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Their Laymen and Laywomen : 131 “pūjā”, and men are usually bare-chested. Before going outside, the veils are taken off, men put on again their city clothes and both men and women their shoes. In pilgrimage at a sacred place in India, Jain laymen and women also go barefoot.
When they get older, laymen and laywomen lead a more selfdisciplined life and fast more frequently and strictly.
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The period of gradual withdrawal from active life.
During this period of pre-retirement (vānaprastha), Jain householders gradually renounce their professional activities and hand the control of business and household to their children. At the same time, they meddle less in the lives of them. They devote themselves more and more to everything that is part of spiritual domain and reject prosperity and pleasure in order to follow the rules of detachment, compassion, tolerance and simplicity. They make effort to deepen their knowledge on religious matters, through study of sacred books, pious readings, penances, meditation and self-discipline.
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The period of renouncement to worldly affairs.
If they want to reach the ascetic stage (saṁnyāsa), which somewhat resembles the life of monks and nuns, the laity who have decided to remain at home with their children prepare their succession and themselves to death. They do external and internal austerities, in particular: fasts (anaśana), renouncement to the body by "kāyotsarga" posture, meditations, etc. They confess their sins and repent. This is the way they do for removing all the “karma” that has stuck to their soul during their present or previous lives (nirjară).
The Jain laity who want to go further may at any time, according to their gender, become monks (sādhu, muni, yati) or nuns (sādhvi, āryā, āryikā, yatini). Renouncing everything, they ask to be admitted in a
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