Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

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in the beginning, very cruel in course of time, in the end the objects of the senses deceive everybody, like the words of a rogue. Unions of all things in the womb of samsāra suffer separation finally, just as high places fall in the end. Life, money, and youth of creatures in this samsāra disappear very quickly, as if in rivalry with each other. In the four conditions of existence (gati) in samsāra, there is not a particle of pleasure, fike sweet water in a desert. For instance, whence is there any happiness to hell-inhabitants who are tormented alternately by the fault of the place and by the demons ? Whence is there any happiness to animals tormented in numerous ways by cold winds, heat, water, slaughter, captivity, hunger, etc.? Whence is there any happiness to humans nursed by discomforts caused by dwelling in the womb, birth, disease, old age, poverty, and death? There is not the least happiness even to gods because of the unhappiness produced by jealousy of each other, anger, quarreling, and falling from heaven. Nevertheless, again and again men creep toward samsāra from ignorance, like water trickling to a low place.
Therefore, you who are capable of emancipation, possessing understanding, do not nourish samsāra with this birth of yours, like a serpent with milk. After considering the many kinds of pain that arise from living in samsāra, struggle with your whole soul for moksa you who have discernment. In mokşa, contrary to samsāra, creatures certainly do not suffer pain arising from being in embryo, similar to the pain of hell. Pain arising from birth, resembling the pain of hell-inhabitants being dragged out of a jar, also is not produced in mokşa. Mental anxieties and diseases like arrows, scattered inside and out, the cause of pain, do not exist there. In it there is never old age, the advance messenger of Kţtānta, the thief of the wealth of splendor, the mother of dependence. There