Lord Mahavira and His Teachings

Author(s): Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi

Page 82

“CHOOSE THE GREAT ROAD”
Shri B. P. Wadia
The opinion of the Tirthankaras is that knowledge, faith and right conduct are the true causes of true liberation ; never the outward marks.”
"By praises and hymns one obtains the wisdom consisting in knowledge, faith and conduct.”
-Uttaradhyayana Sutra
THE mysteries of taking birth are as great as those
I which attend the death of the body. While it is clear to all that he who is born must one day die, it is not as clear to all that death is followed by birth in another body. Unless we learn to contemplate what Nitya-prabhava and Nitya-pralaya imply we cannot comprehened the emancipation of the soul into immortality; and the still more mysterious process of the raising of the body to be a temple of Light like that of the grand Tirthankara.
The Jainas celebrate Mahavira Jayanti every year. There is a difference between the compulsory birth of mortals whose Karma draws them to embodied existence and the Birth of an Emancipated Jina, the conqueror of mortality and of all limitations of body and of mind. By his Vir--the dauntless Energy that fights its way to the supernal truth-the Soul known as Mahavira reached perfection. As the last of the Tirthankaras he graciously took, voluntary Birth for helping the humanity.
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