________________
372
PHILOSOPHY OF SOUL
Question : If the soul is effecting the destruction of karmas
all the while, then why could it not destroy all the karmas till this time?
Answer : How can you expect to empty a cellar when daily
some corn is drawn out and other amount of corn is also added at the same time. Thus contracting fresh karmas as well as consuming them lead nowhere. Under the circumstances, some such arrangement should be innovated to contract lesser karmas than those destroyed. This arrangement is created by practising penances and that is why penances are the means of destroying karmas. All the souls till this very day have destroyed karmas only with the help of penances. Even today the souls residing in Mahavideh and other regions are destroying karmas by means of penances and the souls shall destroy all the karmas hence forward by means of penances only.
Question : Ilaychi Kumar obtained omniscience on the thir
teenth stage of the attribute of the soul while dancing on bamboo and ropes. How can we say that this omniscience was obtained with the help of penances ?
Answer : Many dancers dance on ropes and bamboos but all of
them do not obtain omniscience. Moreover, Ilaychi Kumar also played on the rope four times but he did not obtain omniscience during the period he played before. This implies that there must be some extra-ordinary cause for the manifestation of omniscience. We should try to understand how this extra-ordinary cause operated. When Ilaychi got himself on the bamboo for the fifth time, he witnessed a young and beautiful woman with a dish full of sweet balls, requesting the monk earnestly to accept the sweet balls but the monk not only did not accept them but did not try to look up to the woman at all. This incident deviates Ilaychi Kumar's trend of thought. His mental reflections get overhauled and he immediately engaged himself into pure meditation. When he engaged himself in the second basis of pure meditation all his atrocious (ghati) karmas were destroyed and omniscience was revealed. Here pure meditation is also a kind of penance.
