Nine Lives Read Online Free PDF Page B

there are no creator gods: depending on its actions and karma, a soul can be reincarnated as a god, but eventually, when its store of merit is used up, the god must undergo the agonies of death and fall from heaven, to be reborn as a mortal in the middle world. The same is true of hell beings. Once they have paid through suffering for their bad actions, they can rise to be reborn in the middle world and again begin the cycle of death and rebirth – depending on their karma, as human beings, animals, plants or tiny unseen creatures of the air. Like the fallen gods, former hell beings can also aspire to achieving moksha , the final liberation of the soul from earthly existence and suffering . Even the Tirthankara Mahavira, the Great Hero himself, spent time as a hell being, and then as a lion, before rising to be a human and so finding the path to Enlightenment. It is only human beings – not the hedonistic gods – who can gain liberation, and the way to do this is completely to renounce the world and its passions, its desires and attachments, and to become a Jain ascetic. As such, the monk or nun must embrace the Three Jewels, namely right knowledge, right faith and right conduct, and to take five vows: no violence, no untruth, no stealing, no sex, no attachments. They wander the roads of India, avoiding any acts of violence, however small, and meditating on the great questions, thinking about the order and purpose of the universe, and attempting to ford the crossing places that lead through suffering to salvation. For the Jains, then, to be an ascetic is a higher calling than to be a god.
    It is a strange, austere and in some ways very harsh religion; but that, explained Prasannamati Mataji, is exactly the point.
     

    At ten o’clock each day, Prasannamati Mataji eats her one daily meal. On my third day in Sravanabelagola, I went to the math or monastery to watch what turned out to be as much a ritual as a breakfast.
    Mataji, wrapped as ever in her unstitched white cotton sari, was sitting cross-legged on a low wooden stool which itself was raised on a wooden pallet in the middle of an empty ground-floor room. Behind her, her fan and coconut water pot rested against the wall. In front, five or six middle-class Jain laywomen in saris were fussing around with small buckets of rice, dal and masala chickpeas, eagerly attending on Mataji, whom they treated with extreme deference and respect. Mataji, however, sat with eyes lowered, not looking at them except glancingly, accepting without comment whatever she was offered. There was complete silence: no one spoke; any communication took place by hand signals, nods and pointed fingers.
    As I approached the door, Mataji signalled with a single raised palm that I should remain where I was. One of the women explained that as I had not had a ritual bath, and had probably eaten meat, I must stay outside. Notebook in hand, I observed from the open door.
    For an hour, Mataji ate slowly, and in total silence. The woman waited for her to nod, and then with a long spoon put a titbit of food into her cupped and waiting hands. Each morsel she then turned over carefully with the thumb of her right hand, looking for a stray hair, or winged insect, or ant, or any living creature which might have fallen into the strictly vegetarian food, so rendering it impure. If she were to find anything, explained one of the laywomen, the rules were clear: she must drop the food on the floor, reject the entire meal and fast until ten o’clock the following morning.
    After she had finished her vegetables, one of Mataji’s attendants poured a small teaspoonful of ghee on to her rice. When a woman offered a further spoonful of dal, the slightest shake of Mataji’s head indicated that she was done. Boiled water was then poured, still warm, from a metal cup into the waiting bowl of Mataji’s hands. She drank some, then swirled a further cupful of it around in her mouth. She picked her teeth with her finger, and