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Pearls of Jaina Wisdom
austerities practised by other Tīrthankaras. His life was filled with equanimity, compassion and fearlessness. He remained mostly silent during this period. Ācārānga Sūtra on Mahāvira's Spiritual Practice
We get a soul-stirring description of the rigorous austerities and spiritual practices of Śramana Mahāvīra in the ninth chapter of the first part of Ācārānga Sūtra. His direct disciple Ganadhara Sudharmāsvāmī has given a very vivid description of this period in it. It says that the he was totally detached and equanimous in both favourable and unfavourable circumstances.
Brief excerpts of these spiritual practices are presented here : Unclad Ascetic
When Mahāvīra renounced the world, he had only white cloth on his body. After thirteen months, while passing through some thorny bushes, it was stuck and separated but Mahāvīra did not care to collect it back and became an unclad ascetic. He calmly tolerated heat, cold, rain and other natural elemental forces and even in severe cold he meditated in open ground. And when summer came, he exposed himself to the heat, squatting beneath the blazing sun. Solitary Wandering
While wandering from place to place, the Venerable one sometimes stayed in desolate huts, inns, rest-houses, parks, villages and towns and sometimes he spent nights under a tree. While staying in such places, he was subjected to difficult and trying situations, snakes and insects used to bite him, vultures and birds used to peck him, uncivilized people used to torture him and indecent women tried to allure him. But Mahāvīra remained unaffected and indifferent. When he was asked to go out, he quietly left the place and moved elsewhere. Control of Food and Sleep The venerable ascetic had great control over his body and For Private & Personal Use Only
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