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[3] These Are Not Lord Mahavir's Pratikramans
Pratikraman
devshi pratikraman, you have been wandering around in vain for infinite lives.
not attain a human birth again. Be cautious. This is not the rule of some wishy washy person, this is the rule of the vitarag Lords. Bribery will not work here. Yes, everyone here knows that. Falsehood will not work here.
Questioner: Is there a way for it?
In the old days, people did shoot-on-sight' pratikraman. People cannot do that nowadays, so they recall all the mistakes of the whole day and do their pratikraman at night. That is called devshi pratikraman. And recalling all the mistakes of the night and doing pratikraman for them in the morning is called rayshi pratikraman.
Pratikraman Can Never Be Ritual
Dadashri: If ever this lady (Self-realized person sitting next to Dada) sitting here has a thought about you like, 'Why did this person have to come here and crowd everything? She may get a thought like that but she will not allow you to notice it. She will keep a smiling face, all the while doing pratikraman within. To have a negative thought is atikraman. She does five hundred or so pratikraman a day. There is nothing but mistakes and yet people have no awareness of it.
Instant Pratikraman is Needed Seeker: If we do pratikraman for any wrongdoing when any karma is discharging, we still have to suffer some effect of that karma, do we not?
Dadashri: Who has to?
Seeker: We do.
If a person of the current time cycle wants to know dharma (religion), what 'we' teach him is that there is no problem if he happens to say something wrong, there is no problem even if he said something wrong in his mind, but he has to do pratikraman for it and vow that he will not do it again. 'We' teach people to do pratikraman.
Seeker: So then the pratikraman we do morning and night; are they wrong?
Dadashri: You are doing pratikraman of a corpse; you are not doing it for the living. If you do pratikraman like a corpse, then you will bind merit karma.
Seeker: Does that mean that whenever we do something wrong, we should do pratikraman?
Dadashri: Pratikraman should always be done 'shooton-sight'. It should never be left pending.
Seeker: A living being (jiva) is constantly binding karma, so should he be constantly doing pratikraman?
Dadashri: Of course, he has to.
Many mahatmas should be doing up to 500 pratikramans daily. How many would this Niruben be doing? For the past eight years, she does 500 to a thousand
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Dadashri: Because atikraman occurs, pratikraman follows. But You cannot do these pratikraman. Even the monks (sadhus) and ascetics, do not know how to do them; the shooton-sight' pratikramans have to be done the instant a mistake is made.
Seeker: We do the pratikraman of rayshi (at morning) and devshi (at night).
Dadashri: Those pratikramans will not work. What should pratikraman be like? One should be able to recognize one's mistakes the moment they occur and, therefore, pratikraman should be instant. Despite doing these rayshi and