Jain Journal 1975 10

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

Page 54

80
Nandivardhan: Vardhaman, you have not decided wisely. When Yashoda returns from Kalinga and does not find you in the palace-what will be her plight, you cannot imagine. You are a great advocate of non-violence. But you did not pause for a moment to consider the magnitude of injury you would be inflicting on your wife by giving her such unanticipated shock.
Vardhaman :
Vardhaman :
Nandivardhan: You have failed in your duty to the State. By becoming an ascetic yourself, you have forced asceticism on your wife. You are called Mahavir Vardhaman-Is this escapism your criterion of valour and bravery. You do not know what things are to be done and when.
JAIN JOURNAL
Vardhaman :
I have already told you that Yashoda will herself become an ascetic. Once a person takes to asceticism, he becomes indifferent to pleasure and pain, profit and loss, life and death.
Nandivardhan: Are courtly dignity and honour, jewels and ornaments, wife and children poison? Was your coronation, a poison given to you?
Right and wrong are comparative terms. They depend on one's circumstances and angle of vision. A sign or a symbol may be indicative of many words; but there are people who stick to only one meaning of it. Then blame me not if I get at all the indications and symptoms of one single word. I am happy in my own creed. Having savoured of nectar, I no longer desire to taste hemlock.
My real coronation was when I gave up bead of pearl and jewel, caskets of gold and silver, and took to this earthen bowl.
Nandivardhan: I do not know what pleasure you get in begging for food in this tattered dress of a mendicant, when you could have the choicest dishes in your palace.
Vardhaman : I will give up even this tattered dress of a mendicant; and I need not beg for food. The pleasure of self-realisation far exceeds the pleasure of a hundred dainty dishes.