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Bhagawan Mahavir )
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Achala-Bhrata, the ninth Pundit, too, came to the Lord with his disciples. He doubted in the existence of good and evil or merit and demerit. On his arriving in the Samavasharana, the Lord disclosed his doubt and addressed him thus" When you actually see, hear and experience the fruit of righteousness and sin, why do you doubt in their existence ? It seems you have not tried to go down deep to the root of the matter. Long life, good health, beauty, wealth, strength, knowledge, honour, birth in a high family, and, above all, the attainment of spiritual knowledge are all fruits of righteousness; while short life, bad health, ugliness, poverty, misery, diseases, and birth in a low. family are fruits of sin. If you reflect, for a moment, on the causes of this dissimilarity, your doubt would disappear of its own accord. Had there been no such thing as righteousness and sin, the world would not have been so much dissimilar as it is today. Nature, too, would not have been able to maintain law and order in her realm. The fear of sin having gone, the strong would have begun to oppress the weak. And, thus the claim to equality would have been simply a farce. Even the so called equality in its true sense. Therefore, believe that good and evil do exist in this world and will remain in this world for ever." This precept of the Lord removed the doubt from the mind of Achala-Bhrata, who now willingly accepted consecration with his 300 disciples at the feet of the Lord. The reader must have known by now how far the light of knowledge can penetrate, and how quickly it can remove the darkness of ignorance and doubt from the mind of a man.
Now, it was the turn of Maitarya, the tenth Pundit, to go with his discples to the Lord and have his doubt removed.
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