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RE-INCARNATION.
879 compatible with the idea of steady progress. For this reason, while strict celibacy is enjoined on the muni, the sravaka is required to restrict his sexual passion to his married spouse, and may not gratify his lust with other women and 'slaves.' As for slavery, Jainism has been its bitter opponent from the very beginning. It does not tolerate even the bondage of animals and birds, to say nothing of men and women,
To conclude, the proof of the theory of transmigration renders it necessary for man to re-adjust his existing notions of the important problems of life. The belief that all will end once for all and for ever in the cold embrace of mother earth in the grave, is seen to be an absolutely unjustifiable one. Man cannot now afford to take life indifferently. Something more than a life of 'harmless ease,' so fashionable in society, with all its well-meant chit-chat, picnics, tea parties and other forms of social intercourse, considered innocent fun, is needed to be saved the anguish which will be the lot of the soul imbued with the notion of its identity with the body. And much more than the eradication of that pernicious belief is necessary to escape from the cycle of births and deaths altogether. Strenuous effort is required to be made for the attainment of Godhood ; vice and frivolity have to be given up one after another, and to be replaced by meditation and knowledge of the Self.
New light is thrown on the problem of ethics and morality by the doctrine of re-incarnation. In all the numerous departments of science and commerce, as well as in all other walks of life, the path to improvement
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