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tion, thousands courted equanimity and became partially renounced; but Nandis ena was in favour of a total renunciation in order to be a monk.
People all over the city talked of his great resolve to give up non-ending pleasures at the palace and to go out like a begging mendicant. Suddenly, a voice was heard from the sky:
It
'Prince Reconsider your decision. Your karma giving you a worldly life is yet to be exhausted. exists and it must be gone through. Your resolve is indeed noble, but karma is more powerful and inexorable'.
The prince smiled within himself. He was so full of the idea of renunciation that he said with courage:
"Does darkness withstand light? How long do the patches of clouds struggle against gusts of wind? On initiation, I shall submerge myself deep under hard penances, so that it would be impossible for karma to be effective. What can be the base of the future except the present? I shall spend every moment of my life carefully to the performance of penances, combined with studies, meditation and kayotsarga. I will not let any evil force to strike any root there".
Thus completely unmindful of the favourable as well as unfavourable factors, a determined Nandisena came to attend the congregation of Bhagavan Mahavira, and display. ing supreme indifference to the mundane life, he joined the order of monks. But the possibility of harm makes a man vigilant every moment. To render the divine voice in efficacious, Nandisena immersed himself into deep penances. In this manner, he turned his plump and powerful body into a skeleton devoid of all lusture. Only his bones were visible. He led a solitary life, and concentrated on the nature of the self. Fortnight after fortnight, and month after month, he lived on fast, and visited human habitation only on the fast-breaking day to beg food, but soon he came back to his own seclusion and concentrated on self. In consequence, he acquired good many powers that come from penance.
