Unknown Pilgrims

SR No.: 007014
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: N Shanta
Publisher: Sri Satguru Publications Delhi
Publication Year: 1997
Total Pages: 820
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 98

78
The Unknown Pilgrims
Exhortations to persevere on the path are not lacking in the Scriptures:
- One must remain faithful to the dharma so long as one's faculties are intact and one has not succumbed to old age or sickness. - By no means should one do like the driver of a chariot who abandons the highway for a stony path and breaks his wheel; that is, one must not turn aside from the dharma. - The days pass and do not return. Only those human beings who follow the dharma Icad a fruitful life. - Even the powerful monarch, in his last moments, is only saved thanks to his sidelity to the dharma, for the passage to another life must be undertaken with the support of the dharma. - In the midst of the swirling currents of old age and death that cngulf beings, the dharna is an island, firm land, the supreme refuge for all living creatures. 32
Ācārya Kundakunda says that nirvāna, the final goal, is attained through the dharma and that the dharma is identical with the ātman, when, having been freed from agitation and all perplexity, it has reached perfect cquanimity; for then the purified ātman is one with the dharma 33 Further on he continues:
The śramana the great atman with vision free from all error, who [is] expert in [knowledge of] the Scriptures, free from all attachment, vigilant, [is the visible) expression of the dharina.34
In other words, he is the manifestation of the dharma, is of the same nature as the dharma, he actualises the dharma, he is dharma.
32 These varicd points are to be found in: DS VIII, 36; US V, 14-15; XIV, 24-25; 40; XIX, 20-21; XXIII, 68; cf. the beautiful verses of YSas IV, 97-102 where the dharma is extolled as the saviour of humanity.
33 Cí. PSa 1, 6-8.
34 jo nihadamohaditthi agamakusalo virāgacariyamhi
abbhuthido mahappă dhammo tti visesido samaņo. PSa I, 92.