Jain Legend Vol 3

Author(s): Hastimal Maharaj, Shuganchand Jain, P S Surana
Publisher: Hastimal Maharaj Shugan C Jain P S Surana

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Slowly and slowly, the practice of psychical /mental contemplation and worship were being gradually replaced by those traditions which involved pervert material offerings and objects. Glamour of material offerings and religious ambience started attracting the minds and interests of the common followers and monks alike towards these. The profounder of these pervert traditions kept on adding innovative techniques in making such pervert external rituals involving material offerings and ambience to further enhance their attractions for the common people. Influenced by the popularity of such innovations, majority of rama a monks also joined them and started preaching the same. The group which introduced the maximum number of innovations became the most popular group and hence representing the successful, largest, original and true Jain doctrine and practice. Large groups of monks also gave up the true path of spiritual purification and became supporters of these material offering based traditions. All these developments resulted in the almost total eclipse of the fundamental principles of spiritual purification as propagated by Lord Mah v ra.
rama a Lord Mah v ra experienced the pains of all living beings categorized as ad j vanik ya or having six categories of bodies while preaching his religious creed.
Even though the crisp details of the doctrine and conduct were given in the scriptures; yet the rama as who became proponents of these pervert material offering worships and rituals started promoting building temples and idols therein and their worship using material offerings involving violence of all types i.e. committing by self or asking others to be violent or support those who commit violence. Such acts caused irreparable damage to the true and pure doctrine and right conduct of rama as. Gradually the followers of rama a tradition started forgetting and becoming unfamiliar with the original doctrine.
The rama as who were familiar with and could preach the original doctrine and right conduct became few and far between and the number of their followers also shrank considerably. All these developments resulted in the almost total eclipse of the pure rama a tradition and its being replaced by the rising of new pseudo tradition of pervert religious rituals using external material offerings. Laxity in the conduct was not the only reason for these developments. There were other developments as well, some of which are listed below:
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