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XXXII
CONCLUSION
Conduct is the reflection of the immaculate soul within. Conduct necessarily means good conduct. If you behave politely, speak sweetly but harbour rancour within, you are not a man of conduct but a hypocrite. In case your mind, speech and action are at variance with one another, it means that your soul is tainted. Conduct includes everything good and excludes every thing that should be illegal and immoral. It is buttressed by physiology, psychology, sociology, ethics and the like. It is not enough to live well. To die happily and with no complaint or reservation is no less important. People are mortally afraid of death. Jainism teaches us to opt for passionless, voluntary death. Conduct is not only for monks and nuns but also for the laity. Life, shorn of moral values, loses its meaning and significance. The preceding chapters leave no aspect of conduct untouched or ill-treated. Vows, special vows, non-violence, non-possessiveness, truth, non-stealing, celibacy, and the like have been treated exhaustively. There is perhaps no religion, eastern or western, that does not treat of conduct but Jainism, in the words of a well known mendicant, is nothing but conduct. Its greatest emphasis is on conduct which may very well mean plain living and high thinking. So long as the heart is not pure, all external rites are sheer ostentation which can deceive none even though it makes you pretend to put on the attire of self-complacency, but it is short-lived. The approach of Jainism is never superstitious but always scientific. Even the omens have their own logic. The human body is a blessing but only when it leads to blissfulness. It is given to man to rise high or fall below. The seminal thing is ever to remain human and also humane. If you torture your body, you cannot observe the right sort of penances, with the result that you make yourself subject to the chain of never-ending transmigration. Jainism tells you what to eat, what not to eat and never to eat at night and also to meditate daily at fixed hours to attain the state of equipoise and perfect tranquillity. Unless you sincerely repent for your lapses, intentional or unintentional, your life is doomed. Very few persons are born great. What each one of you can and should do is to make yourself good. The so called great men are not without faults, but essentially good men are spotless. No stigma can stick to them, but this requires restraint, freedom form attraction and repulsion and a holy, selfless life that is lived for the good of all.
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