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SAMBHAVAJINACARITRA
229
Thus throughout the entire famine the King gave food, etc., in a fitting manner, to the entire congregation. By performing service and showing attention to the whole congregation the King acquired the body-making karma of a Tirthankara.
One day he was seated on the palace-roof, and he saw a cloud raised in the sky like an umbrella for the earth. It filled the sky completely like a robe made of indigocolor cloth with an ornament of forked lightning for the sky. In the meantime a violent wind arose, shaking trees from their roots as well as all the Pātāla-vessels. By this great wind the great cloud was lifted and led hither and thither, like the fluff of the arka. In a moment the cloud became visible, and in a moment it disappeared. As he observed that, the wise king thought:
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Just as that cloud appeared and disappeared while people looked on, everything else in worldly existence is known to be like it. Just so, whether one who of his own accord is talking, singing, dancing, laughing, gambling, meditating on various means of acquiring wealth, walking, standing, lying down, seated in a conveyance, angry or playing, at home or outside, is suddenly bitten by a serpent appointed by fate, is killed by a sharp stroke of lightning that has fallen, or is crushed by a rutting elephant with its tusks, or is injured by the breaking of an old wall, etc. that has fallen down, or is devoured by a tiger lean-bellied from hunger, or is attacked by a disease causing a change for the worse and difficult to cure, or is struck down suddenly by a wild horse or something like that, or is killed by an enemy, thief, etc. with a dagger, etc., or is burned by the blazing fire of a lamp, or is swept away by the velocity of a river-flood from heavy rain, etc., or has his body penetrated by an acute affection of the windy humor, or he is embraced by the phlegmatic humor which has dried up the heat of the whole body, or torn by a violent biliousattack, or is suddenly overcome by a coughing-fit, or is consumed by a skin-disease, or is seized by consumption,
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