________________
RECONCILIATION.
let not the fruit of action be thy motive, nor be thou to inaction attached.
987
"Perform action, dwelling in union with the Divine, renouncing attachments, and balanced evenly in success and failure: equilibrium is called yoga.
"Man masing on the objects of sense, conceiveth an attachment to these; from attachment ariseth desire; from desire anger cometh forth.
"From anger proceedeth delusion; from delusion confused memory; from confused memory the destruction of reason, from destruction of reason he perisheth.
"There is no pure reason for the non-harmonised, nor for the non-harmonised is there concentration for him without concentration there is no peace, and for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness?
"Whoso forsaketh all desires and goeth onwards free from yearnings, selfless and without egoism-he goeth to peace.
"This is the eternal state, having attained thereto none is bewildered. Who even at the death hour is established therein, he goeth to the nirvana of the eternal."-Discourse II.
The main thing is to cultivate the habit of equanimity which prevents new karmic bonds from being forged even though asrava of matter still continue. The man who is resigned to his fate, who keeps his mind evenly balanced both in prosperity and adversity, who calmly and dispassionately employs himself exclusively in the performance of right action--such a man alone is said to practise resignation, none else.
Fatalism is altogether out of place here, for while fatalism proceeds on the supposition of an inexorable fate, resignation is practised only to take the shaping of one's destiny in one's own hand.
Jain Education International
Active resignation, thus, is as different from physical laziness as is a living being from a corpse. It is this principle of resignation which is the pearl of
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org