Life of a Reformist Saint Kanaji Swami

The Jain Samaj has been generally interpreted as an orthodox society, but it is not true. It has witnessedinternal movements, a process of reforms and a strong undercurrent of sensible liberalism which have givenit new directions time and again. Among these, the most successful twentieth century Jain movement hasbeen spearheaded by Gurudev Shri Kanji Swami. Gurudev was instrumental in starting a new revolution in thepercept and practice of Jainism, thereby putting thousands of souls on the true path of salvation.

Kanji Swami was born in Umrala, a small village in the Kathiawar region of Gujarat, in V.S. 1946 (1889 AD) to a Sthanakvaasi family. He showed a great ability for learning and was considered the most intelligentstudent of his class in the school. His mother died when he was 13 and he lost his father at the age of 17. After this, he started looking after his father's shop. He utilised the frequent periods of lull in the shop in reading various books on religion and spirituality. Turning down the proposals of marriage, he confided in his brother that he wanted to remain celibate and take up renunciation.

Eventually he took renunciation as a Sthanakvaasi monk in 1914 at the hands of Shri Hirachandji Maharaj.During the ceremony, while riding on an elephant, he inauspiciously tore his robe, which was later to provean ill omen in his monastic career. He embarked upon a rigorous study of the Shwetamber scriptures andfinished a detailed study of the 45 Agams (Jain Scriptures) including a deep analysis of several hundred verses. Being a believer in purushaarth (self effort) for achieving emancipation, he quickly became a learned and famous monk and, backed by his seventeen renditions of the Bhagvati Sutra with its 100,000 verses, came to be known as the 'Kohinoor of Kathiawar.'

But all this time he could never completely engage with the scriptures he was studying and continued hissearch for the still evasive Truth. Then, around 1921, he came upon Acharya KundKund's Samaysaar - 'Essence of the Doctrine' - the study of which was like "drinking the nectar of Truth" for him. He followed onby studying the writings of other Digambers such as Acharyakalp Pandit Todermalji and Shrimad Rajchandra.During his discourses he began to incorporate the ideas picked from these studies and began to lead akind of double life, nominally a Sthanakvasi monk but referring to the Digamber literature.

His assertions that "vows, giving and fasting were ultimately worthless if performed without any understanding of the soul" did not endear him to the Sthanakvasi community. This lead to a great turmoil in his life and in the lives of his followers. He began experiencing distress about his own self and about his behaviour as a Sthanakvasi monk. This came to a head at the small town of Songadh on Mahavir Jayanti day in 1934, when he formally removed his Muhapatti (a small white cloth to cover the mouth), left the Sthanakvasi monk-hood and proclaimed himself to be a Digamber shravak.

Even though he had some devotees, the Sthanakvasi community was understandably enraged by this betrayaland even his life was threatened. Kanji Swami fled to Songadh where eventually the local community becamereconciled to him and indeed virtually all of the nearly 300 families who today live at Songadh and follow him claim to be of Sthanakvasi background. Gurudev Kanji Swami started discourses, many of which are recorded on tapes, in the form of running commentaries on Acharya KundKund's writings. He never wrote any books and did not claim to say anything new but merely reiterating the words of Arihantas, acharyas and other scholars apart from Bhagwan Mahavir Swami, KundKund Acharya and Pt. Todarmalji.

Gurudevshri's DiscoursesIgnoring mundane topics such as dietary prescriptions, on the basis that all Jains would know about suchmatters, he directed his teachings to the subject of the soul and to Acharya KundKund's representation ofit as the one eternal and unconditional entity. Kanji Swami's insistence on the primacy of the absolutelevel of truth over the relative one of ordinary life is obvious from his frequent comment: "Please try tounderstand. No soul, with or without knowledge, has the slightest ability to move even a particle. In suchcircumstances, how can it do anything to the human body, or to any other thing for that matter?"

For him Samyak darshan (right faith) was a prerequisite to any meaningful progress upon the spiritual path. "The real path lies in self-experience of the soul after securing itself in Samyak darshan".He was convinced that the three jewels of Samyak darshan, Samyak gyan and Samyak charitra (right faith, right knowledge and right conduct) could only function effectively on the basis of a prior experience of the soul, and considered the various rituals and merit-making practices as subordinate. In an interview in 1977 he denied being hostile to the traditional Jain monk-hood and regarded them as personifying the fundamental principles of Jainism. However, he also pointed out that taking up formal initiation and behavioural practices, like the abandonment of clothes(common for Digamber monks) and other possessions, could not make an individual a true monk unless he hadabandoned internal possessions as well.

By now the following had grown quite large and the small house became inadequate so his devotees starteda building project at Songadh in 1937, which culminated in the 'Digamber Jain Swadhyay Mandir'. Inhonour of his favourite scripture, one of his devotees, who was later to become the leader of his following, Bahenshri Champaben, installed the Samaysaar in the main temple and the words of Acharya KundKund's five main treatises have been engraved on its walls. A temple dedicated to Shrimandhar Swami wasconsecrated in 1941.

Kanji Swami travelled on pilgrimage throughout India where he gave discourses and consecrated many temples. In 1980 he visited Kenya and installed many images of Tirthankars at temples in various towns. He had a profound impact on one particular family in Mombasa, the Bhagwanji Kachra family, who have continued their support to-date and even in London take a very active role at the Digamber Jain Mandir in Harrow. After a very dynamic and undoubtedly a revolutionary life, Kanji Swami left for his heavenly abode in a state ofSamadhi on 28th November 1980.

Acharya Kundkund

If recent research is correct in considering him to have belonged to the second or third century ad, then this would make him the first significant and independent thinker of the post-canonical period whose views are accepted as representing the essence of Jaina thought. Although he was a pioneering Digambara thinker, probablyfrom South India, appreciation for his views also comes from the Digambar sect of Jainism. He was also known as Padmanandi. The name Grudhapiccha, erroneously used for him since about the fourteenth century, has led to confusion because it is also an alias for Umaswati.

A total of eighty-four works on various themes are ascribed to Kundakunda, of which fifteen are extant and three may be said to be philosophical masterpieces, all written in the Prakrit language. These are the Pañchastikaya (Essence of the Five Existent= s), the Pravacanasara (Essence of the Scripture) and the Samayasaa (Esse= nce of the Doctrine). The Pañcstikya and samaysara is an elementary work=dealingwith the Jaina substances (excluding time because it does not occupy any spatial points) and the fundamental truths, to which two additional categories are added, namely the meritorious and demeritorious acts related to karma (puṇya and pāpa). The Samaya= samaysara emphasizes, among other things, two standpoints mentioned in the canonical literature which seem to have no relation to the standard sevenfold standpoint (see Manifoldness, Jaina Theory of). These are the `definitive' standpoint (niścayanaya), used synonymously with the `pure' or `transcendental' (śuddha or paramārtha) standpoint,= and the `mundane' standpoint (vyavahārikanaya). It is an illuminating work dealing with the nature of the soul and its contamination by matter, and whether the soul's intrinsic nature is in any way affected or changed through karma bondage in so far as it is the doer and enjoyer of activities. An attempt is made to reconcile theseproblems, solutions to which depend on the standpoint from which one approaches the issues. The Pravacanasāra is an insightful work whose three sections clearly delineate its scope: knowledge, the objects of knowledge, and conduct. The problem of substance, quality and mode, is one of the pivotal issues in Jaina philosophy and a few points are outlined below in order to show how Kundakunda deals with it. It forms the subject matter of the second section of the Pravacanasara,which the tenth-century commentator Amṛtacandra says Kundakunda `properly discusses'.

The problem is basically that of how change in the world may be explained given the permanent, eternal nature of the two basic substances of ultimate reality; this has obvious implications for the essential nature of the soul. Kundakunda begins the section with the statement: `The object of knowledge is made up of substances, which are said to be characterized by qualities, and with which, moreover, are (associated) the modifications' (Pravacanasāra II, 1; trans. A.N.Upadhye). The basic problem is then evident when he says: `There can be no origination without destruction, nor is there destruction without origination; origination and destruction are not possible in the absence of permanent substantiality' (II, 8). How `origination' and `destruction', which in fact refer to change, are to beunderstood is expressed by Kundakunda in typical Jaina language in II, 19: `The substance forever retains its position, its own nature, as endowed with positive and negative conditions according as it is looked at from the substantial and the modificational viewpoints.'This is further elaborated:

All substances are nondifferent from the substantial viewpoint, but again they are different from the modificational view-point, because of the individual modification pervading it for the time being. According to some modification or the other it is stated that a substance exists, does not exist, is indescribable, is both or otherwise.

(II, 22–3)What Kundakunda means by origination and destruction is distinctively Jainist and is clarified later in the same section: `In this world, in which modifications originate and pass away at every moment, nothing is absolutely produced or destroyed; what is the production of one modification is the destruction of another; and thus origination and destruction are different' (II, 27). The change that occurs in matter is understandable on the analogy of objects and colour. Just as gold (regarded here as a substance), for example, can have not only different shades of colour (with colour being its basic quality) but also different forms (with the object made out of gold being its modification), so too all substances retain their substantiality despite the apparent destruction of their qualitiesand modes. The situation is more complicated with the soul substance. The problem is technical, and relates to two `operations' (upayogas) ascribed to the soul, namely `indeterminate intuition' and `determinate knowledge'; these operations are described as two qualities (guṇas) of the soul. The concern is with the unity or identity of the soul and involves the question of whether the two upayogas operate in the soul simultaneously or in succession, and if in succession, which is first, and whether they maintain their distinctness in the state of omniscience. Kundakunda maintains that they operate successively at the mundane level and simultaneously at the transcendental level of omniscience. His view, which is also held by Umāsvāti, represents the attitude of the Digambara sect and is=

opposed, for example, by Siddhasena Divakara, who, in regarding quality and mode as synonyms, says that they are not separate operations in the state of omniscience. His view represents the general Śvetāmbara standpoint, based on the fact that the canonical literature distinguishes only substance and quality, withoutmentioning the standpoint connected with the modifications of a substance.