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NARRATIVE TALE IN JAIN LITERATURE
there such illimitable bliss as has begun for the enlightened one. The bliss of the gods, multiplied in duration to eternity, even though it were endlessly augmented in its fulness, is not so great as the blissfulness of liberation...As a savage, who becomes acquainted with the manifold beauties of a city cannot describe them, because he lacks something with which to compare them, so, too, the blissfulness of the enlightened ones is incomparable, there is no comparison, and yet I shall mention something which can be compared with it in a certain sense. As a man, when he has eaten food containing all desirable ingredients, no longer experiences thirst and hunger, as though he had sated himself with the celestial beverage, so the enlightened ones who have come to the unique extinguishing, dwell sated for all time, rapturous in the possession of illimitable blissfulness without end."9
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THE DIDACTIC SERMONS In the Bhattaparinnā the following didactic
sermon is worth mentioning :
“Even as a needle through which a thread has been drawn, cannot get lost in the rubbish heap, so also a soui does not disappear in Samsāra. Souls which do not renounce the world, and which are lacking in character and good qualities, plunge into Samsāra, just as birds with a broken wing and without tail-feathers fall into the ocean. A dog which licks a bone, does not reach the marrow, and persuades himself that he is happy, whilst in reality he is only keeping his throat dry. Similarly a man takes for bliss intercourse with women, which in reality, serves to exhaust him. A sinner who makes a sincere confession, is like the bearer of a burden, whose burden is taken from him."10
9. 170 f., 178 ff. After the translation of W. Schubring, Die Jainas
(Rel. Leseb,), p. 29 f. 10. Bhattaparinnā 86, 141ff., Mahāpaccākkhāna 30, according
to the translation of Kamptz, loc. cit., p. 23 f.
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