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RISABHA DEVA
ance from birth. All this is due simply to the fact that the material of their bodies is not gross like ours; it is ethereal. The conditions in hells are different; but we are not concerned with their description here. For the present let us turn to the fate of the soul whom we left engaged in the 'observance of the sallekhanā death.
Mahabala understood full well the importance of the time that was still left to him for the shaping of his destiny for the future well-being of his soul. He devoted the whole of that period to the eradication of his lower nature, the subduing of his passions and emotional propensities, and the suppression of private loves and hatreds. He worked under the guidance of Svayambuddha all the time. The latter was now his spiritual counsellor, as he had been his temporal councillor (minister) when he was a king. Holy meditation, adoration of the Great Tirthamkaras, of the Liberated Ones, of Saints and Preceptors and the ordinary Sadhus (ascetics), collectively termed Pancha-Parameṣṭhi, recitation of the great obeisance mantram and the cultivation of the spirit of detachment from the physical body occupied his time, to the exclusion of all other thoughts. He began by giving up solid food at once; gradually other kinds of diet were also abandoned. Thereafter his sustenance con
