Attaining salvation

The teachings of Mahavira are captured in one single verse in the Suyagado (3.23), an Agama of the Jainas. The verse says, Dananaam shreshtam abhayapradanam/ Satyeshu cha na avadyam vadanti/Tapassu uttam brahmacharya/Rishinam shrestastha vardhamana.

This is the Sanskritised version of the Prakrit original.

The first line says of all daana, or among all acts of charity, the grant of fearlessness is most superior. How does one grant the feeling of fearlessness? Only the one who has espoused nonviolence can grant fearlessness. This leads us to a whole treatise on nonviolence. When does violence arise? When one has attachments and desires. To ‘protect’ your family or to gain a desired object like a new car or even a new relationship, one goes to any extent. Desire and attachment cloud all other values.

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In other words one transgresses priority and one’s own limitations and encroaches upon other’s territory. That makes the other fear you for you have entered into competition. Fierce competition is the oft used phrase. In this line two of the five vows enjoined by monks and nuns are covered: Ahimsa and Aparigraha.

If you grant fearlessness, you say, you do not need to fear me. I will not compete with you for the resources. What you can share with me, I will take. That is why the ascetic (Jaina) is supposed to grant fearlessness because he or she has stepped out of the rat race and is living off that which he or she is given in the form of alms.

The second line says that truth alone is speech. It is the most desired. One should not speak anything but the truth. One should not seek anything but the truth. This truth, albeit relative, will take us eventually closer to the absolute Truth. This covers the third vow of Asteya.

The third line says tapasya or penance is great but the most difficult tapasya is that of brahmacharya or celibacy. But brahmacharya does not mean celibacy alone. It goes beyond that. It means to find joy in being with Brahman or the soul. That person is a brahmacharya. He goes inwards and is rested with the soul alone. This is the fifth vow a Jaina monk or nun takes; brahmacharya.

The last line extols the teacher, Mahavira, as the supreme ascetic. Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara in the Jaina tradition, conquered all the above worldly temptations and so was able to show the path to salvation to the others after him.