Kshamapana

Author(s): Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: Jaibhikkhu Sahitya Trust

Page 6

10 - Kshamapana back to the former place only to find that someone had meanwhile taken away the rupees that he had buried there. He lost both the cowrie and the nine hundred and ninty-nine rupees."
Bhagavan Mahavir says that as the man lost nine hundred and ninety-nine rupees for the sake of a cowrie, so man loses his valuable soul for the sake of his desires. He loses the dignity of the soul for the sake of the body that is worth only a cowrie.
Significance of Samvatsari In the propitiation days of the Paryushana. parva, we need to search the soul. Let the body which is worth a cowrie, along with the passions that inhabit it, be lost, but let us search the valuable soul. Paryushana is the festival (parva) when we should examine the soul, search the soul. Forgiveness is its culminating original incantation. The festival (parva) of penitance and spiritual love has came today for the soul roaming in the darkness of animosity and the fire of jealousy, with an evil desire for retaliation, on the festival Deepavali. We draw up the balance sheet of profit and loss. Samvatsari is an annual festival. On this day the account of good and bad deeds of the whole year should be settled and sincere efforts should be made to get free from bad deeds. In the Agam scriptures, there is the
Kshamapana a 11 story of three merchants. With an equal capital they set out trading. The first merchant doubled the capital and returned. The second merchant got entrapped in depression of prices and returned only with the original capital. The third merchant incurred a loss. Let alone gains he lost the original capital.
All the human beings, of the jivas in the world are like these three merchants. The first type of jivas preserve the original capital of humanity and moreover they attain reverence. They practise good conduct, keep vows and attain emancipation.
The second type of jivas do not attain emancipation but preserve humanity. They practise good conduct. The jivas of the third type lose even the traces of humanity. They practise bad conduct and are consigned to hell.
Fault-finding and Inner Search Today we should search the self. Who does not err ? To err is human. Errors are committed sometimes automatically, sometimes by force of Karma and sometimes through misunder. standing. We may or may not wish but we have quarrels and distrees in life. All these errors are no doubt earmarked on the slate of Karma and the effort to clean the slate before the errors are