Jain Journal 1967 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 96

APRIL, 1967
221
he took food offered by a smith named Cunda. He was ill again with severe pain in the stomach. As soon as the pain had subsided, he made his way for Kusinara where, it was then foretold, the master was to pass away. But the meal offered by Cunda was the last meal. Blessed was the peasant damsel that had offered him meal before enlightenment; and blessed was Cunda to provide the last meal before the master's entering into nirvāna.
The master now lay between two śāla trees with his head towards the Himalayas and surrounded by his dearest disciples. People came from far and near. Ananda was by his side. "Transiency is in the nature of all created things; seek diligently for emancipation"-these were the master's last words to the gathering. He then sank deeper and deeper into meditation ultimately passing away into nirvana.
Pythagoras
Among the illustrious near-contemporaries of Mahavira we must introduce three persons all of whom flourished in Greece and through their contributions which have been directly inherited by the modern western society have enriched the life and thought of humanity. Of these the first in the line is Pythagoras, followed by Socrates and Plato. They were not god-men in the strictest sense of the term, as Lao-tse or the Buddha were ; but they were very much in touch with and influenced by the religious ideas current in Egypt and Asia, notably in India. All the three had, therefore, lots of mystical experience and all of them emphasized more the matters of the soul than that of the body. After Plato, however, the mystical current died out in Greece and even though, a little later, a direct political connection had been established between India and Greece by the military activity of Alexander of Macedon and a large number of Greeks had settled on and beyond the north-western border of India, the flow of culture between one and the other country had gradually died out.
"I wish to set forth the fundamentals of religion as determined by Pythagoras and his followers.” Thus wrote Lamblichus of Syria in the biography of the great Greek philosopher written after about nine hundred years of the latter's death. He continued, "The test of all that they did or abstained from doing was consonance with divinity. Their first aim was converse with God. They shaped their lives in order to accord with His will. That is the foundation of their philosophy, because, they say, to search for good from any but the divine source is foolish." This gives