Sambodhi 2004 Vol 27

Author(s): J B Shah, N M Kansara
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 61

Vol. XXVII, 2004
THE VICTORS AND THE VANQUISHED
55
the unpleasant clouds one's vision and one loses the discretion for false and the true. Mostly, he takes the false to be the true, the wrong to be the right and falters from the path of virtue, which is straight and narrow. Thus, delusion produces false-vision, wrong inclination, wrong attitude and misplaced view-point. The falseness of vision results in wrong-doings and consequent karmic bondage that forces the soul into the quagmire of worldly transmigration and misery.
It is, therefore, important that we know the causes of delusion and endeavour to overcome them to have our vision right.
Who Are The Losers ?
I have indicated, earlier in this essay, that the ones that cannot overcome their passions and their delusions and succumb to them are said to be the vanquished or the losers.
It needs some elaboration. Those who are unable to realise the wrong in following a persistent passionate course, those who keep treading on others' toes in utter disregard of their feelings and harms caused to them, feel no necessity for repentance or making amends for their misdeeds and blunder on regardless of the others, are the ones who have been referred to as being in the grip of 'Infinitely Bonding Passions. They are the losers in the battle against the abominable passionate quartet of anger, conceit, deceit and greed.
It is plain that those who are given to the physicality of sensual pleasures, those who love luxury at any cost, those who think not of the means employed to secure their comforts and luxuries for themselves and theirs cannot rise above the attachment for the pleasurable and aversion for the painful. They will consider anything or any being, how-so-ever honest or innocent, who is inimical to their perceived interests as their enemies and those who help them in their selfish wrong or right pursuits as their friends. It is not difficult to guess that they will be attached to those whom they consider their friends and averted to those whom they consider their foes. They never rise above attachment-aversion induced delusion. They are the losers.
How To Be A Victor ?
To be a loser is not a very good feeling. One wants to win. So, in the spiritual parlance also our seers, who were victors (Jina) themselves, laid down a victorious path for all those who would heed them and follow it. One can become a victor by following this path propounded by the victors called Jina.