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SEEING HOLY LIFE IN PRACTICE
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But the command over body, emotions and thoughts must also be stainless during the regular life of monks. In the days I spent there I saw no sign of irritation or depression in their faces. Still, inwardly they may or may not be constantly confronted with emotions and inner conflicts. Of the fourteenfold path to the liberation of the soul they have only reached the third to fifth stage, or exceptionally the sixth stage. The guru can, in his best moments, reach the seventh stage, I was told. But even then a very long and difficult path lies before him. The next chapter discusses this path in some detail.
What inspires people to begin such a life? In the first place they must have an undreamed-of love for all that lives: to give up all worldly enjoyments because they do not wish to inflict any harm or pain on any living being. Externally their life is completely relaxed: no family, no troubles, no mobile phones to recharge, no text messages from whiny girlfriends, no fear of missing the latest download, no jealousy, because no one has anything to be jealous about. Their emotional life has become entirely internalized. Jainism knows only simplicity and philosophy; there are no complex rituals no secondary gods of various kinds to whom people can beg for personal help. One can only travel the path alone. Pure motives will lead to pure results. One already has to have quite an intelligence to distinguish the essential from the senseless: the thousands of rituals and forms of worship and prayer with which so many religions entertain the people and which have perhaps some effect, but distract from what is essential – or to become an autonomous and fully developed human being. Therefore most of those who choose such a path will be intellectuals with a deep spiritual confidence
Brahmāchārinī was an example of this. With a university education and a broad scientific interest, a successful academic career behind her, unmarried and childless, but with the heart of a mother and a grandmother at the same time, she spent hours sitting in pure devotion at the feet of her guru. She kept strictly to the rules she found useful, but for other ones she did not care. The guru had great respect
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