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Jaina Acara : Siddhanta aura Swarupa
123
But this does not preclude well-meaning, worthy children from being initiated. An ordinary child will wake up at night and cry for food. Initiation is not for those who aspire for easy food. It is only for such as yearn for release from the worldly cycle of birth and death. Those who are prone to relish taste in food are not fit for austerities which is swimming against the tide and is also so very arduous. The ideal in Jainism is asceticism which has been preferred not only by average mortals but also by kings and queens, army generals and chieftains as also by politicians and tradesmen. Rich and poor alike have taken to this course which does not let ascetics remain rich or poor. The only right incentive is unswerving detachment. Lord Mahavira had initiated the old Brahmana Risabhadatta. Some sons initiated their own fathers as Jambu practised it in the case of his rich father Risabhadatta and Aryarakŝita in the ease of his father Somadeva.
Not that a lay votary cannot be liberated, but it is an uphill task for him. Circumstanced as he is, he has to carry out many mundane responsibilities. Moreover, when the urge for self-realization is strong, nobody will continue to stay as a householder. Those who are wakeful are not lured by blandishments and ogling. Those who are asleep in the laps of belles will never give up home and hearth and shall continue to be born again and again. The garb is significant and also insignificant. When initiated, the garb has to be changed but what needs drastic change is of the heart and head.
Asceticism is not escapism but progressivism, it is a challenge which the spiritual aspirant accepts willingly on knowing that the material world is essentially immaterial. It is a voluntary choice between the evil-infested world and the blissful, even though apparently hard. Who will not discard most delicious victuals on knowing that they are poisoned? The wakeful soul knows that the world is poisonous,that happiness is an occasional episode in the general drama of pain, that the wastage of human life which is otherwise a hard find is a veritable sin. Science has made tremendous progress, making human life as comfortable and disease-free as possible. Science, however works in the material sphere and is oblivious of the spirit. Without the propelling engine, can bogies move by themselves? Even corpses have hands and feet, but what animates them is the spirit. How does it avail if man gains the whole world and loses his soul?
Initiation is internal devotion. It is a spiritual journey within, having little to do with the outside world. All kinds of people from the highest to the lowest, from kings and queens to learned scholars in their own lore, from tender princesses to mature and hardened politicians, from the richest to the poorest and the like have chosen the path of renunciation. There are sundry reasons why people take recourse to asceticism. They are mentioned in Sthananga as follows:
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