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STAGES OF SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
219 cruel thing, you can pity him for the future suffering which he is generating. You can pity the lame, diseased dog in his suffering, which is his reaping of past criminal acts; why not pity the being in his causing acts as a criminal ? Also, a cruel person, or an immoral person, or a drunkard, or a liar, is a person with a diseased mind; and we should pity mental disease equally with bodily disease.
The next step in the process may be to meditate on Arhats that is, those in whom the eighteen faults, previously mentioned, are absent, and on perfection, or those who have already accomplished their complete development and are living a right life : “I shall be entirely satisfied when I reach Masterhood."
The idea is that, by this process, practised, if possible, daily for some forty-five or fifty minutes without interruption, resulting in equanimity, we get illumination or self-realization.
As a help to becoming what we ought to be, or, at any rate, to prevent us from acquiring unnatural energies or characteristics, the layman may use the following reflections (anuprekşā) :
(1) There is nothing unchangeable in this world; everything is transient or subject to alteration. We should not, therefore, attach too much importance to it, and should regard it as transitory (anitya).
(2) In this world of misery, disease, old age and death, there is no other protection, refuge or help than our own practice of the truth. Others are powerless; as we sow, so we reap (aśaraņa).
(3) This continual cycle of births and deaths as man, as animal, as angel, as denizen of hell, although it has been going on for countless ages, is not yet ended; and therefore we should now make some efforts to free ourselves from them, with the suffering, old age, etc., which they entail (saṁsāra).
(4) To think, I enter this world by myself, I go out of it by myself, I have to do my own work of self-moral improvement, and myself to suffer my own pains (ekatva).
(5) All the things of the world are separate from me, are not
1. Tattvārthasūtra, IX. 7. with Bhāsya thereon.
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