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"I am not, however, competent to keep my mind steady, even for a moment, like a big slab of stone tumbling down from the top of a mountain, or like a huge wave of the ocean tossing about by the fierce wind prevailing at the time of the annihila tion of the world, or like a great mass of brightness issuing from the disk of the Sun or like the great fire burning furiously in a very dry forest.
“The duties of an asoctio deserve to be observed by exceedingly careful and strong-minded persons, and I am like an un. bridled ass. They are suitable for great persons, who are like huge elephants with powerful trunks, and I am a coward. How can I, therefore, enter into a terrible fight with very strong warriors intimidating me by fearful expressions of eye-brows ?
" Besides, defeated by an array of irristible endurances of accidental miseries, I am, for the present, entirely unable to perform the duties of an ascetic in a way that ought to be performed, however charming they are by the possession of the eighteen thousand ways of maintaining chastity. Self-control is hard to be traversed like Mount Meru, and I am, now, highly dejected, how can I carry the burden with a despondent mind throughout my whole life?
“Although my grand-father Bhagavān Sri Rişabha Swāmi, with manifest supernatural powers is able to see the unsteady state of my mind like a fruit in the palm of his hand, how can I possibly observe the highly sublime duties of an ascetic with indifference to worldly attachment, by the use of such methods ? The orders of my religious preceptor can be strictly followed for a few days, but, how can self-control be practised throughout life ? Now that my mind has become enfeebled, I am undoub tedly unable to observe the duties of an ascetic without a blemish. The state of a householder, is also, unsuitable, ill-omened, for me.
" What expedient should I, now, devise ? Bewildered thus, with the idea “ What to do now? Undor
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| SR No. | 008001 |
| Book Title | Shraman Bhagvana Mahavira Part 1 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Ratnaprabhvijay, D P Thaker |
| Publisher | Parimal Publication |
| Publication Year | 1989 |
| Total Pages | 650 |
| Language | English, Sanskrit |
| Classification | Book_English, Biography, History, & Religion |
| File Size | 15 MB |