Jainism For Beginners Level 03

Author(s): Sayampurnashreeji
Publisher: Sayampurnashreeji

Page 65

and 2) Shalya means a thorn. This means to believe in false faith is a thorn. We know thorns never give pleasure, but rather they always hurt. In the same way, keeping faith in a false belief will lead us to nothing but sufferings. False beliefs can start from believing in false teachers, false religions and false Gods. False teachers are those who do not believe in the five major vows as prescribed by the Jinas. They promote violence, lying. stealing, immoral sensual activities, and possessiveness. These activities will bring our downfall. In the same way, false religions will promote teaching opposite of what the Jinas have taught. False religions can promote violence, anger, ego, deceit, and greed. They will nourish attachment and hatred. That will be bad for us. In the same way, a false God would be the one who is tinted with attachment and hatred. When someone is biased, he cannot give proper advice.
But Jinas do not have any attachment or hatred; therefore, they do not expect anything from what they advise. There is no reason for them to give us any advice that will hurt us. They have reached the higher state by following the same path they have shown to us. They have taught us that we are our own saviours, and only we can save ourselves. Thus, we should have faith in the right teachers, the right religion, and the right God if we want to progress in our spiritual journey. From the discussion we realize that any of these 18 types of sinful activities are harmful. As long as we are living, we are bound to undertake some of these activities, but we should be careful and replace the sinful activities with good activities to minimize harm to our soul. If we have to get involved in sinful activity due to unavoidable circumstances, we should do it with regret and repent for doing such acts and never enjoy doing them.
When nails grow long we cut the nails, not our fingers, similarly, when misunderstandings grow up cut your ego, not relation.
Sources of Sins-Pap
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