Disclaimer: This translation does not guarantee complete accuracy, please confirm with the original page text.
## The Study of Precepts
"If you want to study precepts, know that happiness is only achieved through actions that are in accordance with the divine. Happiness is only attained by those who give happiness. This is logical because the cause produces the effect. Just as the seeds of superior rice varieties like Sali and Vasmati produce rice plants of the same quality, not barley, similarly, happiness in this world leads to the attainment of liberation-happiness in the next world. Acts like hair-plucking and fasting do not lead to liberation. The Agamas state: 'The Muni should meditate on beautiful, pleasant, and delightful things, and should have a beautiful bed, seat, and house.' It is also said: 'The Muni should sleep on a soft bed, drink milk and other beverages in the morning, eat rice in the afternoon, and consume panaka, asava, and madya in the third part of the day. In the middle of the night, he should consume grapes, raisins, and sugar. This ultimately leads to liberation.' This has been witnessed and experienced by the Buddha of the Shakyan lineage.
Pleasant food, entertainment, etc., create joy in the mind. Joy leads to concentration, and the mind becomes focused and stable. This leads to liberation. This proves that happiness leads to happiness. Hair-plucking and other bodily afflictions do not lead to liberation. Those who propagate such ideas, like the Shakyans and Buddhists, abandon the path of liberation, which is based on the complete renunciation of all that is harmful, as taught in the Jain scriptures. They are ignorant and foolish. They wander endlessly in the cycle of birth and death. Their claim that the effect is always in accordance with the cause is not absolute, because it is observed that the plant called Shringa-Song produces the reed called Shar-Sarakanda. Scorpions are born from dung. Grass grows from the hair of cows and sheep.
## The Truth
The claim that pleasant and delicious food is the cause of happiness is also flawed, because it can lead to diseases like cholera. In reality, the happiness that arises from worldly pleasures is not true happiness. It is said: 'To consider painful things as pleasurable and pleasurable vows and rules as painful is like seeing the letters of an inscription in reverse when the inscription is turned upside down.' In this way, we must understand the true nature of happiness and suffering. Therefore, how can painful worldly pleasures be the cause of liberation-happiness, which is the ultimate, absolute, and eternal state of bliss?
You have said that hair-plucking, sleeping on the ground, begging for alms, enduring insults, hunger, thirst, the pain of flies and mosquitoes, etc., are the causes of suffering. Those who have weak hearts and are not visionaries of the path of liberation, those who are not great souls and do not know the ultimate truth, those who are not dedicated to achieving it, and those who are not engaged in the practice of self-liberation, for them these things are not suffering. They have immense inner strength, which transforms these things into means of happiness. It is said: 'The Muni who renounces attachment, ego, and delusion, even if he sleeps on a bed of straw and grass, experiences the ultimate bliss of liberation. He can be called a universal emperor.' It is also said: 'Great souls are not distressed by suffering, but they are very happy knowing that suffering leads to the destruction of sins.' Forgiveness and tolerance destroy enmity."