Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

Page 292

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weapons of strategies which do not cause injury to those using them). Service must be paid to dharma, sole protector, so that the abode of immortal delight may be easily gained. This mischievous Sri of sovereignty is the cause of endless injury from the occurrence of many births, as great pride is her only fruit. Moreover, the greed, which was not satisfied by the delights of heaven in your former births-how can it be satisfied by mortal pleasures, like the thirst of the charcoalburner ?
Story of the charcoal-burner (835-842) A certain charcoal-burner took a skin filled with water and went to make coals in a forest where the water was dried up. Overcome by a thirst produced by the heat of the coal-fire and increased by the midday sun, he drank all the water in the skin. . His thirst unsatisfied by that, he went to sleep; and in a dream he went home and drank up all the water of the waterjars, pitchers, and earthen water-jugs. His thirst, like an oil-fire, unsatisfied by their water, he drank and drank, and dried up the tanks, wells, and pools. Thirsty just the same, be drank up the rivers and the oceans, but his thirst was not quenched, like the pain of hellinhabitants. Then, going to a well in the desert, he tied together a bunch of kuśa-grass with cord and threw it into the water. What does a man in distress not do? He squeezed the bunch of grass, whose water had dripped back into the well because of the distance of the water, like a beggar squeezing sticky cloth, 880 and drank. The thirst which had not been satisfied with the ocean, etc., could not be satisfied with the water from the bunch of grass. In the same way, can your greed unsatisfied by the pleasures of heaven, be
880 841. I.e., most of the water had dripped out of the grass while it was being pulled up. Snehaprota seems to refer to a cloth that had contained sweetmeats or some food.
A
.