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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
common people. Mahavira delivered his last sermon on good and bad acts. their corresponding impressions and the resultant fruits.
The Liberation of Mahavira
Three and a half months of Mahavira's stay in the office-room of King Hastipala's revenue clerks passed. Mahavira's death was fast approaching and the citizens of Pavapuri got to know this. There was sorrow, gloom and grief in every house.
The people were distressed. They wondered when they would have the opportunity to see the divine form of Tirthankara Mahavira again. They felt that they would be deprived of Mahavira's benevolent speech. The learned saints advised others to remain calm and unagitated in both pleasant and unpleasant circumstances. They knew that by discarding his body Tirthankara Mahavira would attain liberation. Yet they themselves could not pacify their own hearts. Even the gods were sorrowful. The learned saints and gods managed to compose themselves and started the funeral preparations. They blew their conches. Having made all arrangements for the funeral, Indra, the lord of the gods, who had arrived there to serve and worship the venerable Mahavira, became very distressed at the thought of Mahavira's death. He approached Mahavira and said, "O venerable Mahavira, your conception, birth, initiation and omniscience occurred in the Hastottara constellation. At present Bhashma planet is passing through the constellation which marks the time of your death. This period is inauspicious. It will be better if you postpone the event of your death. You can do that because you are omniscient and omnipotent." Indra thought to himself : "Once the event of death is postponed, the battle is won. Later on, I shall see to it that Mahavira lives for some more years. There is a belief that one who survives a critical moment, lives for a hundred years."
Tirthankara Mahavira replied, “O Indra, you make such comments because of your attachment to my body. You forget the universal rule that a life-span can never be lengthened. Neither a tirthankara nor anybody else can lengthen his or her life-span by even a fraction."
In his last sermon which lasted for forty-eight hours, Tirthankara Mahavira expounded in fifty-five sections (Adhyay) the consequences of auspicious karmas and in other fifty-five sections (Adhyay) the consequences of inauspicious karmas. While expounding the thirty-seventh stanza entitled
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