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for everything the matter remains the sane but its modes change all the time. When one mode gives way to another, the former is destroyed while the latter is born. This new insight into the reality of things enabled His principal disciples to interpret their learning with a new perspective and compose the twelve primary cannons and the fourteen pre-canons.
Messiah Of Mercy -
Mahāvīra's teachings were based on only one principal premise - non-violence towards all the living beings how-soever big or small, developed or undeveloped, one-sensed or fivesensed, intelligent or unintelligent. All the precepts that He gave were designed to ensure this perfect non-violence in thought, words and deeds, and in action, order or approval. He maintained that all living beings wanted to live, none wanted to die; all of them loved pleasure and shunned pain. Therefore, our actions might be such as to ensure that we did not kill any creature, did not cause any hurt to any of its ten kinds of vitality and treated all of them with utmost care and compassion. He preached, "We must seek friendship with all and animosity towards none. We must not only live ourselves but let others live as well". His merciful disposition and the feeling of universal love were so potent that His very presence could calm the most poisonous serpent, Candakausika, that was famous for its poisonous hiss and was known to kill at sight.
He saw that the soul in its purest form was an abode of infinite knowledge, infinite vision, infinite prowess and eternal bliss and preached a three-way path to gain spiritual emancipation, on attaining which all these qualities of the soul are realised. He maintained that this was the most natural state of the soul, which was disturbed by the karmic encumbrance that could be shed by right endeavour (conduct) in the light of right-vision and rightknowledge. He preached that right-vision was nothing but the
18: JAINISM: THE CREED FOR ALL TIMES
| SR No. | 006564 |
| Book Title | Jainism the Creed for All Times |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | D S Baya |
| Publisher | Prakrit Bharti Academy |
| Publication Year | 2006 |
| Total Pages | 420 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 20 MB |