Met at Yeola in Mahārāştra in March, 1975.
37 Although BrkS V, 23-33 forbids the practice by sādhvis of a number of āsanas, certain ones of them have, in our day, disregarded these prohibitions, which are in any case unjustified.
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