Tirthankar Mahavir and His Sarvodaya Tirth

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

Page 75

SARVODAYA TIRTHA
gives happiness and peace to the soul, so the dharma propounded by Mahavira is not merely a dharma, but the dharma of the soul, which is a road to liberation, a means to end misery. The nature of objects spread over three time periods is already there. What is to gain or lose in these? These have simply to be known and understood But the soul veiled in ignorance has not understood these, never paid any heed to these, never felt these.
It is so only one duty to see the nature of this self On having seen it and with its help the favourable category type of dharma that emerges is the coveted dharma and this has to be attained. It is like the three jewels. The nature of the soul is primarily the dharma of the soul, and to see it face to face, to know it, to enter into it, to be rooted in it, to get mixed up with it, is the favourable category of dharma which is also called right knowledge, right faith and right conduct, the religion of triple jewels, the road to liberation
Acarya Umasvati writes in his monumental work Tattvārtha Sūtra: samyagdarśanajnānacāritrāņi mokşamārga, ie., right faith, right knowledge and right conduct, these three together are the road to liberation.
Declaring this to be the dharma, Acarya Samantabhadra wrote:
saddrstinānabrttānı dharmam dharmesvarā biduh yadiyapratyanikānı bhavanti bhavapadhatihts
The Tirthankara who is the Lord of the dharma has said, "Right faith, right knowledge and right conduct are religion, and reverse to them, wrong faith, wrong knowledge and wrong conduct, which augment the distress of the worldly life are adharma”
Faith, knowledge and conduct are the qualities of the soul. Their favourable fructification is respectively right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. When favourable to the self,
15 Ratnakaranda Sravakācāra, Sloka, 3