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causing the sculpting of idols of Jina, established foot imprints only and worshipped them. The greatness of foot imprints is the greatness of lotus feet. Acarya Hemcandra declared that the spots where Tirthankara's feet have been imprinted deserve our reverence and worship.
The body for man is one only but he has got a pair of legs. Is it poetic way of reminding us of non-duality in the midst of duality ? Be it as it may. Though the legs are independent yet there is general and mutual control between them. If we forget and neglect co-operative attitude in the midst of our independence, pain, horror and poverty alone will result. If people were to remain cultured and not barbaric, co-operation, mutual help and unity of thought must be achieved.
Even meditation on a single finger of the Lord is capable of taking us in the path of salvation. Then how great it should be to concentrate on the lotus feet of the Lord ! As there is an eternal pair of positive and negative, to complete a circuit, so also right and left is an eternal pair in giving us the results. The right foot of the Lord removes the time immemorial attachment and the left foot sows the seed for manifestation of infinite power.
Destruction of sin - development of merit Destruction of asrava - development of samvara
Destruction of extraneous nature - development of own nature all result from the pair of feet. The ten toes signify the ten types of rules of recluses. The shining nails in the toes bless the aspirant-sadhaka that his fame will be immortal and spread in all ten directions.
Sri Manatunga described the feet as the destroyers of darkness. All the three commentators (Gunakara Suri, Meghavijaya Gani and Kanakakusala Gani) take darkness to signify sin. We offer our salutations to those great scholar-saints to permit us to differ a little from them. We feel that, the salutation to Jinas remove not only sin but also darkness. This interpretation too appears to be suitable. Some times some sufferings or pain or failure or adversity also may take man towards the way of salvation but darkness can never help him. In a way papa (sin) becomes punya (merit). This usage 'merit in the form of (or following) sin' signifies this only i.e., some sins help us like punya to move further. But darkness never gives scope for development or allows us to proceed further.
To wit. Though the aghati karmas, asubha-nama-karma, asata-vedaniya-karma and nicagotra-karma give adversities and difficulties, yet take us in the way to paramatman. But the impact of ghati-karmas is essentially that of (similar to) darkness. They cover atman so completely that even a single ray of self-knowledge is not allowed to enlighten the man. The lotus feet of the Lord are capable of destroying both sin and darkness – ghati and aghati karmas. So to destroy the pair of sin and ignorance the worship of pair of feet is necessary. 2. SAMYAK PRANAMYA
Sri Manatunga great logician as he is, has not composed the present work in aphoristic style. But the characteristics of a sutra work are very much discernible here. Each word is logically selected. 'Natva' can be used in the place of 'pranamya' in Sanskrit but the acarya chose 'pranamya' only and not 'natva'. why? Because 'natva' will not go with jinapadayuga.
When people in the house get angry, sometimes we bow down to appease them, in the same way we bow to non co-operative authorities. But such external-physical obeisance is not enough for paramatman. He expects total surrender. We have to cling to his lotus feet (as a drowning man would cling to a log of wood). The preposition 'pra'is added to signify the surrender here, not mere bowing down. 'Pra' stands for great effort. One can do obeisance in fifteen different ways but surrender is possible only when one is impelled by the desire for release. A mere namaskara is not enough to remove the beginningless samskaras and habits. The destructions of karmas require the removal of internal enemies. They won't go for a song. They have to be banished. Without a commensurate effort, atman can not be cleansed of its
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Rahasya Darshan
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