Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 203

182
as before. The Lord acts now to avoid the whirlpool of existence. He is a monk who has acquired freedom from all censurable activity. A man who desires pleasure makes baths, ointments, ornaments, and clothes his own. What use are these to the Master, disgusted with them ? A person who is subject to love accepts maidens. Women are no more than stones to the Master, who has conquered love. He who desires great sovereignty accepts elephants, horses, etc. They are like burned cloth to the Lord, who has sovereignty over self-control. He who commits injury takes fruit, etc., which contains life. The Master gives all creatures fearlessness in regard to life. The Lord of the World takes food, etc., that is free from faults, according to rule, and pure. You, ignorant, do not know that."
They said to the Prince: “The people know only the arts, etc., whatever the Master taught formerly. The Lord did not teach thus; and so we do not know this. Tell us, please, how you knew it.” The Prince explained : “At the sight of the Blessed One, the memory of former births awoke in me, like knowledge at the sight of a book. I wandered with the Master through eight different births in heaven and on earth, like a servant through different villages. In the third preceding birth from this one, the Lord's father, Vajrasena, was a Tirthakịt in the Videha-zone. The Master became an ascetic in his presence, and later I also. From the memory of that birth I knew all this. So now the fruit of the three dreams, mine, my father's, and the merchant Subuddhi's, is plain. I saw a dark Meru and washed it with water; that means that the Master emaciated by penance shone from the fast-breaking with the cane-juice." The King saw the Lord fighting with his enemies; that means that he conquered the trials' because of the approach of fast-breaking at my hands. The merchant Subuddhi saw a thousand-rays which had fallen from the sun-disc. replaced by me; and then the sun shone brilliantly. The