Spiritual Awakening and other Essays

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 96

ownership.39 .39 To take the possession of property at the death of one's own kinsman is justified, but, when he is alive, his sanction is required to sustain the householder's vow of Asteya.40
Nature of Abrahma : - The copulation arising from sexual passion is Abrahma. This is Himsā in two ways.41 In the first place, many living beings are deprived of their vitalities in the vagina in the sexual act, just as a hot rod of iron, when it is introduced in a tube filled with sesamum seed, burns them up.42 Secondly, psychical life is affected because of the emergence of sexual passion, and so also the material prāņas are affected owing to the lethargic condition consequent upon coition.4
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Brahmacaryāṇuvrata : The householder cannot relinquish copulation as such. Hence he should abstain himself from the sexual and lustful contacts with all other women except his nuptial partner. This is Brahmacaryāņu vrata or gross form of the vow of Brahmacarya. In view of Vasunandi, the householder following this vow should not succumb to the unnatural ways of sexual satisfaction like masturbation, sodomy and the like and should not copulate even with one's own wife on the two pious days (Aştami and Caturdásī) of each fortnight.45 Samantabhadra pronounces Brahmcaryāṇuvrata as renouncing lustful contacts with another man's wife, and as seeking contentment in one's own wife.46 Such an observer of vow neither enjoys another man's wife, nor instigates another person to do so.47 Somadeva enunciates Brahmacaryāṇuvrata as conceiving all women or concubines as one's mother, sister or daughter with the exception of one's own wife.48 "Wine, meat, gambling, music with song and dance, personal decoration, intoxication, libertines and
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