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THE WAY OF LIFE
from my soul. This house, this shop, these relations....this prosperity and this body do not remain with the Atma forever. So they are not mine; my character is mine; my vitality is mine and Vitragata (victory over attachments and hatred) is mine. But these external objects which have devolved upon me on account of my karmas are not mine. What is mine lies only in my soul. Those virtues of my soul can never be separated from it. I must try to manifest outwardly what is really mine". To achieve this manifestation of your innate virtues, you need the guidance of enlightened people. "I will search for such enlightened people and I will take their guidance. With their guidance, I will try to manifest, the innate virtues of mine. I will discard totally my attachment for those things which are really not mine. I will endeavour to achieve this detachment".
The third question is this, "Whence have I come ?" "I came into this world not in utter nakedness; not in entire forgetfulness but I came trailing clouds of karmas from the earlier phases of my existence". We have to look into our earlier lives with our intellectual and spiritual vision. In our previous life, we were living in some other state of existence and after our death, we are born as human beings. We have attained the human state of existence that too in Aryadesh. Even there, we are born in a Jain family which respects and practises the principle of non-violence. We are not born in this situation by chance. It is not a lottery that decides our birth in a certain situation. We have been able to attain the human state of existence only because in our previous life, we carried out some vows and austerities with devotion and dedication; because we showed benevolence to some jivas in distress; because we did not cause violence to jivas; because we extended cordial hospitality to some guests and because we did not commit sin with a strong passion or attachment. Only because of such noble actions that we might have done in our previous life we have attained the human state of existence. Even an animal after its death may be born as a human being but animals are born as human beings only if they were not cruel and wild and only if they were not meat-eating animals. Those animals that
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