Mahasramana (महाश्रमण)

महासमणो सो भणिओ, जो सव्वभूयहिए ॥२२.१॥

He is called the Great Monk who is beneficial to all beings.

The chapter opens — and, with its opening verse, the whole chapter's theme is announced — by naming the Mahasramana's single defining quality: he is beneficial to all beings (savvabhuyahie — beneficial, welfare-promoting, to all living beings without exception). Not beneficial to humans while indifferent to animals. Not beneficial to those who can reciprocate while neglectful of those who cannot. Beneficial to all beings as a natural consequence of who he is and how he lives. This universal benefit is not primarily an active quality requiring conscious effort in each moment. It is a passive quality: his presence, his practice, and his very existence benefit the world simply by what they are. A monk who genuinely harms nothing — who moves through the world with complete non-violence in body, speech, and mind — benefits everything in the world simply by that non-harm. The world is better for his existence in it. This is Mahavira's portrait of the accomplished monk: a being whose existence itself is a form of service to all life.

The simple version: The Great Monk's basic quality is that his existence is good for everything around him. Simply by being what he is, he helps.

न हणइ न हणावेइ, न हणंते सम्मए ॥२२.२॥

He does not harm, does not cause harm, does not approve of those who harm.

The triple formula of complete non-violence is stated in its most classical form: na hanai (he does not harm, he does not kill), na hanavei (he does not cause others to harm — does not use his authority, his needs, or his implicit expectations to bring about harm through another person's action), na hanamte sammayai (he does not approve of those who harm — does not consent to or validate harm being done by others in his presence or on his behalf). This three-part formula is not redundant; each part closes a different route through which violence enters. Direct action is the most obvious. Instrumental action through others is more subtle — a person can maintain clean hands while directing harm through agents. Moral complicity through approval is the most subtle — endorsing harm after the fact, nodding along, making exceptions for violence that serves one's interests. The Great Monk is clean of harm in all three dimensions simultaneously. There is no route through which his existence generates harm in the world — not directly, not through others, not through the permission of his approval.

The simple version: He doesn't harm himself, he doesn't use others to harm, and he doesn't approve when others harm. Three layers of complete non-violence.

एगिंदिय बेइंदिय, तेइंदिय चउरिंदिय ॥२२.३॥

One-sensed, two-sensed, three-sensed, four-sensed —

The Jain classification of living beings by the number of senses they possess is invoked here — and the list begins from the bottom of the hierarchy. One-sensed beings (egindriya) are beings that possess only the sense of touch: earth bodies, water bodies, fire bodies, air bodies, and plant life. Two-sensed (beindriya) beings add taste — worms, leeches, some mollusks. Three-sensed (teindriya) add smell — lice, certain insects, ants. Four-sensed (chaurindriya) add sight — flies, mosquitoes, beetles. Beginning from these least-considered forms of life emphasizes the scope of the Great Monk's non-violence: it extends to the very beings that most people and most ethical traditions do not even consider beings at all. The detail is important: most ethical systems draw their circle of concern at some line of obvious consciousness or expressed pain — usually drawing it around vertebrates or at most insects. The Jain tradition, and the Great Monk who embodies it, draws no line. If it is alive, it matters.

The simple version: The Great Monk's non-violence extends all the way down to the simplest forms of life — not just the obvious ones.

पंचिंदिया य ते सव्वे, न हणइ महासमणो ॥२२.४॥

And five-sensed beings — the Great Monk harms none of them.

The progression is completed: five-sensed beings (panchindiya) — the category that includes humans, animals with all five senses, and other complex creatures — are added to the list, and the sutra closes: the Great Monk harms none of them (na hanai Mahasamano). The complete spectrum of life, from the simplest earth-body to the most complex human being, is named, and the verdict is the same across all of it: none harmed. This comprehensive non-violence is not achieved through careful rule-following — through a monk carefully checking each situation against a list of permitted and forbidden actions. It is the expression of a transformation in the monk's entire relationship to life. The impulse to harm — the krodha, the lobha, the desire to take, to exclude, to exploit — has been removed at its root through the elimination of passion. When there is no passion, there is no impulse to harm. The non-violence is natural, effortless, and complete, because its opposite was always rooted in passion and passion is gone.

The simple version: No living being, from the simplest to the most complex, is harmed by the Great Monk. The non-violence is total.

न छिंदइ न भिंदइ, न उद्दवेइ ॥२२.५॥

He does not cut, does not break, does not uproot.

Three specific physical forms of harm to living beings are named: na chindai (he does not cut), na bhindai (he does not break), na uddavei (he does not uproot). Each covers a specific type of damage to living beings who cannot respond or complain — the stationary beings, particularly plant life, that most traditions of ethics do not include in their circle of moral concern at all. The Great Monk moves through the physical world with a constant quality of attentive care that prevents even these forms of incidental, inadvertent damage. He does not break branches while passing through forests. He does not step on plants unnecessarily. He does not uproot anything that is living, even for a practical reason that could be accomplished some other way. This constant attention to small, overlooked forms of life is itself a profound form of mindfulness practice: it requires the monk to be fully present to the physical world, to see what he is about to step on or touch or disturb, rather than moving through the world on autopilot while his mind is elsewhere. The care for small beings cultivates the quality of attention that the path as a whole requires.

The simple version: The Great Monk is careful in how he moves through the physical world. He avoids small harms that most people don't even think about.

तसे थावरे य, रक्खइ महासमणो ॥२२.६॥

Both mobile and stationary beings — the Great Monk protects.

The division between tasa (mobile beings — those capable of movement, including animals, humans, and small mobile organisms) and thavar (stationary beings — earth bodies, water bodies, fire bodies, air bodies, and plants, which cannot move away from what threatens them) together covers every category of living entity in the Jain ontological framework. What is notable in this sutra is the verb: rakkhai — protects. The Great Monk does not merely refrain from harming these beings as a passive act of avoidance. He protects them. His presence creates a zone of safety. His careful movement through the world, his attention to where he steps, his choice of paths, his manner of handling water and fire and plant life — all of this actively protects beings that are otherwise vulnerable. The stationary being in particular — the plant, the earth body — has no capacity to flee or defend itself. The monk who genuinely protects it is exercising a form of care for the most vulnerable and most overlooked forms of life. His presence is experienced by the living world not as a threat but as something closer to a refuge.

The simple version: Everything that lives — moving or still — is safer because the Great Monk is nearby. His practice is itself a form of protection.

अद्दंते सीए उण्हे य, भूए वि अच्छेज्ज समाहिए ॥२२.७॥

In heat, in cold, in all conditions — he remains equanimous.

The Jain monk's life is physically exposed in ways that make equanimity under physical conditions a real rather than theoretical test. He wanders without the shelter of a fixed home. In summer he is in full heat; in winter he is in full cold. He does not have the option of adjusting his environment the way a householder does. The sutra affirms that the Great Monk endures all these conditions — heat (une), cold (sie) — and remains samahie: settled, equanimous, composed. The important distinction is between suppression and genuine transformation. A monk who has merely suppressed his discomfort through willpower would show the strain — in his posture, his expression, his speech, in subtle ways that can be detected. The Great Monk who is described here is not straining. He is genuinely settled — not because sensation is absent (perception remains completely intact, it is one of the soul's capacities) but because the reactive distress mechanism that normally accompanies extreme sensation has been stilled. He feels the heat as information. It does not become suffering, because suffering requires a subject who experiences the sensation as a threat to their wellbeing — and that reactive self is no longer present in the same way.

The simple version: Hot, cold, comfortable, uncomfortable — his inner state doesn't change. He feels everything; nothing controls him.

न य रोसेइ न य तुसेइ, समो सव्वत्थ ॥२२.८॥

He does not become angry; he does not become pleased — equal in all situations.

The Great Monk's equanimity extends beyond physical conditions to social and emotional conditions, and this extension covers the most common test of any person's inner state: the test of how others treat you. Na ya rosei — he does not become angry (rosei from rosa — anger, irritation, resentment). Na ya tusei — he does not become pleased (tusei from tusa — pleasure, satisfaction, excited happiness). Samo savvattha — equal in all situations. Anger and elation are the two poles of the reactive emotional life as it is actually lived by most people. We get angry when things go against us and pleased when things go our way. In both cases, our inner state is being determined by what is happening outside us — which means we are being controlled by external events and by the people who generate them. A person who can be deliberately provoked into anger has been given a weapon against themselves. A person who can be flattered into elation and compliance has equally been compromised. The Great Monk is genuinely beyond this control: not because he has practiced not-reacting while still feeling the reactions, but because the passions that would produce the reactions — aversion in the case of anger, attachment in the case of elation — have been genuinely diminished through years of sincere practice.

The simple version: He can't be provoked into anger and he can't be worked up into excitement. Both reactions would mean others are controlling him.

सव्वरसेसु निव्विण्णो, न य आसत्तो ॥२२.९॥

Dispassionate toward all tastes; not attached.

Taste is one of the most immediate and powerful sensory experiences, and attachment to food — rasalobha, the craving for pleasant tastes — is among the most deeply rooted forms of sensory bondage. The monastic tradition repeatedly identifies taste as a particularly potent source of ongoing karmic accumulation, because the act of eating is inescapable for the living monk and the opportunity for attachment is therefore constant. The Great Monk has resolved this completely: he is savvarahesu nivvino — dispassionate toward all tastes, indifferent in the sense of genuine freedom from the pull of flavor. He eats what is offered without preference or relish, without the seeking and comparing that characterizes an attached relationship to food, without the anticipation of pleasure beforehand or the satisfaction or disappointment after. He eats to sustain the practice of liberation, not to enjoy sensation. This is not ascetic hatred of taste — the tradition's tradition is not to hate food but to eat with the neutrality of a physician taking medicine. The Great Monk's neutrality toward taste is the model of how all sensory experience is to be met: present, functional, without the hook of craving or aversion.

The simple version: He doesn't have a favorite food, doesn't enjoy eating as a pleasure, doesn't complain about what he's given. Taste stopped mattering to him.

न य सद्दे न य रूवे, न य गंधे य ॥२२.१०॥

Not in sounds, not in forms, not in smells —

The enumeration of the senses continues: sound (sadda), form/sight (ruve), and smell (gamdhe) are the next three objects toward which the Great Monk maintains dispassion. Each of these represents a distinct category of sensory experience that can become a hook for attachment and thus a channel for karmic accumulation. Beautiful music — inspiring, moving, emotionally powerful — can produce attachment to pleasurable sound. Attractive visual forms — beautiful faces, landscapes, objects — can produce attachment to pleasurable sight. Appealing fragrances can produce the same. The Great Monk perceives all of these — sensory perception remains completely active and intact; the tradition does not advocate for the elimination of sense function — but none of them hook him into the craving-and-aversion cycle. He can hear music and remain equanimous. He can encounter beautiful forms and remain undisturbed. This is the freedom of someone who is genuinely present to experience without being driven or controlled by it — the quality that the Jain tradition describes as jitendriya, conquest of the senses.

The simple version: Beautiful sounds, beautiful sights, pleasant smells — none of these pull him off center. He's present to them but not captured by them.

न य फासे य, तत्थ वट्टइ समाहिए ॥२२.११॥

Not in touch either — he remains settled there.

The final sense object — touch (phase) — completes the survey of all five senses, and the sutra closes with the characteristic phrase that the chapter returns to repeatedly: he remains samahie — settled, composed, genuinely at rest within himself. The Great Monk's inner state is described with this single word because it captures the most remarkable thing about him. Five complete categories of sensory experience — taste, sound, form, smell, and touch — are enumerated, each capable of producing craving or aversion, attachment or revulsion, and none of them move him off center. He is settled through all of it. The word samahie carries the sense of something firmly placed, well-rooted, undisturbed — like a great tree that the wind moves around but does not uproot. He is not withdrawn from experience, not numbed, not absent from his own senses. He is fully present to all five sense objects and remains perfectly settled within that presence. This is the accomplishment that the entire preceding portrait has been building toward: a being who is completely present and completely free simultaneously.

The simple version: All five senses are active, all five kinds of sensation are present — and he remains perfectly settled through all of it.

महासमणो जिइंदिए, जियकसाओ ॥२२.१२॥

The Great Monk has conquered the senses; he has conquered the passions.

Two conquests are now named as the titles of the Great Monk: jiindriyo — one who has conquered the senses, and jiyakasao — one who has conquered the passions (kashayas). These are the two great achievements that distinguish the fully accomplished practitioner from the aspiring one. Conquering the senses does not mean destroying them or becoming unable to perceive. It means the senses have ceased to be commanding — they convey accurate information about the world but they no longer drive action, because the craving and aversion that previously used sensory perception as their trigger have been eliminated. The senses serve the soul; the soul is no longer enslaved to the senses. Conquering the passions means the four kashayas — krodha (anger), mana (pride), maya (deception/illusion), and lobha (greed) — have been genuinely eliminated, not merely suppressed or managed through ongoing discipline. These are the four roots of karmic bondage as Jain philosophy identifies them. When they are gone, karma stops accumulating, because every fresh accumulation requires one of the four kashayas to be the motive force of action. The two conquests together — sense-conquest and passion-conquest — constitute the portrait of someone who is either liberated or very close to it.

The simple version: The senses report to him; they no longer run him. The passions are gone; they no longer exist in him. This is what conquest means.

अविगयबंभयारी, अणगारो ॥२२.१३॥

Unbroken in his practice of celibacy — the homeless one.

"Avigayabambhayari" — uninterrupted, unbroken, undiminished in his practice of brahmacharya — is the specific quality named here for the Great Monk's celibacy. Not merely practiced, but avigaya — without break, without gap, without the erosion that can happen even to genuine commitment over long years of difficult monastic life. The completeness of the celibacy is emphasized: no lapses, no internal hedging, no secret space in the mind where the old orientation toward sensory pleasure still lives. And the word "anagaro" — homeless one — is paired with it as if the two naturally belong together. The connection is real: the monk who practices complete celibacy is also completely homeless. Both are expressions of the same quality: non-attachment to the body's pleasures and to the comforts of a particular place. The householder's home is the base of domestic life; the body's pleasures are the base of the biological life. The Great Monk has relinquished both bases, not with resentment but with the genuine freedom of someone who has found something more worth having.

The simple version: His celibacy has never been broken, and he has no home. Both forms of rootedness — in bodily pleasure and in place — are absent.

सव्वोवहिए विरओ, परिग्गहविवज्जिओ ॥२२.१४॥

Withdrawn from all means of existence; free of all possessions.

Savvovahie virayo — withdrawn from all means of existence or livelihood (uvahi refers to the tools, supports, and aids through which a person maintains their life and position in the world), pariggahavivajjiyo — freed of all possessions (pariggaha — possessions, property, the things one holds as "mine"). The Great Monk possesses nothing. This is not ordinary poverty — ordinary poverty is the absence of what one wants and strains toward. The Great Monk has no want and no strain. He has withdrawn from all the tools, habits, social roles, and material props through which ordinary people maintain their existence, not as a form of deprivation but as the expression of a completely different relationship to material reality. In that different relationship, the soul's existence in the world does not require any material claim beyond what is freely offered moment by moment by the lay community's generosity. He holds nothing. He claims nothing. He protects nothing. This is aparigraha — non-possessiveness — in its most complete form.

The simple version: He has no tools, no inventory, no property, no means of maintaining himself. He exists in the world without claiming anything from it.

न य कुज्जइ परिग्गहं, जाणंतो ॥२२.१५॥

He does not create possessions — knowing what they are.

The sutra specifies the ground of the Great Monk's non-possessiveness with a single crucial word: jananto — knowing, because he knows. He does not create possessions (na kujjai pariggaham) because he genuinely knows — with the living, present understanding that is the second jewel in practice — what possessions actually are and what they do. A possession is not merely a physical object. It is a relationship. It is the claiming of something as "mine," which activates the mamattva — the mine-making — that is one of the soul's most persistent forms of bondage. The "mine" thought creates karmic accumulation, strengthens the ego-identity's sense of having stakes in the material world, and generates the fear of loss and the desire for protection that multiply further karma. The Great Monk who knows all this does not encounter a potential possession and suppress the urge to acquire it through discipline. He encounters it and the invitation simply finds no taker — because the understanding is vivid and present, not theoretical, and the mechanism that would respond to the invitation has been genuinely removed through practice.

The simple version: He doesn't avoid possessions because he was told to — he avoids them because he can see exactly what they do. Knowledge is the rule.

अकिंचणो महासमणो, निरावासो ॥२२.१६॥

The Great Monk owns nothing; he has no dwelling.

Akinchana — owning nothing, having nothing whatsoever — is one of the great designations of the Jain spiritual ideal, and the Great Monk who has genuinely achieved it is described here with this title alongside niravasa — without dwelling, without home. The conjunction of these two states — akinchana (no things) and niravasa (no place) — describes a human existence that has been stripped of the two primary axes of material identity: the axis of having (what one owns) and the axis of being (where one belongs). Most people's sense of self is organized substantially around both: I am someone who has these things and lives in this place. The Great Monk who is akinchana-niravasa has released both axes completely. He has no home to return to, no possessions to protect, no accumulation that defines the territory of "mine." This total emptiness of possession and place is experienced not as deprivation — that would require a subject who still wanted what is absent — but as an extraordinary freedom: the freedom of someone who has genuinely nothing to lose, and therefore nothing to fear.

The simple version: Nothing to protect, nowhere to return to. That is a kind of freedom most people cannot imagine.

सव्वत्थ समभावेण, वट्टइ ॥२२.१७॥

He lives with the attitude of equanimity in all situations.

Savvattha — in all situations, everywhere, in every circumstance — the Great Monk lives with samabhavena, the attitude of equanimity, of even-mindedness, of equal valuation. The word samabhava describes not a particular emotional state that can fluctuate but a foundational orientation — a settled way of approaching everything — that is more stable and more fundamental than any passing feeling. This is a key distinction: a feeling of equanimity is valuable but fragile, vulnerable to sufficient provocation. The samabhava of the Great Monk is not a feeling but a settled orientation that does not depend on favorable conditions to maintain itself. He brings the same quality of mind to being honored as to being insulted. To receiving excellent food and to receiving none. To meeting people who venerate him and to meeting people who are hostile. The variations in situation are real and he perceives them accurately — but they do not alter the orientation from which he meets them. The orientation is stable across all variation, not because the monk has become rigid and unresponsive but because the root of the reactive patterns that would normally be triggered has been addressed.

The simple version: Equanimity isn't a mood — it's a way of approaching everything. His approach doesn't change based on what situation he's in.

सव्वपाणभूयजीवसत्ते, दयावंतो ॥२२.१८॥

Compassionate toward all breathing beings, all organisms, all living beings, all sentient ones.

The fourfold enumeration in this sutra is emphatic in its comprehensiveness: savva-pana (all breathing beings), bhuyajiva (organisms, beings who exist as life), satta (sentient beings, those who feel and experience). Each descriptor slightly differently captures the living quality of the beings toward whom the Great Monk's compassion extends, together ensuring that no form of life is accidentally excluded by the limitation of a single term. The Great Monk's day avanto — compassion, mercy, tender regard — extends genuinely to all of it, not as a rule he has been trained to follow and tries to apply in practice, but as an inner reality. He actually feels compassionate regard for every living being he encounters. This is not a performance or a conscious achievement requiring effort in each moment; it is the natural expression of a consciousness from whom the passions have been genuinely removed. Compassion is, in the Jain understanding, the soul's natural quality — the way light is the sun's natural quality. It is passion and karma that block it. Without those blockages, compassion flows naturally and effortlessly in all directions toward all living beings.

The simple version: His compassion isn't selective — it genuinely extends to every form of life. When passion is gone, compassion is what's left.

न य लुद्धो न य माई, न य मिच्छाईणो ॥२२.१९॥

Not greedy, not deceitful, not of wrong views.

Three significant qualities are named in the negative: na ya luddho (not greedy, not covetous — free of lobha, the fourth and deepest of the four kashayas), na ya mai (not deceitful, not wily — free of maya, the third kashaya, the quality of cunning concealment and deceptive self-presentation), na ya micchaaino (not of wrong views — free of the fundamental misdirection of the intellect that comes from moha). These three — greed, deception, and wrong view — are among the most persistent and subtle obstacles on the path. Greed drives the endless accumulation of karma through acquisitive action. Deception — maya — is the quality that conceals the true state of the soul from itself and from others, enabling ongoing delusion to masquerade as wisdom. Wrong view is the foundational misorientation that makes the other two possible. The Great Monk's freedom from all three is not a matter of ongoing effortful restraint — the constant exercise of willpower against these tendencies. They are simply not present. There is nothing to restrain because the roots from which they grew — the kashayas — have been genuinely eliminated through sustained practice.

The simple version: He's not greedy, he's not sneaky, and he's not confused about what's real. These aren't things he's controlling — they're things that are genuinely absent.

न य रोसेइ, न य पसंसइ, समो ॥२२.२०॥

He does not become angry; he does not praise himself; he is equal.

Two specific behavioral expressions — anger and self-praise — are named here as expressions of the equality (samo) that the Great Monk embodies. These are among the most socially visible markers of the underlying passions: anger (roseti — from rosa, anger, heat of mind) is the outward expression of aversion-based passion, the kashaya of krodha working itself out in behavior. Self-praise (pasamsai — praising oneself, extolling one's own qualities or achievements) is the outward expression of pride-based passion, the kashaya of mana asserting itself. Their absence in the Great Monk is not a matter of polite social restraint — of someone who has learned to contain his anger and his boasting for the sake of decorum. It is a matter of genuine transformation. He does not suppress the urge to anger and self-praise while still feeling them internally. The urge itself has been removed because the passions that produce the urge — krodha and mana — have been genuinely eliminated. He is equal (samo) not because he is managing his inequality, but because the source of inequality has been resolved.

The simple version: He never gets angry, he never talks himself up. Not because he's holding himself back — there's nothing to hold back.

सव्वपावविरए, सव्वदुक्खाओ मुक्को ॥२२.२१॥

Withdrawn from all evil, freed from all suffering.

The causal relationship is stated in its elegant simplicity: savvapavavirae — withdrawn from all evil (papa — here meaning passion-driven action that creates karma) — savvadukkhaomukko — freed from all suffering (dukkha). Evil in the Jain sense is not violation of a divine commandment or departure from a cosmic moral code. It is action driven by passion — action generated by krodha, mana, maya, or lobha — that creates karmic bondage and therefore creates the conditions for future suffering. The cycle is direct: passion drives action, action creates karma, karma determines the conditions of future experience, those conditions include suffering. When the monk is genuinely withdrawn from all evil — meaning all passion-driven action — he has cut the causal root from which suffering arises. He may still encounter situations that would produce pain in others. He may feel physical sensations that would be called painful. But he does not suffer in the deeper sense of being distressed, disturbed, afflicted, and destabilized by what happens to him — because the passionate self-centeredness that converts experience into suffering has been genuinely removed.

The simple version: When you stop creating the cause of suffering, suffering stops. The connection is direct and complete.

आयावेइ उग्गं तवं, अण्णउत्थियपत्थाणं ॥२२.२२॥

He practices intense austerity, going beyond what other teachers require.

The Great Monk practices ugga tava — severe, intense, demanding austerity — and this austerity is described as going beyond (annautthiyapthanam — the standard of other teachers, other traditions). The Jain path's full austerities are genuinely demanding: fasting for extended periods, including the ultimate practice of sallekana — voluntary fasting to death as the final renunciation at the end of life; complete bodily equanimity under heat and cold without shelter; lifelong unbroken celibacy; renunciation of all possessions including clothing in the Digambara tradition; and the constant physical demands of wandering without fixed residence. Most other ascetic traditions, even demanding ones, do not require the complete package the Nirgrantha path requires. The sutra does not describe this as a point of pride but simply as a description of the Great Monk's reality — he practices at this demanding level without complaint, without display, without seeking recognition for his endurance. The austerity is not performed for an audience; it is simply what the path asks and what he does.

The simple version: The Great Monk's practice is genuinely demanding — not ordinary spiritual discipline. He goes as far as the path requires.

भिक्खायरियं चरइ, जहाविहि ॥२२.२३॥

He practices begging for alms — according to the proper method.

The begging round — bhikkhayariyam, the monk's daily practice of going from household to household to receive food — is described here as something the Great Monk practices "according to the proper method" (jahavidi — according to the rule, following the correct procedure). This specification matters. Begging is not merely a practical necessity that the monk improvises to get enough to eat. It is a practice with its own detailed ethics and procedures, every element of which expresses the monk's non-violence and non-possessiveness. The monk should approach only appropriate households (those where accepting food will not create harm). He should accept only food that was not specifically prepared for him — to avoid creating harm through the killing of animals or destruction of plants solely for his benefit. He should accept only what is freely offered without any manipulation or hint of request. He should take only enough to sustain practice, not more. The discipline of bhiksha is itself a complete practice of non-harm, non-manipulation, and non-possessiveness, carried out multiple times each day. The Great Monk does it correctly, not expediently.

The simple version: Even begging has a right way to do it. The Great Monk does it correctly — not just effectively.

न य आहारं अभिलसइ, न य दोसेइ ॥२२.२४॥

He neither craves food nor finds fault with it.

The two dysfunctional relationships with food are both absent in the Great Monk: na ya aaharam abhilasai — he does not crave food, does not long for it or desire pleasant-tasting things before receiving them; na ya dosei — he does not find fault with it, does not react with disappointment or complaint when what is offered is poor. These are the two poles of the attached relationship to food: active craving of what one wants, and aversion toward what one doesn't want. Both arise from the same root — treating food as a source of pleasure and pain rather than simply as fuel for practice. The Great Monk is equally at ease with all food or with none. His begging round is not driven by appetite; his acceptance is not colored by expectation. This inner evenness about food — one of the most basic biological drives, one of the oldest and most persistent sources of attachment — is one of the most convincing demonstrations of the depth of his equanimity. Food is the first thing most people notice they care about deeply when comfort is stripped away. If he is genuinely even about food, he is genuinely even about everything.

The simple version: He's not excited when food is good, not upset when it's bad. Food is sustenance for practice; it's not a pleasure to chase or a discomfort to avoid.

उवसग्गं सहइ, खमेइ य ॥२२.२५॥

He endures disturbances; he is patient.

Uvasaggam sahai — he endures disturbances (uvasagga — troubles, obstacles, challenges sent by people or by circumstances). Khamei ya — he is patient, he forbears. Earlier chapters in the Sutrakritanga described the various kinds of disturbances a wandering monk encounters: hostile words and mockery from people who do not understand or respect the monastic path, physical obstacles, deliberate provocations by those who want to test whether the monk's equanimity is real. The Great Monk endures all of this. The two words chosen here — sahai (to endure, to bear with steadiness) and khamei (to be patient, to forbear, to refrain from retaliation) — together describe both the inner quality and its behavioral expression. Sahai emphasizes the inner steadiness required to actually absorb a disturbance without being broken by it. Khamei emphasizes the sustained quality of that steadiness over time — not just bearing a single difficult moment but maintaining the patient disposition through prolonged challenge. Patience, in the Jain tradition, is not a single act of restraint but a continuous orientation of the entire character, one that deepens with practice and becomes more natural and effortless the more thoroughly the underlying passion has been addressed.

The simple version: When things go wrong — including when people deliberately cause trouble — he bears it and stays patient. Not once, but always.

न कुज्जइ परिस्सहं, सव्वत्थ ॥२२.२६॥

He does not create hardships for himself — in any situation.

This sutra introduces an important qualification on the preceding praise of the Great Monk's severe austerity: na kujjai parissaham savvattha — he does not create hardships for himself, in any situation. The distinction being made here is between the genuine austerity that is part of the practice and self-punishing behavior that arises from wrong view, hidden pride, or neurotic self-harm. The Jain tradition walks a deliberate middle ground between hedonism and extreme self-mortification — a point that the preceding chapters have made explicit in their criticism of false monks who use dramatic displays of suffering to gain reputation and alms. The Great Monk accepts and endures the genuine hardships that come with the monastic life and with the specific practices of his tradition: he does not seek out additional suffering beyond what the path asks. Austerity is a tool for burning karma — it is productive, purposeful, and aimed at liberation. It is not a punishment inflicted on the body as an expression of self-hatred, or a performance of suffering to impress observers. The Great Monk's hardship is always in service of liberation; it is never in service of his own ego or the creation of his own distress.

The simple version: He accepts hardship as part of the path but doesn't seek it out needlessly. Austerity is a tool, not a performance of suffering.

न सेयइ पणीयं, न य कसायं ॥२२.२७॥

He does not seek out pleasant things; he does not seek out harsh things.

Na seyai paniyam — he does not seek out pleasant things (paniyam — the pleasing, the comfortable, what is agreeable to the senses). Na ya kasayam — nor does he seek out harsh things (kasayam — the harsh, the rough, the deliberately unpleasant, the extreme). The Great Monk is genuinely oriented toward neither end of the pleasure-pain spectrum. He is neither a pleasure-seeker who arranges his life around comfort and sensory enjoyment, nor a self-mortifier who deliberately pursues suffering and deprivation as a form of spiritual practice in itself. This double absence — not chasing pleasure, not chasing pain — is what distinguishes the Jain monk's middle ground from both the householder's orientation and the extreme ascetic's orientation. The Jain tradition has always distinguished itself from the extreme practices of certain other Indian traditions of its time, which used severe bodily mortification — exposure, starvation, self-injury — as a primary method. The Jain path includes genuine hardship and austerity, but those hardships are accepted rather than sought, endured rather than performed, in service of liberation rather than as the goal themselves. The Great Monk inhabits this middle ground not as a compromise but as the achievement of someone who has genuinely transcended the craving-and-aversion structure that drives both orientations.

The simple version: He's not chasing comfort or chasing suffering. Both chases have stopped, because both are driven by something that's no longer present.

विगयलोहो विगयमोहो, विगयरागो ॥२२.२८॥

Free of greed, free of delusion, free of passion.

Vigayaloho — free of greed, greed gone (from vigaya — departed, dispelled, truly absent). Vigayamoho — free of delusion, delusion gone. Vigayarago — free of passion, passion gone. Three of the four kashayas — the great roots of karmic bondage — are declared absent. And the word vigaya is crucially specific: it does not mean "temporarily suppressed" or "being overcome through ongoing effort" or "managed." It means departed, gone, dispelled — no longer present. This is a description of achievement rather than aspiration or ongoing struggle. The person who is still working on overcoming greed has not had greed depart. The Great Monk has gone past the stage of working on greed — greed is simply gone. The same for delusion: not being overcome, gone. The same for passion: not suppressed, gone. This is the portrait of the fully accomplished practitioner at a high stage of spiritual development — not someone still climbing the mountain, but someone who is on the summit, or very close to it. The chapter is describing an ideal that gives direction to every sincere practitioner still working through the earlier stages.

The simple version: Greed, delusion, and passion are genuinely gone — not held back, not managed. They departed. He achieved that.

न लालेइ न य रोसेइ, समो सव्वेसु ॥२२.२९॥

He does not flatter; he does not resent — equal toward all.

Na laleyi — he does not flatter (laleyi — to speak sweetly, to ingratiate, to use pleasant speech for the purpose of gaining favor or manipulating behavior). Na ya rosei — he does not resent (rosei — to be angry, to harbor grudges, to become heated against those who disappoint). Samo savvesu — equal toward all. Flattery and resentment are the two characteristic behavioral expressions of a mind still organized around the satisfaction of desires through social interaction: flattery toward people who are likely to give you what you want, resentment toward those who deny it or who frustrate your goals. Both behaviors presuppose a fundamental orientation of desire toward the people around you — a use-based relationship in which others are instrumentalized as either sources of satisfaction or sources of frustration. The Great Monk's equality is grounded in the genuine absence of that desire. He desires nothing from anyone — not approval, not donations beyond what sustains practice, not deference, not ease. With no desires to be satisfied or frustrated through people, the entire machinery of flattery and resentment has simply nothing to run on. His equality with all people is not diplomatic strategy or social skill. It is the genuine expression of a mind that is no longer organized around getting something from others.

The simple version: He doesn't need to sweet-talk people and he doesn't hold grudges. Both require wanting something from people — and he doesn't.

अप्पणा एव जहा, तहा य अन्ने ॥२२.३०॥

As he regards himself, so he regards others.

Appana eva jaha — as he regards himself (as he would wish for himself). Taha ya anne — so with others. This is the Jain expression of the golden rule — the principle of equal regard — and it appears here not as a moral prescription but as a description of the Great Monk's achieved state. For most people, the golden rule is an aspiration: a difficult ideal to be worked toward, resisted by the persistent fact that one's own pain feels more vivid and more real than another's. The self always has a louder voice in one's own experience than any other being does. For the Great Monk, this asymmetry has been resolved. Having genuinely understood — through right knowledge in practice — that all souls are equal in their fundamental nature (all jivas are consciousness, all are equally capable of liberation, all equally deserve freedom from suffering), he has arrived at a state in which his regard for others is genuinely equal to his regard for himself. He does not feel his own pain as more important than the pain of the being in front of him. This equality is not forced or performed; it is what his perception has actually become.

The simple version: He genuinely doesn't feel a difference between his own pain and someone else's. That understanding is complete.

न य मे कोई मित्तो, न य मे कोई अमित्तो ॥२२.३१॥

"There is no one who is my friend; there is no one who is my enemy."

The sutra is quoted as the inner voice of the Great Monk himself — his own first-person declaration of his situation: na ya me koi mitto — there is no one who is my friend (in the partial, exclusive sense). Na ya me koi amitto — there is no one who is my enemy. The distinction between friend and enemy is the most fundamental binary division of the social world for ordinary people. We organize our interactions, our loyalties, our energy, and our emotions around this distinction: toward friends we lean, to enemies we are guarded or hostile. This division is the product of desire: friends are those who serve our desires and support our goals; enemies are those who frustrate them. The Great Monk has no enemies because he has no desires that can be opposed. He has no friends in the partial, preferential sense because the craving-based attachment that makes one person "mine" in a way others are not — the mamattva of relationships — has been resolved. He is equally present with all. This is not coldness or emotional poverty; it is a more complete form of regard than partial friendship can be, because it is extended universally without the exclusiveness that makes ordinary friendship a form of discrimination against those who are not included.

The simple version: Friend and enemy are categories of the mind that picks and chooses based on what serves it. That mind is gone. So are the categories.

सव्वे जीवा समा, एवं वट्टइ ॥२२.३२॥

"All souls are equal" — in this way he lives.

Savve jiva sama — all souls are equal. Evam vattai — in this way he lives. The structure of this sutra is the key to its meaning. First the principle, then the description of how he lives from that principle. The principle "all souls are equal" in the Jain tradition is not a poetic aspiration or a social ideology. It is a metaphysical claim: all jivas, at their fundamental level, are equal — all are conscious, all are in bondage to karma, all are capable of liberation, all are equally deserving of freedom from suffering. This principle is first affirmed as doctrine, then internalized as right knowledge, then — in the Great Monk — lived as the actual orientation from which every interaction and every moment proceeds. He does not remind himself to treat all beings equally; he perceives them as equal. The reminder would indicate a gap between knowledge and perception; the Great Monk's knowledge has become his perception. The principle has been internalized all the way down — from philosophical proposition to lived reality, from what he knows to what he sees to what he is. This is the completion of the second jewel: right knowledge that has become right perception.

The simple version: He doesn't try to believe all souls are equal — he actually sees them that way. The knowing has become the living.

सव्वपावविरओ, निव्वाणमभिलसइ ॥२२.३३॥

Withdrawn from all evil, he aspires to liberation.

The chapter's description converges toward its destination. Savvapavavirae — withdrawn from all evil (all passion-driven karma-creating action). Nivanamabhilasai — he aspires to liberation, he yearns toward nirvana. The connection between withdrawal from evil and aspiration toward liberation is not coincidental or sequential but organic: withdrawal from passion-driven action is itself the condition that makes the soul's natural orientation toward liberation evident. When what is blocking the view is removed, you naturally see what was always there behind it. The aspiration here is not the anxious craving of someone who doesn't have what they desperately want. It is the natural orientation of a soul that has exhausted most of its bondage and that is now drawn, with the irresistibility of gravity, toward the freedom that is its original and deepest nature. The Great Monk's aspiration to liberation is purified of self-seeking — it is not a desire to get something for himself. It is the soul recognizing its home direction and moving toward it with the ease of something returning to its natural state.

The simple version: When the causes of bondage are gone, the soul naturally moves toward freedom. Liberation is the soul's home direction.

जत्थ गच्छइ महासमणो, तत्थ होइ पभासिओ ॥२२.३४॥

Wherever the Great Monk goes, there he is luminous.

The chapter enters genuinely lyrical territory. Jattha gacchai Mahasamano, tattha hoi pabhasio — wherever the Great Monk goes, there he is luminous (pabhasio — radiant, illuminated, filled with light). This is not a physical description of visible light emanating from the monk's body, though the Jain tradition does speak of the aura of a highly accomplished practitioner. It is a spiritual and perceptual description: the quality of the Great Monk's inner state is so settled, so purified, so freed from the darkness of passion and delusion, that his presence communicates something unmistakable to those around him. The places he visits are different for his having been there. The people who encounter him experience something they would not have experienced without him. Being in his presence creates a different quality of awareness than being away from it — the way being near a clear flame in darkness creates a different quality of sight. The luminosity here is the natural expression of a soul from which the obstructions of karma are being removed: as the coverings thin, the soul's natural quality of light and knowing and bliss begins to shine through into the world around it.

The simple version: The Great Monk changes the atmosphere wherever he goes. People feel something in his presence that they don't feel otherwise.

तं दट्ठूण सम्मं, बहुए सद्दहंति ॥२२.३५॥

Seeing him rightly, many have correct faith.

The Great Monk's luminous presence has a specific effect on those who encounter it: tam datthunam sammam, bahue saddahanti — seeing him rightly, many have correct faith (saddahanti — believe correctly, have right faith, samyak darshana). "Seeing him rightly" is not just visually looking at the monk. It is perceiving what he actually is — seeing through the surface appearance to the quality of accomplishment that is genuinely present. Those who encounter the Great Monk and see truly — not dismissively, not superficially, but with the open perception that recognizes genuine spiritual achievement — find that right faith arises naturally in them. They believe not because they were argued into it but because they have seen something real. This is one of the great practical values of the fully accomplished monk's existence: by being what he is, he makes the path real, credible, and accessible to others. He is the teaching made visible. The doctrine says liberation is possible; the Great Monk shows that it is actual. His existence is an argument that nothing abstract doctrine can make as effectively.

The simple version: Being around someone who has genuinely achieved something makes you believe it's achievable. He inspires correct faith just by existing.

न य सो आयावइ अत्तुकसट्टुं, न य परं वव्हेइ ॥२२.३६॥

He does not extol himself; he does not disparage others.

Na ya so ayavai attukasattum — he does not extol himself, does not proclaim his own praises or accomplishments (ayavai — to praise, exalt; attukasattum — one's own excellence). Na ya param vavhei — he does not disparage others, does not put others down or diminish them in comparison to himself. This quality appears again in the chapter's lyrical closing section, and its repetition is worth noticing: throughout the entire Sutrakritanga, from the very first chapters' critique of false monks forward, this pair — self-promotion and disparagement of others — is consistently identified as the most visible and persistent mark of the ego-driven practitioner who is not yet who he presents himself as being. It is worth noting because these are the last residues of pride to go. A practitioner can give up material possessions, celibacy can be maintained, even overt anger can be managed — but the subtle hunger for recognition of one's own accomplishment, and the subtle need to establish one's own excellence by reference to others' limitations, persists very late and very quietly. The Great Monk's freedom from both is a mark of deep, late-stage practice. Pride — mana, the second kashaya — has departed.

The simple version: He never claims credit and never puts others down. Pride, in all its forms, is simply gone.

पासंति णं सावया, पव्वजिया ॥२२.३७॥

Both laypeople and the ordained see him — and are moved.

Pasanti nam savaya — laypeople see him (and are moved or inspired). Pavvajiya — the ordained (monks and nuns in their formal practice) also see him. The Great Monk's transformative presence touches both halves of the fourfold community — the lay practitioners who support the monastic life from the outside and the ordained monastics who share the wandering life with him. His impact is not limited to those who share his precise form of practice; anyone who encounters him and perceives truly — who has the right orientation and openness to receive what the encounter is offering — finds something real and is moved by it. The lay community finds in him the visible evidence that the vows they support are genuinely producing something worth supporting. The ordained community finds in him the living model of what their own practice aims at and what it is possible for their own practice to become. He serves both — not through active effort, but through the natural communication of his achieved state to those around him. His presence is his teaching.

The simple version: He moves people from every part of the community — not just other monks, but ordinary practitioners too.

जिणगुणा जिणसासणं, दिट्ठा णेण पयाणुगे ॥२२.३८॥

The qualities of the Jinas, the teaching of the Jinas — following the path, he has seen them.

Jingunam jinasasanam — the qualities of the Jinas, the teaching of the Jinas. Dittha nem payanuge — following the path, he has seen them. The Great Monk is not merely a skilled follower of rules; he has seen what the Jinas have seen. The path, when followed sincerely and completely, leads to the same perception that the fully liberated beings possess. His qualities — the equanimity, the non-violence, the dispassion, the compassion, the luminous presence — are described as jinaguna: the qualities of the Jinas, not mere approximations or shadows of those qualities but the actual qualities that define the liberated ones as they begin to emerge in the advanced practitioner. This is what the Jain path is ultimately for: not merely the improvement of character or the development of virtue in a conventional ethical sense, but the gradual emergence and expression of the nature that the fully liberated beings embody in its completeness. The Tirthankaras are not a category apart from all other human beings; they are what the path is leading every sincere practitioner toward. The Great Monk is close.

The simple version: By following the path, he has come to see and be what the fully liberated ones are. The path leads to the destination — completely.

सव्वकम्मक्खयं गंतुं, सो महासमणो भवे ॥२२.३९॥

Going toward the exhaustion of all karma — he is the Great Monk.

Savvakammakkhayam gamtum — going toward the exhaustion of all karma. So Mahasamano bhave — he is the Great Monk. This is the chapter's penultimate definition: the Great Monk is identified by his direction. He is the one who is going — gamtum, moving, traveling — toward the complete exhaustion (khayam) of all karma. Not some karma. Not most karma. All karma. This direction, and the authenticity of his movement in it, is what makes him the Mahasramana. The "going toward" is important: it indicates that even the monk who has achieved all the qualities described in this chapter — the non-violence, the equanimity, the conquest of senses and passions, the luminous presence — may not have crossed the final threshold of liberation in this present moment. But his movement toward it is certain and irreversible. He has traveled too far along the path, exhausted too much karma, eliminated too many of the causes of bondage, to turn back. Every quality described in this entire chapter is one step on this single, inexorable journey toward the complete freedom of nirvana.

The simple version: The Great Monk is heading toward total freedom — and nothing is going to stop him. He's too far along the path.

जो सव्वभूयहिए, जो सव्वत्थ समाहिए।
जो सव्वपावविरए, सो महासमणो भवे॥ — iti bemi

One who is beneficial to all beings, equanimous in all situations, withdrawn from all evil — such a one is the Great Monk. — Thus I say.

The chapter closes with the featured verse as the final word, sealed with the authority of iti bemi — "thus I say" — Mahavira's own voice. Three qualities define the Great Monk in their most essential, condensed form. Jo savvabhuyahie — one who is beneficial to all beings: this is his relationship to the external world, to everything that lives around him. Jo savvattha samahie — one who is equanimous in all situations: this is his inner state, the quality that characterizes his experience of every moment regardless of external conditions. Jo savvapavavirae — one who is withdrawn from all evil, all passion-driven action: this is his relationship to action itself, the quality of his will and motivation. Together these three move from his effect on the world, to his inner state, to his relationship to action — they cover the complete range of what a person is. And all three together, in their fully realized form, constitute the Mahasramana — the Great Monk. This is what the path produces. This is the direction every sincere practitioner is walking. This is the ideal, stated in its simplest and most beautiful form, by Mahavira himself. Thus he says.

The simple version: Good to all. Steady in all. Free from all evil. That is the Great Monk, and that is the path's destination, described in its simplest and most beautiful form. Thus says Mahavira.