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158 THE NINE CATEGORIES OF denizen of hell (Sarsāra bhāvanā), the wise will be stirred up to try and stop the inflow of karma in this life, the only opportunity a man may have for so doing.
We must also remember that we came unaccompanied into the world, that we shall go out of it unaccompanied, and that unaccompanied we shall have to endure the expiation of our karma (Ekatva bhāvanā). A king named Nami was led to understand this reflection in the following manner. He once fell very ill, and his queens called in a physician, who ordered him to be rubbed with sandal wood. Each queen, terrified of being widowed, seized a picce of wood and rubbed some part of the king's body. As they rubbed, their many bangles jingled, and the august patient, who was not only ill, but also irritable, exclaimed against the din. Instantly each of the ladies tore off all her bangles save one (to have taken all off would have been unlucky, since it would have looked like anticipating widowhood) and the rubbing proceeded in silence. The king asked what they had done, and when they explained to him that each of them was now only wearing one bracelet, the true meaning of the bhāvanā he had heard so often dawned on him. Exclaiming that he was born alone and must die alone, he renounced the world and his wives, and proceeding to the forest, received initiation as a monk, and died in a few years.
Again, karma is impeded by remembering that in reality the soul is separate from the body (Anyatva bhāvanā), though through ignorance we think of it as attached thereto, for a soul cannot actually be united to body or wealth, wife or child. As an illustration of the importance of this reflection the Jaina tell the following legend. Once upon a time the great King Bharata, the son of Rişabhadeva, was seated on his throne, magnificently arrayed in all his jewels, when he noticed that the ring he had been wearing on his little finger had slipped off. He thought how ugly the finger looked without it, but reflected that the finger had never possessed the ring, the contact with which had been purely fortuitous. Amused at
