Jain Journal 1980 07

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

Page 15

6
sharp rock-like vibrations, you grow something beautiful on them instead. You turn this manure into fertilizer in order to sow a fresh new plant, a positive seed-thought. You stop scratching the dirt of your past which gives you a bad odor. People know it is not good for them to go on scratching their old wounds, but they do it for years and years, till the whole consciousness is covered with that kind of odor. Once that happens, the foul thing goes so deep that not even perfume can remove it. It is like the smell of alcohol in the hospital. One nurse was telling that even though she goes home and takes a bath, that odor does not go from her mind for several days. But this resentment of ours, this anger of ours do not go away for years together. People become full grown adults, but still they hold onto these odorous painful memories.
JAIN JOURNAL
When I was a monk, I was asked to go and see one lady who was on her deathbed. She was in her seventies or so, and when I went there her daughter told me, "Please, you tell her to call her son. My brother has not been able to come for years to see her because she tells, 'I don't want to see him.' If you can convince her, it will be good. So I went, I recited the mantras which are meant in our philosophy for those about to depart, and the lady bowed and bowed, saying "These are good words."
I told her, "Now you love all, you forgive all."
She said, "Yes, I love all, I forgive all."
Then I said, "If you don't mind, now you must bring your son. I heard you have a son."
"No," she shook her head, "That you should not ask. Exclude son and bring all, I can forgive." Can you believe? She wanted to include the whole universe except one.
She said, "Gurudev, please go on saying the mantra, it's a good mantra, but I am not going to give up my hatred toward that son who did not listen to me and married against my will a girl from another caste." That was his fault. He had married a girl who did not belong to his mother's caste. So even on the deathbed, violence does not go. How deep it has gone!
When we know that every thought we have penetrates our cells and activates our glands, that every vibration of resentment and bitterness causes us pain and invites the germs of disease, then we are determined