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herdsman inserted reeds of a grass named 'K msa' in both ears of Mah v ra and with a stone, hammered it into the ears completely. The Lord considered the intense pain from this as a past life karma and bore it quietly. Leaving Chamm i the Lord arrived at "Medhiy gr ma” and went for alms to a vai ya 'Siddh rtha's house. At that time, Siddh rtha was talking to his physician friend "Kharaka'. When Kharaka saw the Lord's facial features, he knew there is some sharp thing inside his body. He told Siddh rtha and they requested the Lord to stay a while but the Lord did not stop. From there he went out of the village and again became meditative in a garden. After a while, Siddh rtha and Kharaka reached the garden with medicines. They massaged the Lord's body with oil and with the help of pincers, extracted the reeds from the ears. The moment the blood-ridden reeds came out of the Lord's ears he gave a cry, the echoes of which reverberated throughout the garden. After that, the physician Kharaka applied the ointment samroha a on the wound and after paying obeisance to the Lord, both friends left. It is said that during his mendicancy period, the Lord bore with many ordeals and calamities but the ordeal of removing the nail-like reeds from the ears was the most painful of all. Bearing with all these ordeals with equanimity, the Lord destroyed a great amount of karmas. Strangely, the herdsmen caused the first and the last calamities faced by the Lord.
During twelve-and-a-half years of mendicancy period, the Lord accepted food only for 349 days. He fasted without water for the rest of the days.
Omniscience and First Sermon
In the middle of the 13th year on the tenth day of the bright fortnight of Vai kha month in the afternoon, the Lord was in meditation under a
ala tree in the Jr a garden by the banks of the river J mbhik outside the village J mbhik . At that time, ascending the accelerated path of annihilating the obscuring karmas (k apaka re ) with a fast without water and in the second stage of pure ( ukla) meditation; the Lord destroyed the four obscuring karmas, namely, deluding, intuition obscuring, knowledge obscuring and interference producing under Uttar f lgun constellation, and achieve pure intuition and pure knowledge i.e. became an Arhanta and omniscient.
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