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SANNYASA DHARMA
and dhyāna, or rather without those other things which constitute disqualifications for the obtainment of release, therefore, is the loss of the opportunity which it furnishes for the realisation of the ideal likened to the throwing of a wish-fulfilling jewel into a sea! As that jewel is precious beyond all other jewels, so is the human form more valuable than all others ; and as a small jewel thrown into the sea is practically irrecoverable and lost, so is the opportunity furnished by the human form difficult to be obtained again!
. Such is the train of thought implied in the eleventh anuprekshā. If repeatedy meditated upon, it, will strengthen the detərmination to face suffering and hardships involved in the practising of holy asceticism, and prevent laziness and the stagnation of inaction.
(12) Dharma anupreksha.- In a world where misery and suffering surround one wherever one goes, where distress is the usual lot of living beings, where patrons and protectors are wanting or powerless, where relations and friends are deceitful and not able to share the burden of affliction, where death is the paramount Lord and Sovereign King, where disease itself does not really imply a cessation of woe, but only a beginning afresh thereof,-in a world such as this there is only one refuge for the soul, and that is Dharma ! There is no other protector than the Tirthamkara, who is the Ideal and the true Model after whom one has got to shape his own life. Yet the Tirthamkara Himself has nothing to give, nor does
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