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DAS LAKSHAN DHARM
207 Prem or love and gympathy for living beings. So long as a man is under the influence of pride, he cannot recognise real nature of his soul. Even Bahu Baliji could not attain Kevalajnan (highest attainment) so long as he was under the influence of pride and as soon as being admonished by Brahmi and Sundri he began to start for saluting his younger brothers who had already attained omnisciense, he at once attained Kevalajnan. Hence a man should always give up pride.
The third quality of soul is Arjava or straightfor wordness or in other words absence of deceit. A man who does what he thinks, says what is in his mind and keeps his word and whose mind is free from sycophancy is said to be straightforword. Now a days people are going far away from this quality and openly say something but intend to do something else and practise deception under the name of policy. Instead of calling anything done to suit his own purpose by the name of policy a man should consider honesty as the best policy. A man who earns money by practising deception damns himself to hell and the relations for whose support he earns such money will not share his sins, but he himself will be held responsible for all his doings and will lower down his own soul. A deceitful man is nowhere respected and people gradually begin to loose faith in him. Hence it is very necessary for a man to cultivate this quality of straightforwordness in order to ennoble his soul.
The fourth quality of soul is Satya or Truthfulness. A man who speaks truth is respected by all. A liar is not trusted even when he speaks truth and suffers as in the story of the boy who always used to call villagers under a false pretence that wolf was going to devour him, although no wolf was out coming. One day a wolf came actually and the boy called for help, but none of the village people now believed him as they all knew him to be a liar, so none came to help and rescue him and the result was that he was devoured by the wolf and thus lost his life owing to his habit of speaking falsehood.
Truth means to tell and show the things in their real light. A man under the influence of selfishness and greed becomes a
prey to falsehood and does not even care that his conduct may Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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