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Bhagavān Mahavira
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of his father. But being urged by the futility of this very prosperity, Mahāvīra accepted the hard path of renunciation and austere life. This life of great self-control, asceticism, and austerity earned for him the epithat of Mahāvīra. Later on he became known as Mahāvira only as the people forgot his earlier name that was Vardhamāna.
He attached importance to abstinance only and not to sensuous enjoyments and to so called peace and progress earned through wealth. Ultimately, he became an ascetic, leaving aside everything when he was barely a young mai. of thirty. The fact that he remained for thirty years as a householder had its origin in his respectful attitude towards the desire of his parents and his elder brother. Even though he was in the world, he was out of it as he was never absorbed in the thoughts of enjoyment of worldly objects and pleasures. In the final years of his life as a householder. he gave away everything he had to the deprived and destitute. He left the world keeping nothing---not even a pie-with himself.
The Secret of his Austerities The revered Pārsvanātha had shown the easy way of self-purification of which non-injury, truthfulness, non-stealing and possessionlessness were the constituents, opposing the contemporary practices of senseless mortificacation and physical torture. He preached soul-lifting technique consisting of meditation, contemplation, trance. fast etc. etc. in place of senseless methods such as those of hanging from the tree, heating the body by five types of fire, sleeping on pointed iron spikes etc. etc. Vardhamāna Kumāra also had obtained omniscience through noble means and intense as well as continuous effort without any remissness, having first purified himself.
Bhagavan Buddha underrated penance, as it was according to him, a physical torture and therefore considered it as unhelpful in self-purification. . He himself practised hard austerities for a very long time but could not succeed in obtaining enlightenment. The reason of this is not that one cannot get illumination through penance or that penance is not a bonafide remedy but that there should be some limit to it and it is this that it can be practised so long as quiet can be preserved and mental peace is not disturbed. Unlimited penance fails as it interferes with mental equipoise.
Without keeping an eye on his own power, Bhagwan Buddha practised penance to the extent that his mental balance was disturbed. It is no surprise if, therefore, he considered penance and austerities as somewhat useless. Contrary to this, Bhagavān Mahavira gave due and equal weightage to his own potentiality and to penance also. He did not undertake practices of penance beyond his own ability and capacity. This is the reason why Mahavira could get omniscience through those very
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