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Liberated Mahāvīra -
Mahāvīra preached His gospel for thirty years for the benefit of the humanity, divinity, animal kingdom and the rest of the living world. His message of universal love and non--violence reverberated in the four corners of the country as well as in the heavens above.
At seventy-two, He was still spreading His gospel far and wide but time now came for His departure from the mundane existence, the event for which all living beings crave - liberation.
He was staying for the rainy season at Pāvā, when His four non-destructive types of karma were also exhausted and His spirit was ready to leave behind the confines of a body and was knocking at the doors of perfectly pure incorporeal existence. It wanted to go and make an abode on the Siddhaśila in the uppermost part of the universe beyond which there is nothing but the infinite expanse of the non-universal space. At midnight on the fifteenth of the dark half of the lunar month of Kārtika, in the year 527 BC, the nirvāṇa call came and leaving the order established by Him in the able hands of His able principal disciple, Sudharma, He breathed His last to be one amongst the supremely accomplished, perfectly pure souls the Siddhas. The Jains celebrate this day as Dīpavalī till date.
The following verse candidly sums up His supreme accomplishment: -
"Vīraḥ sarva suarāsurendra mahitah, Vīrami budhā samisrtā / Vīrenābhihatah svakarmanicayah, Śrī Vīrāya nityami namah|l”
(Meaning – “Daily obeisance to Vīra by whom His own karmic accumulation has been completely annihilated and so He
MAHAVIRA: THE MESSIAH OF MERCY :21