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The Śramaņi: The Worker
505
Next the sadhvis assemble in a circle, seated on the ground with their guruņi in the centre, each with her pătras, the guruņi helps herself and shares the food out among the members of the group. The sādhvis are permitted to converse during the meal. This terminated, each one washes her pătras and wipes them carefully.
Scripture exhorts the ascetics not to dwell in thought or in speech on the quality of the food, whether it is appetising or not, savoury or tasteless, salty or sugary, etc.; the essential thing is that it should be pure.118 One must abstain from highly-spiced and stimulating foods;119 and if one has harvested nothing today, one must not be sad, for perhaps one will receive something tomorrow.120 All that has been brought back must be consumed, because no food is kept in the upāśraya.
We must comprehend what it means when, all one's life long, one never eats a dish of one's own choosing and to one's own taste, when one is faced sometimes with a very peculiar mixture and when one always consumes it cold;121 when one depends entirely upon others, on their benevolence, and must make the daily effort of gocari. However, when a sadhvi has acquired sufficient experience to know exactly how to behave, what she can accept and what she must refuse, when the right attitude becomes spontaneous and her judgement has become sound, then the practice of gocari can unquestionably
doșas on the part of the sadhvis in the taking of their meal; cf. SramanS pp. 431-435; US XXIV, 12.
118 Cf. DS V, 1,97-99; 2, 1; US XXXV, 17.
119 Cf. US XXXII, 10-11.
120 Cf. AS 1, 2, 5, 3; US II, 28-31.
121 When a sick sadhvi needs to have a warm drink, one of the sadhvis designated for gocari brings it back to her immediately and then sets out again.
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