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Once it is understood that sansaara is the root cause for all the sorrow and grief resulting in living beings experiencing birth after birth, the next question that arises is: How to get rid of sansaara? It would be a grave folly to commit suicide in order to attain liberation from sansaara. Suicide would result in rebirth in another form. Liberation will remain a distant dream. He shall remain stuck in the transmigration rut taking birth again and again in sansaara. Giving up the body in this manner cannot possibly lead to liberation.
How then, does one attain liberation? Can one become free from sansaara while remaining in sansaara? The answer is simple.
Just as sansaara is caused by our internal desires, the cessation of sansaara, liberation is also brought about by our inner disposition. Just as attachment and aversion lead to sansaara, the cessation of attachment and aversion leads to liberation.
For instance, let us imagine that you are walking through a shopping mall. The stores display hundreds of varieties of merchandise. Just seeing them will not make you own the merchandise! If you begin window-shopping, will the shopkeeper gift you his merchandise? No. Unless you step inside the store, ask the price and offer payment, the merchandise cannot be yours. You will not be able to possess it or use it.
Similarly, this world is also a shopping mall. And as long as you remain indifferent to all the things present therein, you will remain detached from them. The moment you begin to like and dislike things, try through the means of mind, speech and body to acquire them, you will become attached to them. Remain supremely indifferent and none of the plethora of substances present in the world will be able to affect your soul in any way. And as long as you remain supremely indifferent to worldly substances, no power in the world shall be able to bind you.
Lord Mahavira has shown us a great path. Even if you live in the world, as long as you remain indifferent to it, you will be untouched by it. Your sequence of birth and rebirth shall come to an end.
"Na lippaye bhavamajjje vi santo, jalena va pokkhariniipalaakham." ~ Uttaraadhyayana Suutra; Verse 32.34 (Page 291, Author: Lilambai Mahasatiji, Publisher: Gurupraana Foundation, (Parasdham, Ghatakopar) Mumbai, year 2009)
Despite living in sansaara, remain detached. Just as the lotus blossoms in the midst of filth and mud but remains impervious to it, the soul not besmirched by attachment and aversion cannot be bound by the external world.
Just as it is futile treating the stomach if your head is paining, it is futile being nice from the outside if deep down inside, you are seething with anger, arrogance, artifice and avarice. As long as you cannot rid yourself of all desire and passion, you will not attain liberation no matter what you do.
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