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Chapter 4.
Pravrajyā: The itinerant life
The eight-month continuous pilgrimage and
the pause during the monsoon
The ascetic must pursue his path, unaffected [by any adversity); he must endure everything both the agreeable and the disagreeable, manifesting no desire for anything (in any way), taking notice of neither honours nor blame.
A - Vihara: Continual journeying from place to place
The sādhvis remain in an upāśraya for a period which may last from a few days to several weeks and sometimes even some months.2 For the anagāris, the shift or change of place is a spiritual activity the same as any other. Vihāră is the expression of the pilgrim life: walking for several or more hours, staying somewhere for a limited
1 uvehamāņo u parivvaejjā piyamappiyam savva titikkhaejja
na savva savvatthabhiroyaejjā na yāvi pūyaṁ garahaṁ ca samjae. US XXI, 15.
2 Cf. BrkS I, 8-9 where it is said that the nirgranthis may stay for 2 months of winter or 2 months of summer in a city or market-town, surrounded by some form of enclosure (walls or a natural enclosue, such as a river or mountains), so that all the dwellings are on the inside of this enclosure. They may stay in a city or market-town of which some of the houses are within the enclosure and others outside it. The nirgranthis may stay 2 months within the enclosure of such a city or market-town and 2 months outside it. A stay may be prolonged for reasons of study or illness. If one is obliged to stay in the same town, one changes upăśraya. Sadhvi Vicakṣaṇa, for example, was obliged to remain in Dilli for several years, her mother, Sadhvi Vijñāna Śri, being paralysed. They regularly changed upåśraya, along with her whole group, and stayed in different districts of the city; cf. P 561 ff.
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