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Ratnakarandaka-śrāvakācāra
welcome, a high seat, washing the feet, worshipping, bowing, purity of mind, speech and body, and purity of food.
Jain, Vijay K. (2012), “Shri Amritachandra Suri’s Puruşārthasiddhyupāya”, p. 109-110.
The first āhāra of Lord Mahāvīra after His renunciation (dīkņā);
After spending 30 years as youth (kumārakāla), Lord Mahāvīra, reflecting on His past incarnations, decided to tread the path that leads to the end of the cycle of births and deaths. He contemplated on the twelve conceptions (bāraha bhāvanā) – transitoriness (anitya), helplessness (aśaraņa), transmigration (samsāra), loneliness (aikatva), distinctness (anyatva), impurity (aśuci), influx (āsrava), stoppage (samvara), dissociation (nirjarā), the universe (loka), rarity of enlightenment (bodhidurlabha), and Truth proclaimed by religion (dharma). The Lord renounced all worldly pursuits and decided to adopt the supremely worthy Jaina asceticism in order to tread the path to liberation. Laukāntika devas from Brahmaloka came down to
ship Him. The Lord had, by birth, the first three kinds of knowledge, sensory (mati), scriptural (śruta) and clairvoyance (avadhi) and now He had acquired the fourth kind of knowledge – telepathy (manaḥparyaya). The Lord took to the observance of great vows (mahāvrata) along with other attributes of asceticism and decided not to break His fast before the end of three days.
Although the Lord had been enjoying inner happiness all the time, after three days of Holy Meditation, the former Prince set out, barefoot, with no vestige of cloth on His body and unmindful of the pangs of hunger, towards the town of Kūlagrāma, ruled by king Kūla, to seek some kind of nourishment (āhāra) for His body so that it could withstand further rigours of austerity. King Kūla's happiness had no bounds when he suddenly saw such a divine, celebrated and accomplished recipient (pātra) in his compound and
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