Shraman Bhagvana Mahavira Part 5

Author(s): Ratnaprabhvijay, D P Thaker
Publisher: Parimal Publication

Page 39

the things in the Universe, felt aversion to worldly pleasures, prostrated himself before Šramaņa Bhagavān Mahāvira, and requested him with a faltering voice "O lord! I came here with the deliberate intention of testing your knowledge and discussing with you, like a dwarf desiring to measure a tall tree. But you have enlightened me so nicely, that I now want to be trec from worldly atrachments You will, therefore, do me the favour of giving me 4781 Diksā Initiation into the Order of Monks, and delive: me from the trammels of this part Sainsāra-worldly existence."
Sranana Bhagavān Mahāvīra welcomed the pure-intentioned request of Inarabhūtı, as he knew that he would be his Fust TOTT Ganadhara,-the head of a corpora 1011 of ascetics,and initiated Indrabhūti and his five hundred pupils into his Order of Ascetics. Indrabliūti Gautama was fifty years old at the time of renouncing the world, and accepting wifi Cāritra Dharma,-the duties of an ascetic.
At that tire, par Kubèra, the God of Wealth brought before Gautama Ganadhara, the materials suitable for an asce. tic lliw and requested him to accept them. Before accepting them, the great ascetic Indrabhūti who was now weary of worldly existences, thought "I have renounced all iny belongings. I do not know whether I should accept these materials or not ?" Indrabhūti Gautama whose name is, even at present, remembered every morning, whose false belief was transformed into right belief by the preaching and anftata Cáritradāna Initiation by the Venerable Saint, whose aversion to worldly belongings was increasing, and whose spiritual development and mode of life had become pure, decided that the clothes, utensils and other materials brought by Kubera would be useful in the careful observance of his vows, and they were fit to be accepted. They are essential for daily use, and without them, an ordinary ascetic, eager for the preservation of the lives of the six varieties of living beings, cannot perforin his reli 1ous duties, satisfactorily without injuring his sense of duty. Wise persons