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chance again and again. From among your family members, relatives, friends, servants, none will be able to free you from the various miseries like birth, old age, death, fear, sorrow, disease, or worry. At the same time, it is quite certain that none from among these are going to provide protection or save you at the time of death. So why do you waste precious time, in the infatuation for such imaginary relations? Farms, personal property, silver, gold, money, crops, two-footed beings four-footed beings and base metals are the nine-fold wealth. You might have held or obtained this wealth, whether more or less, whether light or heavy, whether living or nonliving, whether subtle or gross, whether open or secret. They are invariably painful, evil, and sources of sin. Therefore, they bring downfall. They encourage passions like lust, pride, deceit, and greed. They are like the wild forest fire, that burns down the wishing-tree in the form of the monk hood. Wealth is indeed short-lived, noneternal and it will never provide protection to you or save you. Again, this gross body is a receptacle of excretion and urine, a skeleton of bones. It is like a broken pot wrapped with leather, like an old rag, like a ripe fruit, like a bag of creatures like worms. It is afflicted with ailments like the disorder of the three humors. It is likely to be worn out with age and disease. Praiseworthy are those great men who observe the five pure great vows, fivefold carefulnesses, threefold control of mind, speech and body, and protect their soul from sins. Sitting in the ship made of path shown by the non-attached Tirthankars, they cross the ocean of the world. Praise is due to the worthy monks and the saints, who uplift several souls. Praise is due even to those excellent, truthful, highly moral, forgiving, patient, modest, god-fearing, soft-spoken, and appreciative lay Jains of good character, who observe vows. Those who remove the misery of others and are extremely liberal, pious, disciplined, intent on doing good, obliging, mature, beautiful, straightforward, affectionate, and devoted to the fourfold community. O Soul! your task will be successful when you achieve these virtues. Adopt therefore, the excellent religion of the Tirthankar, step back from sinful acts, and get rid of all the sins and errors by remembering and thinking about them one by one. O Soul! The foregoing are probabilities which might have occurred in previous as well as this life. You might have first undertaken but then violated the Jain vows or offended against them. Year after year, you might have committed evil deeds out of anger, pride, deceit, greed, or through sound, color, smell, taste, touch, attachment, aversion, censure, false talk, obstinacy, wrong insistence, and carelessness. My religious preacher of this life, my guru, deliverer, savior of the wretched, destroyer of the worldly misery, singular benefactor, led an evildoer like me, along the path of righteousness after showing me the process of stopping the inflow of Karmas. I wish that I had been able to observe the five major vows. There are twelve vows. If I have been guilty in respect of restraining my activities in the way of the fivefold conduct, viz., conducts regarding right knowledge, faith, character, penance, and thinking of committing sins, preparation for the commission of such sins, attempts to commit such sins, or actual commission of the sins, then keeping the Arihants, the Siddhas, the Acharyas, the fourfold community, the exposition of the principle and my soul as witnesses, I wish to repent such actions and ask for forgiveness and please all of these sins be set aside. LEARNING, STUDYING & TEACHING THE SCRIPTURES I reflect on and confess the 14 wrongdoings related to learning, or studying, or teaching the scriptures in threefold ways, like scriptural texts themselves, their commentaries, or meanings, or all. Following wrongdoings are possible:
Reciting the Sutras in random order, Pronouncing a word or stanza for several times, Failure to utter some letters or words during the recitation,
