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( 72 ) How could then one know if the Raja was a one-eyed man?" Our eyes too always fall on the qualities of the monks. What have we to do with their body ?:
This will also explain why we worship naked images, Because the images were of those who were naked. When we go to the temple, we never look to the body of the images. We look totheir Dhyana. We contemplate that we ought to be like those Tirthankaras whose images they are, and we ought to absorb ourselves in self as those images are suggesting. We look to the Dhyana of the image and not to the body. One who understands our images will find them absorbed in meditation as it were. We worship this meditation. We worship the image to be reminded of. this meditation. There is no idol-worship among us. We have ideal-worship. These images are only a means to remind us of our ideals just as lovers. have rings to look at them to be reminded of their sweethearts. We never worship stony idols. We worship ideals. We pay reverence to these stony images simply because they are representatives of our ideals. And why should we not pay respect to the images of our beloved ideals who forgot good and evil, who forgetting nakedness obtained salvation, and who leaving behind them for our guidance their example that we might make our lives as sublime as theirs, verified the truth of what Longfellow says:
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time?
