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The Jains through Time
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say! This slavish way of thinking, 1 believe, provide others with an opportunity to mock has toppled our ideals and destroyed our our Tirthankars and our scriptures, culture. This type of mindset has been responsible for the rise of scepticism and a If you look at things in an unbiased and resultant antipathy towards religion in our objective manner, you may begin to wonder time.
whether scriptures containing .elaborate
geographical and astronomical data, Devotion to Omniscience or
descriptions of the moon and the sun, of Attachment to the Scriptures
planets and constellations, or mountains and It is from scriptures that we gain knowledge oceans can provide us with any inspiration of the supreme state of the soul. We are souls for freeing ourselves from bondage. How do and a Tirthankar is a supreme and purified they show us the way to self-belief? What soul. The difference between a worldly soul lessons of kshama, tapa, and ahimsa do we and a supreme soul is only one of a degree of learn from them? Why should we consider purity. Soul in its purest state is God. The those books, which have no relevance for essential nature of the supreme soul is not our self-seeking consciousness and nothing different from that of our own soul. Only to do with our aspirations towards those scriptures which enlighten us about our purification, as our scriptures? On what soul, show us the way to becoming a supreme basis should we accept them as the words, or soul, pave the way for purification and the even the teachings of the All-Knowing perfection of our lives are true scriptures. Ones? These are the only ones we need. It is harmful to count those texts as scriptures that Many of the sacred books of the Jains, the lead us to self-delusion and make us world- Buddhists and the Hindus were compiled orientated' instead of 'soul-orientated'. Such and revised during a period which stretched pseudo-scriptures distance us from true faith, from a few centuries BC to 4th and 5th make our minds restless with doubts, and century AD. Whatever books were written
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