Book Title: Story Book
Author(s): Shrimad Rajchandra, Dinubhai M Patel
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram

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Page 47
________________ Mokshmala - Lesson-29. Protection of all living beings part-1 spread far and wide for a long period. With this object in view, he put a Charmaratna or a hide-jewel in the sea on which his large army was supported. It is said that one thousand Deities served this Charmaratan, one of whom thought as to when would he be free from that servitude and so he thought while serving Charmaratana, he should meet his wife and with this idea uppermost in his mind this deity went away, and other deities similarly followed the first one and in the end as there was no controller of Charmaratna, it was drowned and with its drowning King Subhum with all his army also died by drowning. King Subhum with his ambition to command more lands dipped in sins went to seventh hell, the direst of all pain giving hells named Tamatamaprabha. See ! The commander of six continents King Subhum could not enjoy and in a greed of getting more and more possessions died with all his soldiers. If this is the miserable end of a King of Kings then what to talk of ordinary mortals ? Thus greed or extreme possessiveness is the root cause of many sins. It can be called the father of sins. Its nature is to obstruct eleven vows. Therefore one who works for the uplift of his own soul, should at all cost abandon greed and put a limit to his possessions. In short one should live with the satisfaction of his minimum needs. LESSON-29. PROTECTION OF ALL LIVING BEING -Part-1 No religion is comparable to Daya-compassion. Compassion is the very body of a religion. Where there is no compassion, there is no religion at all. There are such harmful religions in the world who say that there is no sin to kill a living being; at the most protect human life. Followers of such religious views are fanatical (Zhanuni) and blinded by their pride do not know even an iota of compassion. If they think minutely, setting aside their religious pride, they can easily realise that even killing a small germ is greatly sinful. As one loves one's self, similarly every living being loves its own self. Such followers should ask themselves as to how much unlimited karma they incur to their own soul by fearlessly and carelessly killing innumerable animals and germs only for a slight gain or a mere habit ? Not having any root of intelligence in them, they are not able to think this way at all, really they have trained themselves as incapable of such a line of thinking as to what is real compassion and they remain steeped in incuring more and more violence or life killing and hurting. In Vedas and other books written by great preceptors of Vaishnavism, we do not find any thought about subtle compassion, still they, the followers of Vedas and Vaishnavas are much better than those not understanding at all the nature of real compassion. These Vedic followers have much thought of saving and protecting animals and birds and even beasts. But as compared with these people, we the followers of Bhagawan Mahavir are much more fortunate to learn real essence of religion that even hurting a small petal of flower is also sinful and as such we are quite free from performing all sacrifices involving killing or hurting any living being. We try our best to save all lives. We do not intentionally harm or like to injure or to take life of any living being. We are free from eating prohibited foods; we are totally vegetarians. In our time the observance of compassion or non-violence in thought, word and deed has much been followed by us because of the strength of Yogic acquisition of Bhagawan Mahavir, the son of a great King Siddhartha. His noble behaviour and spotlessly clean pure and perfect non-violent living has supported the Jain religion and its followers leading to the maximum 44

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