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Individual and Society in Jainism
: 105
pigeon or a deer or a cow in order to flatter one's gluttonous appetites, when a dish of well-dressed vegetables would have served the same purpose just as well, if not better.
The appeasement of all these, and others of our social instincts, by avoiding the harming of, and trying to benefit fellow creatures, is, after all, in itself a valuable personal gain.
In addition to avoiding bad and securing good Karma, and to appeasing its innate social instincts, the individual gains, by its nonegotistic attitude, a third advantage, which is perhaps the most valuable of all : it consists in the lasting and genuine bliss, that only renunciation, can give.
For what is the good of trying to gratify all one's wishes, all one's passions, all one's ambitions? It the advantage gained thereby, indeed worth so much hankering, so much worrying, and so much harm brought about? No, says the sage.
The happiness we crave for is transient like a dream, like a cloud, like beauty. It leaves the bitterness of its absence behind, as soon as it is passed, and it leaves behind, like a dose of opium, the ardent craving for more. It is just so as the Uttarādhyayana Sutra states (IX, 48):
suvaņņarūppassa u pavvayā bhave siyā hu kelāsasamā asaṁkhayal naranna luddhasma na tehim kinci icchâhsu āgāsasamā aṇamtiyall
"Let there be mountains of gold and silver, let them be as high as the Kailāśa, and let there be innumerable ones of them : still to man in his greediness all this will mean nothing. For desire is boundless like space.”
So what is the good of a drop of nectar, when you are thirsty for a cup-ful? The cup-ful being denied to you, why bother about the drop? Shake off that foolish wish and forget it.
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