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I am the Soul
feelings, the guard-like reasoning says, “It is for conquering this very craving for taste that you have gone on fast, so don't let these aberrations affect you'.
In the same way, like fasting, whatever other vratas one does, the guard of reasoning has to be always alert and should keep the aberrations at bay.
There should be a constant vigilance, a constant alertness, a vigil every moment of the self over the self. There should be a watch on the thought process within as to 'what is happening to me and when? Which way are my mind, my thoughts, my attachments running?? First place the boundary and then appoint the guard and then the self become its own guard. For guarding the world of our thoughts is nobody else's responsibility. The supreme Soul Tirthankar can know what our thoughts are. He can tell us these were your thoughts at such a time. He can tell us whether they were good or bad. But the responsibility of containing them is our own. Hence the alertness has to be of our
self.
Hence, vratus are successful only when we have recognised our own attitude. Otherwise, having taken the vows of the sadhu or shravak, and if the consciousness that, “my own internal attitude is likely to mislead me, I should be able to prevent it, is not there, then the jiva cannot progress on the path of spirituality. Hence, only those vratas, which revert the disposition to its naturality, are acceptable. Otherwise vratus are not required. It is not because of the insistence of the vratas but because of the insistence of the natural disposition, that some vratas manage to revert the attitude to the natural form.
While discussing the third phrase of this gatha earlier, we have made a reference to paramartha. Let us consider it again here. Srimadji has said that the person who does not recognise his own attitude does not attain paramartha. Due to which, in
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