Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 175

TJIE PHILOSOPHY OF DUTY thought of the future and looking with indiffcrence upon the present," s the homeless wanderer "lives identified with the eternal Self and beholds nothing else." + "Ile no more cares whether his body, spun of the threads of karma, falls or remains, than docs a cow what becomes of the garland that someone has hung around her neck; for the faculties of his mind are now at rest in the Holy Power (brahman), the essence of bliss.” 5
Originally, Jaina saints went about "clothed in space" digambara), i.e., stark naked, as a sign that they did not belong to any recognized group, sect, trade, or community. They had discarded all determining marks; for determination is negation bv specialization. In the same spirit, thc wandering Buddhist monks were instructed to go clad in rags, or else in an ochrecolored garment,the latter being traditionally the garb of the criminal ejected from society and condemned to death. The monks donned this disgraceful raiment as a sign that they too were dead to the social hierarchy. They had been handed over to death and were beyond the boundaries of life. They had stepped away from the world's limitations, out of all the bondages of belonging to something. They were renegades. Likewise, the Brāhman pilgrim-mendicant has always been likened to the wild goose or swan (harnsa), which has no fixed home but wan. ders, migrating with the rain-clouds north to the Himalayas and back south again, at home on every lake or sheet of water, as also in the infinite, unbounded reaches of the sky.
Religion is supposed finally to release us from the desires and fcars, ambitions and commitments of secular life-the delusions of
3 Sankara, Vivekacüdamani 432; compare Luke 12: 22-80. * 15.457. 5 16.416.
6 Later on, as a concession, the Jaina holy mcn donned the white garment and became suetambara, "clothed in white." This was the most non-committal dress that thcy could find. (See, however, infra, p. 210, Editor's note.)
158
This was the mos