Tirthankar Mahavir and His Sarvodaya Tirth

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

Page 97

SARVODAYA TIRTHA
Guru—the Spiritual Master
Those people who have become sublime by dint of right knowledge, faith and conduct have been called Gurus. They may be the Acarya who is the head of the organisation, the preceptors and the monks. A Guru is also said to be one who is devoid of hankering for objects of senses, who is free from endeavour and accumulation, and who is always absorbed in study, meditation and penance.70
On the characteristic of the monks, Pandit Todarmal writes:
"A monk is one who having been indifferent and giving up all accumulation accepts the life of a mendicant, feels his self through purification of instrument, who has no mine-ness in other things, but thinks the qualities of soul only to be his own, who has no mineness in other attitudes, who knows through knowledge other objects and their nature, but who neither has attachment nor greed for these considering them to be evils, who neither feels happiness or misery in diverse states of body or in change in environment, and is always the same in his external behaviour and does not stretch it, who does not extend his effort, who remains indifferent and calm, who if attacked with mild attachment carefully weeds it out, who has wiped clean even the last trace of violence because he is never disturbed by passions, who on attaining such a state becomes nude with a calm posture, who has stopped taking care of the body, who lives in forest-strips, who fulfils 28 mūlagunas with meticulous care, who bears 22 hardships, practises 12 vows, who sometimes enters into trance in an idol-like motionless posture, who at other times indulges in studies and other external activities, and who at still other times move out on a begging mission for the maintenance of the body which is a permitted activity of a monk."71
Ordinarily, even parents and teachers are called guru, but where the subject under consideration is the road to liberation,
69 Bhagavati Aradhana, p 511 70 visayaśāvasarīto nirarambho'parigrahah jnanadhyānataporaktastapasvi sa prašasyate
-Ratnakaranda Sravakācāra, Sloka, 10. 71 Moksamārga Prakasaka, p 3.