Chitrabhanu Man with Vision

Author(s): Clare Rosenfield
Publisher: Jain Meditation International Centre New York

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After some years of inner experience, his young and vital mind became eager to undertake a systematic study of the Agamas. He felt the need to turn to the written utterances of Mahavir to balance his life and to guide him further in his understanding of inner experience. He embarked on this study on his own, continually internalizing the message by meditating and adjusting his actions according to his understanding. Eventually, he found a new lifetime purpose: to share his experiential knowledge of the wisdom of the Agamas with
others.
The first part of his mission was to teach. He gave classes to groups of monks on the Agamas, and eventually became known and appreciated as the authentic Jain Master of the present time period.
The second part of his mission was the fulfillment of an inner dream. He longed to preserve the Agamas in as permanent a way as possible. Before him, they had been recorded only on palm leaf manuscript paper. This kind of paper was fragile and susceptible to the dampness of climate. For this reason, the monks who had access to them guarded the precious manuscripts and did not make them available to all. Āchārya Anand Sagarsuriji took it upon himself to copy them by hand in order to give them to a printer for publishing in book form. The Agamas then became accessible to a great number of seekers.
In the last quarter of his life, the Acharya was the spiritual guide for four hundred monks, including Acharya Bhakti Suri whom Rup had met earlier at Palitana. At the same time, he engaged himself in the realization of his last great dream - to have the Agamas engraved in stone. In this way, future generations would be able to know the exact and genuine version of Mahavir's words. Arguments over wording would thereby be prevented. It was a seven-year project, involving artists, architects, scientists, and engravers from many parts of India. All the utterances of Mahāvir, all the stanzas of deep insights were to be housed in a special temple called the Agamamandir. One such temple was to be built in Surat; another one in Pālitānā, about two hundred fifty miles from one another. In the temple at Surat, the Āgamas were being engraved on
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