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The Heritage of the Last Arhat
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same purpose just as well, if not better.
The appeasement of all these, and others of our social instincts, by avoiding harming and trying to benefit, fellowcreatures, is, after all, in itself a valuable personal gain.
In addition to avoiding bad and securing good Karma, and to appeasing its innate social instincts, the individual gains, by its non-egotistic attitude, a third advantage, which is perhaps the most valuable of all : it consists in the lasting and genuine bliss which renunciation only can give.
For what is the good of trying to gratify all one's wishes, all one's passions, all one's ambitions ? Is the advantage gained thereby, indeed worth so much hankering, so much worrying, and so much harming ? No, says the sage : the happiness we crave for, is transient like a dream, like a cloud, like beauty. It leaves the bitterness of its absence behind, as soon as it is passed, and it leaves behind, like a dose of opium, the ardent craving for more and more. It is just so as the Uttarādhyayana Sūtra states ( ix. 48 ):
सुवन्नरुप्पस्स उ पव्वया भवे सिया हु केलाससमा असंखया । नरस्स लुद्धस्स न तेहिं किंचि इच्छा हु आगाससमा अणंतिया ।।
“Let there be mountains of gold and silver, let them be as high as the Kailāśa, and let there be innumerable of them : still to man in his greediness, all this will mean nothing. For desire is boundless like space.”
So what is the good of a drop of nectar, when you are thirsty for a cup-ful? The cup-ful being denied to you, why bother about the drop ? Shake off that foolish wish and forget it.
And further, if gained, the happiness you crave for, means possession. Possession of land or fortune, of houses or fields, of beauty or skill, of friends or family, of honour or reputation. And possession involves the sorrow of its maintenance. You have incessantly to take care of your land and of your fortune, you have to recur to lots of contrivances, if you want to preserve your beauty or
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