Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

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

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taining pain within the immediate pleasure, is served, it increases excessively like a skin disease that is scratched. This love is a messenger from hell; love is an ocean of sin ; love is the bulb of the creeper of calamity; love is the stream for the tree of evil. People, overcome by love as if by wine, wander off the path of good conduct, and fall into the pit of existence. Love gains an entrance and digs like a rat into wealth, dharma, and emancipation like the houses of householders. Women, like poisonous creepers, through the sight, touch, and enjoyment of them, serve only for intense confusion. Maidens are willingly nets of the hunter, Love, and a source of evil to men who are like deer. The ones who are friends in pleasure are friends only for eating and drinking, since they do not consider the Master's good in the next world. These low profligates, devoted only to their own advantage, confuse their own Master, alas! by stories about women and talk about singing, dancing, and pleasure. How could there be prosperity to well-born people from evil association ? Does a plaintain tree thrive near a jujube tree? Therefore, O Lord of my family, please do not become confused. You are wise. Leave devotion to sin. Put your mind on dharma. What good is a man without dharma, like a tree without shade, like a pool without water, like a flower without scent, like an elephant without tusks, like a figure without grace, like a kingdom without a minister, like a shrine without a god, like a night without a moon, like an ascetic without good conduct, like an army without weapons, like a face deprived of eyes ?
Even a cakravartin, if without dharma, experiences that birth in which the acquisition of bad food seems like a kingdom. Even one who is born in a great family, if he is deprived of acquiring dharma, will in his next birth eat food left by others, like a dog. Even a Brahman, deficient in dharma, always having