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The Heritage of the Last Arhat
children, you do not find so much time as to ask yourself why you are doing all that, what you live for, and where you are steering to. You think that you do not care to ponder over it. But in reality, you are not free to do so, because you are the slave of your attachment to that empty, transient bit of happiness, which is, in reality, no happiness at all. Would it not be much better for you to be unconnected with all this, to be your own master, to be like the Rșis and Munis of old, who, in their solitary meditations, unhampered by secular considerations, without comfort and property, without wife and children, without ambition and position, were, in reality, the lords of the world?
अर्थानामर्जने दुःखमर्जितानां च रक्षणे । आये दुःखं व्यये दुःखं धिग् द्रव्यं दुःखवर्धनम् ।। अपायबहुलं पापं ये परित्यज्य संश्रिताः ।
तपोवनं महासत्त्वास्ते धन्यास्ते तपस्विनः ॥
"The acquisition of property, and, if acquired, its preservation, both are connected with trouble. There is trouble in earning, and trouble in spending. Therefore, cursed be property, the increaser of unhappiness !”
“Blessed are those ascetics, great souls are those ascetics, who gave up sin, the producer of so much suffering, and who have found a place of refuge in the grove of a hermitage."
It is not without reason that people in India have been giving to such 'great souls', titles like 'Svāmī', 'Mahārāja' and others, which, in olden times, were applicable only to the truly renouncing ascetics, who were living examples of the fact that renunciation means power, and who indeed experienced the royal happiness of asceticism, where there is :
न च राजभयं न च चोरभयं, इहलोकसुखं परलोकहितम् । नरदेवनतं वरकीर्तिकरं श्रमणत्वमिदं रमणीयतरम् ॥
“No fear of the king, no fear of robbers, happiness in this, and bliss in the next world, reverence shown by men and gods, and
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