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MAHAVIRA : A GREAT DEMOCRAT
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Consequently, he decided to renounce the worldly pleasures, and practice penances for self-chastisement.
Upto the age of thirty years he lived as a householder. But he thought possession (PACE) as a bond of soul. A prince is imprisoned in the walls of his vain glory. He cannot breathe in free air. Dispossession is necessary condition for free thinking and free living; and no correct attitude (91747fü) can be had without perfect freedom in thought and life. A prince has many fears; at the same time he is fear to many. He cannot give the message of fearlessness to the afraid. He cannot be a devotee of Universai friendship. Mahāvira became an escetic, a mendicant possessing nothing, not even a begging bowl, a perfect nirgrantha.
After getting freedom from external boundaries he started his struggle against the inner enemies.
Non-violence was the first and formost object of his practices. He thought that no man could be non-violent as long as he bears slightest malice towards his serverest enemy. Non-violence, he admitted, is not confined to non-killing of or non-injury to others, which is only its only external form. Its real and positive form is the purity of heart, that one does not wish ill even of his enemy. During the period of his meditations he was tortoured, insulted and beaten by different types of people. A cowherd thurst a spike into his ears, swarms of bees stung him. Chanda Kausika, the venomous snake, bit him; the people of Radha set dogs and inflicted other injuries on his body; but, his tranquility was undisturbed. He did not feel the slightest malice against any body.
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