Istopadesa The Golden Discourse

SR No.: 007695
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp
Total Pages: 170
Language: English, Sanskfit
Classification: Book_English & Book_Devnagari
File Size: 3 MB

Page 76

Verse 19
karmic impurities, he has no desire left to take bath and cleanse his body.
Having learnt the truth about bondage and emancipation, the saint is indifferent to the pleasures of the senses. He has no thought or desire for the well-being of the body and does not adorn it. For him the body is just an aid for acquiring the Three Jewels (ratnatraya) of merit – right faith, right knowledge and right conduct - and safeguarding them. He accepts pure, properly prepared food only once in a day, that too less than his fill, in order to keep his body intact, just as lubrication is indispensable to the running of the wheel. Although his physical frame reduces to a mere assemblage of skin, bones, and arteries, it becomes auspicious, adorable and worshipful. Due to severe austerities, he may have even developed extraordinary powers of cure but being devoid of passions, attachment and aversion, he does not use these powers to cure himself. No wonder, with the passage of time, the purity of his soul increases manifold as his karmic body is purged of many kinds of harmful karmic matter.
Our gross body must undergo changes due to the substance of time (kāla). Gradual, imperceptible changes take place in it incessantly, every instant. If gradual, imperceptible changes do not take place there can be no perceptible change either. We do not develop wrinkles or grey hair all of a sudden. When we perceive major transformations or changes in our body, which truly are results of minute changes taking place every instant, we term these changes as due to 'aging'. The substance of time, which itself is without activity, is the auxiliary cause of the minute changes taking place in all substances. Conventionally, however, we talk of time as the past, the present and the future, or years, days and hours. Changes, minute as well as perceptible, must take place in our body and this process cannot be subverted. The body must undergo transformations due to the substance of time. And on the
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