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looking after by others. As a dear moves about in the jungle unrestricted so a monk also goes about his monastic peregrinations and rises in the spiritual purity. As a dear goes alone in the forest so, sustained by my monastic restraints and austerities, I will also move about alone
and discharge my duties.”
Rendered speechless by irrefutable arguments of their son, the parents yielded to his request and permitted him to accept monastic ordination, as he desired. They said - The Father – "Son ! do as it pleases you.” Mrgāputra - “O' mother ! O'father ! permitted by you, I shall
lead a perfect dear like monastic life that will help me in
destroying the karmic bondage responsible for all miseries. The Mother – “Son ! do as it pleases you.”
Thus, having obtained the parents' permission after variously convincing them, Mrgāputra discarded all delusion and attachment just as a great serpent discards its old skin. Renouncing all worldly possessions as one sheds the dust from one's clothes; he proceeded on his monastic sojourn.
He became endowed with five great monastic vows, he was carefully guided by five comportments (Samitis) and restrained by three self-restraints (Guptis). He was ever-ready to accept increasingly rigorous external and internal penance and shed pride and prejudice altogether. He became a protector of static and mobile life-forms and developed equanimity in gain and nongain, pleasure and pain, praise and criticism, honour and insult and life and death. He freed himself from the clutches of pride, passions, punishment, spiritual thorns, fear, laughter, wishes, worry and bondage and became fully engrossed in the pursuit of perfect monastic practices.
Like this, after leading a monastic life full of the pursuit of
MRGĀPUTRIYA (THE TALE OF THE SON OF MRGĀ): 321
