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32 Kshamapana the cross, because they did not know what they were doing. That is why he said while showing the importance of forgiveness, "If you remember when you are going to offer ablation that there is an enmity between you and your brother, return and compromise."
This means that if the heart is full of animosity, no religious rite will be fruitful. The Jain religion fully expounds the virtue of forgiveness. It brings us a number of virtues at once. Forgiveness is said to be the seed-plot of all virtues. If forgiveness enters, greediness disappears. With forgiveness come renounce-ment, simplicity, modesty, contentment and control over the mind and sense-organs. If all these virtues are present, forgiveness can be practised.
Forgiveness means being a Jain monk (nirgrantha), free from all ties, unknotting all ties, "Ksha (8) means a knot and ma (1) means 'to destroy'. Life today is caught up in a number of knot. Between father and son, there are differences of opinion. Between Guru and disciple, there are disputes. Between husband and wife, there are misunderstandings. Between friends, there are broils. Between master and servant, there is ill feeling. Between neighbours, there are quarrels. Love is absent in the relations between
Kshamapana 33 near ones. Forgiveness unites broken hearts. There are knots of arrogance and there are knots of enmity. There are obsessions and differences of opinion. Man becomes a victim of strange mental diseases. In a sugarcane where there is a knot, there is no juice. this is why relations between persons have become dry and uninteresting. Forgiveness vitalizes them. During the period covering the Tirthankaras from the second to the twenty-third, life was comparatively simple. When a mistake was made, people begged pardon, but life today is complex. Man is restless and he makes the world around him fell restless. Man lives as if in a prison cell. Knowingly or unknowingly, we become victims of anger, pride, illusion and greed. These vices express themselves through our body, speech and mind.
Outwardly we are good, but inwardly? Only God knows. Arrogance is a great vice. Illusion says, "This is mine, that is yours." Where there is anger, there is annoyance. Where there is pride, there is insult. What we think to be non-existent, is found to be existent. What we think to be existent, is found to be
non-existent. Lust pervades everywhere. The festival of forgiveness is the festival of universal love; the festival, that promises
