Tirthankar Mahavir

SR No.: 020834
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: Jaybhikkhu Sahitya Trust
Publication Year: 2003
Total Pages: 235
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 57 MB

Page 154

Mahavira: "O Skandaka! There are roughly twelve ways which are adopted by one who voluntarily invites death through ignorance, blind faith or superstition. They are as follows:
152
܀
Putting an end to one's life by subjecting oneself to severe hunger causing pain and distress.
Putting an end to one's life by completely surrendering oneself to sense-organs etc. that is, by excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures, etc.
Putting an end to one's life by beheading oneself (that is, by offering as sacrifice one's head to a deity) - this indicates one's deviation from the good and spiritual way of living.
Putting an end to one's life in order to bind karma, enabling one to take birth in the same life-species. Putting an end to one's life by jumping from the holy peak of a mountain.
Putting an end to one's life by jumping from a tall tree. Putting an end to one's life by drowning in the sea.
Putting an end to one's life by setting oneself on fire. Putting an end to one's life by consuming poison. Putting an end to one's life by weapons.
Putting an end to one's life by hanging oneself. Putting an end to one's life by offering oneself to vultures and other birds to peck at.
One who adopts any one of these twelve ways to put an end to one's life, will have to take infinite births in different hells, will have to be reborn several times as animal and this will also lengthen one's fourfold transmigratory existence. So it is said that death lengthens transmigratory existence."