The Jain 1988 07

Author(s): Natubhai Shah
Publisher: UK Jain Samaj Europe

Page 79

=Jain
Anything you do with two ends pulling you in opposite directions may give you temporary pleasure, but it does not give you life. You will see the day you are unhappy, you may eat good food, but it will not turn into health. You have burned it up in the oil of worry. The whole process is caught up in fight. A person who is fighting is not free. Always his hands are caught up. Whom are you fighting? Your left hand wants to win over your right hand. You become exhausted.
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On the other approach, you do not fight, you don't make an effort to give up. You choose something better. You transcend. When you go up a staircase and are about to take the sixth step, you don't kick back at the fifth step and say, "Oh, I am leaving the fifth step behind. I am going on to the sixth." When you go onto the sixth step, the fifth naturally goes. You do not fight it; you choose something better.
ANTARATMAN means to find something better. When you find better, good is left behind. When you go to the best better is left. What is the process of turning inward? To see that the same doors which take you out have the power to bring you in. You have not to make two doors: one to go out and another to come in. It is a matter of changing your direction: facing this direction instead of that; turning inside instead of out.
nature of these senses. When you turn inside, you start using your senses to see your inside world. As you see beauty in the sky, you see radiance in meditation. As you hear music outside, so you hear the soundless sound and the inner music within. Your whole approach changes because you are not fighting. You are not impatient either. You know, "It cannot be done overnight. Only I have to grow in my understanding". As you grow in your understanding, your outward approach becomes inward.
PARAMATMAN is the GOAL. It is transcending both sides. There is no outside, no inside. It is "I am in myself. I am in my own light of awareness". The highest soul has reached its own state of peace. There is nothing to get, to win, or to achieve. If we keep our eyes on PARAMATMAN, our attachments, expectations and demands gradually fade away and we will feel that we are there without any fight or flight to experience the state of being which is LIGHT, LOVE AND PEACE. Otherwise, life will be competitive and a constant fight in which we live in turmoil and frustration.
When we change and turn the senses inside, we go from BAHIRATMAN to ANTARATMAN. Eventually all duality ceases. What is felt is inside unity, fulfillment: the transcendent state of PARAMATMAN.
BHAGWAN MAHAVIRA says, "Have SAMYAK DARSHAN! Watch! Don't fight!" Watch the by PUJYA SHREE CHITRABHANUJI
May the sacred stream of amity flow forever in my heart may the Universe prosper, such is my cherished desire.
May may heart sing with ecstasy at the sight of the virtuous And may my life be an offering at their feet.
May my heart bleed at the sight of the wrethed, the cruel and irreligious And may tears of compassion flow from my eyes.
May I always be there to show the path to the pathless wonderers of life. Yet if they should not hearken to me, may I bide in patience
May the spirit of goodwill enter all our hearts
May we all sing the chorus, the immortal song of human concord.