Tirthankar Mahavir and His Sarvodaya Tirth

Author(s): Hukamchand Bharilla, K C Lalwani
Publisher: Kundkund Kahan Digambar Jain Trust

Page 43

BHAGAVAN MAHAVIRA PRESENT LIFE
If the teachings of Bhagavan Mahavira were profound, serious and worthy of acceptance, his present life was equally simple, flat and unostentatious, and diversity had no place in it His present life was not full of events and any search of his personality in events would be futile This was so because there was hardly any worldly event which did not occur in his past lives
Events throw light only on one part of life. To look for life in events is virtually to divide life into parts. The personality of Bhagavan Mahavira is undivided and indivisible; it cannot be divided into parts To divide his personality into events is virtually to cripple it. In a mirror which is unbroken, the reflection of an object is also large and unbroken, but when the mirror is broken, the reflection becomes many and small, and their meaning gets lost The personality of Bhagavan Mahavira was as wide as the sky and as deep as the ocean If this vast personality is linked up with the events of his childhood, it does not get magnified, but loses a lot
He was a hero, a great hero, a very great hero in the field of religion, not in any battle field And the two are widely apart. You conquer your enemy in a battle field but what you conquer in a religious field is enmity In a battle field you win victory over others, in a religious field you win victory over yourself. In a battle field you kill others, but in a religious field you kill your own perversions.
In Mahavira's heroism, there was no running about, no jostling and jumping, no killing, no lamenting, it was non-ending eternal peace In his personality, it was not the vastness of treasure but that of knowledge and detachment that was available in abundance
Although, in brief, the story of his life is only this much that during the first thirty years he spent his life in the midst of