Page:The Heart of Jainism (IA heartofjainism00stevuoft).djvu/176

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148
THE NINE CATEGORIES OF

a human being must be careful to control his movements according to the rules laid down in the scriptures (Yathāsūtraċeṣṭāniyami), and at last, when he becomes a saint omniscient, must maintain his limbs in that state of absolute immobility (Ċeṣṭānivṛitti) possible only to a Kevalī.

There is the same difference in standard as to the way a monk and a layman must observe the gupti that we have noticed in all the Jaina rules, and the following example may illustrate it. If a sādhu and a layman meet a shooting party, and the sportsmen ask where the deer they are trying to shoot has gone, the monk must keep silence, for he may neither aid in the taking of life nor lie, but the ordinary man may point in a wrong direction or give an untrue reply, for, in order to save life, a layman may tell an untruth. The keeping of the gupti is supposed to protect a sādhu from all temptation; and the scriptures say that if a monk possesses the three gupti, his peace of mind cannot be disturbed even by well-adorned goddesses.[1]

The twenty-two Parīṣaha.Since the inflow of karma can also be checked by enduring hardship, the laity should endeavour to sustain certain hardships, but the ascetic was expressly commanded by Mahāvīra himself[2] to endure ‘the twenty-two troubles’ (Parīṣaha[3]) that are likely to beset him in his life as a wandering mendicant.

A monk must accordingly be prepared to endure the trial of hunger (Kṣudhā parīṣaha), if he cannot obtain food blamelessly and without committing one of the forty-two faults, even though he were to grow as emaciated as the joint of a crow’s leg. However thirsty (Tṛiṣā p.) he may be, he must never take unboiled water lest he should destroy some life. However cold a monk may feel, he must endure it (Śīta p.), without wishing that the sun would rise, that a fire were lighted, or that he had more clothes; nor must an ascetic
  1. Uttarādhyayana, S. B. E., xlv, p. 186.
  2. Uttarādhyayana, S. B. E., xlv, p. 9.
  3. Or Parisaha.