Page:The Heart of Jainism (IA heartofjainism00stevuoft).djvu/217

 on the seventh step, so does pride now, either temporarily or for ever. A man at this stage increases his powers of meditation by Yoga, and the fetters of karma are fast becoming unloosed ; in fact so elevated is this step, and so few attain to it, that it is also called ' the Unique '.

It is interesting to notice that the Jaina think it easier ix.Aniya- to get rid of anger than of pride, and that deceit does not^'Jj^^f^^ disappear till the man has reached the ninth step [Aniyati- tha'naka. hddara gunasthdnaka), whilst greed persists longer than •any of the other Kasaya ; any one who has watched the ■ characters of Indians develop and improve would acknow- ledge how extraordinarily true this psychological succession is. Not only does the man attain freedom from deceit at this stage, but he becomes practically sexless. One great difficulty still persists, for he is haunted by the memories of what he did and saw before he became an ascetic.

The description of the tenth step, Suksmasampardya x. Suks- gunasthdnaka, emphasizes the enormous difference between '""^sam- the Jaina and the Christian notions of asceticism, for this gunas- stage is only reached by the advanced ascetic, who there- thanaka. upon loses all sense of humour, all pleasure in beauty of sound or form, and all perception of pain, fear, grief, • disgust and smells. One contrasts with this a certain Cowley father's saying about ' the sheer fun it was to be a Christian ' ; and many devout Christians tell us that, having made the great renunciation, they have found almost unexpectedly that the surrender of worldly ambition and the wire-pulling it entails has endowed them with an entirely new appreciation of the beauty of nature, the treasures of art and the joy of living, besides giving them a deeper power of suffering with others. In short, Christian asceticism is a development of personality, whilst Jaina asceticism amounts to self -stultification.

Some slight degree of greed still remains to the Jaina ascetic who has reached this stage. It must be remembered that the Jaina sadhu generally comes from the commercial