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INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
hay, jewels, clay and gold, indifferent to pleasure and pain, free from limitations in this world as well as in the next, without hankering for life or death, destined to overcome mundane life, born to terminate the bondage of karma – thus he spent his time. With supreme knowledge, supreme faith and supreme conduct ... with extreme valor, highest uprightness, dexterity and patience, with utmost caution and utmost satisfaction, with the highest intelligence and highest truth, restraint and penance. Arhat Rishabha spent a thousand years in meditation of the Self on the road to liberation, which was the duly earned outcome of right conduct. Thereon ... near the city of Purimātāla, in a park named Satakamukha, under the shadow of an excellent Nyagrodha tree, taking food without water [but Digambaras deny this] once in four days ... [at an auspicious lunar conjunction] ... while in meditation, he became the master of omniscient knowledge and faith, infinite, unsurpassed, unobstructed, complete and full. Thus the Arhat Rishabha became the venerable, the victor, omniscient, all-knowing, all-observing; he knew all the categories of gods, men and non-divine beings in all worlds; he knew and saw the conditions of all living beings in all the worlds – where they come from, whither they go, where they stay, when they slip and where they are born; he knew and saw their ideas, the thoughts in their minds, their intake, their doings, their open deeds as well as their secret deeds. Being the most venerable, from whom nothing could be kept secret, he knew and saw in all respects the state of mind, words and deeds, of all living beings in all the worlds” (Kalpa Sūtra, verses 210-212).
Once he had reached enlightenment he decided to guide all living beings towards the spiritual path. He gave – as did the Buddha later – a “first sermon,” which was not an actual sermon, but a nonverbal communication which could only be understood by ganadharas (“spiritual intellectuals”), who translated it into understandable language for the others. This event was attended not only by humans, but also by celestial
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