________________
142
SOME JAINA CANONICAL SOTRAS
to live as a śramana. It is difficult to get over the occan of duties. Self-control is untasteful like a mouthful of sand. To practise penance is as difficult as to walk on the edge of a sword. Enjoy the human pleasures of five senses.' The son replied, 'Parents, in this world nothing is difficult to perform being free from desire. In the sumsūīra which is a mine of dangers and a wilderness of old age and death, I have undergone dreadful births and deaths. I have suffered agonies in this world. Many times I have been crushed like sugarcane in presses. In every kind of existence I have undergone suffering.' Parents said to him, “A man is free to enter the Order but it causes misery to a śrumaņa that he may not remedy any ailings.' The son replied, ‘Oh parents, I shall practise the Law by controlling myself and doing penance. A pious monk goes to many places but afterwards he goes to the upper regions. A monk on his begging tour should not hate or blame the food he gets.' With his parents' permission he gave up all his properties, his power and wealth, sons, wife and relations. He observed the five great vows, practised the five samitis and was protected by the three guptis. Ho exerted himself to do mental as well as bodily penance. He was without property, without egoism, without attachment, without conceit, and impartial to all beings. He was indifferent to success or failure in begging, happiness and misery, life and death, blame and praise, honour and insult. He was free from sins and fetters. He was indifferent to pleasant things. He had no interest in the world and in the next. He obtained praiseworthy self-purification and sacred knowledge by meditating upon himself. He thoroughly purified himself by knowledge, right conduct, faith, penance, and pure meditation. After having lived many years as a Bramaņa he reached perfection.1
King Srenika Bimbisāra of Magadha once made a pleasure excursion to the Mandikukşi Caitya. It was a park full of trees, creepers, flowers, and birds. There the king saw a restrained and concentrated ascetic sitting below a tree. When the king saw his figure, he was very much astonished and said to him with clasped hands, 'Though young you have entered the Order. In an age fit for pleasure you exert yourself as a monk.' The ascetic replied, 'I am without a protector, Oh king, there is nobody to protect me, I know no friend nor any one to have sympathy with me.' Then the king laughed and said, 'How should there be nobody to protect one so accomplished as you are? I am the protector
Ulturüdhyayana, Xix.
