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DISCOURSE XXXVIII
PRACTICE OF RELIGION
Gentlemen,
In Arithmetic there is an example, "If a snail climbs a wall with the speed of 2 inches in day time and descends if inches in night time, how much time would it require to reach the peak of a pole 60' in height?” The example is easy. Even a novice in the studies of arithmetic would work it out in no time. In a day of twenty four hours it would climb only quarter of an inch. In four days it would climb one inch and in 2,880 days, i.e., in eight years it would reach the peak of the said pole.
This example might set you thinking that a man would reach the peak in 2 or 3 hours and a snail is comparatively too slow. But Gentlemen, you need not be proud. You are all much slower in matters of earning religious merits. Suppose the pillar of religion is 60' or 70' in height when would you reach its peak? Some cannot reach its peak even in their entire life-time comprising of sixty, seventy or eighty years.
Man usually lives for hundred years but very few persons live the full span of hundred years. Those who live for sixty seventy or eighty years are deemed as living long life. Most of the persons pass away between 51 and 60. Our highly revered Acharya Shri Vijay Siddhisurish varji expired at the age of 104. He was honoured as 'the unprecedented' of the present age.
The snail would reach the peak in eight years at the speed of quarter of an inch per day, but you would not reach even in eighty years. Then what is your speed ? Some of you cover 1/8th, 1/16th, or 1/4th of the pillar. Now calculate your average speed. One who climbs the pillar in eighty years has the speed of 1/40" in a day, one who climbs one fourth part of the pillar has the speed of 1/160" per day, one who climbs one sixth part of the pillar has the speed of 1/240" per day, and one who climbs eighth part of the pillar has the speed of 1/320" per day. How slow is the speed. But what speed would you affix to the person who does not cover even so much part of the pillar ?
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