Karma

Chapter 7: From One Life to the Next Jainism - Buddhism - The Brahmanical Tradition

ChaPter 7 from One Life to the next The mental state at the precise moment of death is often considered to be particularly important for determining the nature of the next existence. In a certain sense this is not in conflict with the belief in karmic retribution, because the state one is in at the moment of death might be thought of as the end result of a whole life, and therefore as representative of what this life had been like. However, this is not always the case: one’s final mental state may not be representative of the life it concludes, but rather may be exceptional and unforeseen. Emphasizing the mental state at the moment of death introduces in such cases an element that may be to some extent in contradiction with the general tenor of the life concerned. The role attributed to this mental state is therefore ambiguous: depending on the circumstances , it may extend and confirm the importance of karmic retribution , or it may be separate from it (and perhaps even in contradiction with it). Jainism In Jainism the moment of death is also, for some very advanced practitioners , the moment of liberation. It is a delicate moment, at which all karma has been exhausted and no new karma is created. The importance of this precise moment of liberation allows us to expect that the moment of death of less special individuals, too, will be particularly significant in Jainism, the more so since the Jainas consider the transition from one life to the next to be immediate. This is indeed the case. The mental state just before death plays an From One Life to the Next 105 important role in Jainism, and reincarnation is believed to take place immediately after death. This attitude with regard to the final mental state may take a negative form, as when a commentator claims that a man who dies in the act of sexual intercourse is reborn in the womb of his partner. The positive expression of the assumed importance of one’s state at the moment of death is more important. It is behind an essential feature of Jaina religiosity: the desire to choose and control one’s own death. This holy, self-chosen death is called sallekhana in Jainism. The Jainas emphatically distinguish it from other forms of suicide, which they consider “impure,” unlike sallekhana, which is “pure.” Sallekhana is the conscious and conscientious abstention from all food, in a gradual manner that never disrupts the practitioner’s inner peace or dispassionate mindfulness. Such a death will have a positive effect on one’s next incarnation, yet it is important that sallekhana be untainted by any desires pertaining to rebirth, to the extension of the current life span, to a rapid death, or to the prospect of sensual pleasures in the future that were not attained in this life. In spite of the hardships connected with this form of holy death, it is certain that many Jainas over the centuries have chosen and carried out such a death. The ideal of a chosen and pure death finds expression in a canonical text of the Jainas (Uttaradhyanana 5): These two ways of life ending with death have been declared: death with one’s will and death against one’s will. Death against one’s will is that of ignorant men, and it happens to the same individual many times. Death with one’s will is that of wise men, and at best it happens but once.... Full of peace and without injury to any one is, as I have heard from my teachers, the death of the virtuous who control themselves and subdue their senses.... When under discipline he lives piously even as a householder, he will, on quitting flesh and bones, share the world of the gods called Yakshas. Now a restrained monk will become one of the two: either one free from all misery or a god of great power.... 106 karma Having heard this from the venerable men who control themselves and subdue their senses, the virtuous and the learned do not tremble in the hour of death.... When the right time to prepare for death has arrived, a faithful monk should in the presence of his teacher suppress all emotions of fear and joy and wait for the dissolution of his body. When the time for quitting the body has come, a sage dies...