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SARVODAYA TIRTHA
95
A nude Sramana without right faith suffers all the time, continues to pass through the worldly ocean, and he does not find enlightenment or the road to liberation consisting of the three gems and that for good
The prescription given by the Jinas is that in the first place one gives up falsehood and becomes nude from within, 1.e. one acquires knowledge, faith and conduct in pure soul, and then takes care of the external mark,-such is the path, the prescription of the Jinas.
If the true god is an embodiment of liberation, the Guru are the visible road to it. They are in a sense the mobile Siddhas or perfected beings. Like a true god and the canonical texts, they are also worthy of worship with eight objects. They are one of our five beneficial beings (Paramesthis) whom as one in the namokāra, the Jaina mantra, we recall and repeat 108 times every morning, and to whom we pay our obeisance.
If about such ones, the Gurus, the upholders of the three gems, embodied detachment, nude, clad in subjectivity, we entertain even the slightest of disrespect in our heart, we remain far apart from the road to liberation; and if we worship such men as Guru who come nowhere near the description contained in the Jaina texts, even then we cannot come near the road to liberation 74 So it has been said,
je vi padanti ca tesim jānantā lajjāgäravabhayena tesim pi natthi bohi pāvam aņumoyamāņāņams
Those who knowing the monks to be devoid of right faith worship them out of bashfulness, pride and fear, even such ones are devoid of right outlook because of the approval they give to sin
74 bhayaśāsnehalobhacca kudevāgamalıngınām pranāmam yınayam caiva na kuryuh fuddhadyşuaya
-Ratnakaranda Sravakācāra, Sloka, 30. 75 Asta Pahuda (Darśanapahuda), Gatha, 13
