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STORIES OF THE PLOUGHMAN AND OTHERS
247
umbrella and a triple staff. He circumambulated the Lord Jina three times, bowed to him, his hair erect from joy, making the añjali, and recited a hymn of praise with devotion.
Stuti (264-271)193
"I am present in your mind.' With these words presence is hard to obtain. If you are present in my mind, enough of any one else. Having restrained some from anger and favored some from satisfaction, the dull-witted are deceived by enemies devoted to deceit. How can this unequal fruit be obtained from one untranquil? Do not the thought-gem, et cetera bear fruit, though without consciousness? Worship of those freed from passion is the best observance of your teaching. The teaching, carried out, leads to emancipation; not carried out, it leads to worldly existence. Throughout samsara your teaching has the range of being rejected or accepted. The channel of karma must be rejected by all means; the blocking of karma must be accepted. A channel of karma is the source of existence; the blocking of karma is the cause of emancipation.' This is the essence194 of the Arhat's teaching. Anything else is the expansion of it. Countless people, devoted to carrying out teaching to this effect have become emancipated; others are being emancipated somewhere and others will be emancipated likewise. Abandoning misery for the sake of favor,195 by your teaching alone creatures are surely freed from the net of karma."
After hymming the Teacher of the World thus, he sat down in the proper place and heard the Master's sermon, his eyes unwinking like a god's. When Ambaḍa started to Rajagṛha at the end of the sermon, after bowing to the Lord, the Master himself said to him:
193 This is No. 19 in the Vs, p. 233.
194 269. For the use of muşti, cf. IV, n. 58. This passage confirms my interpretation there.
195 271. I.e., describing his miserable state with humility in order to obtain favor.
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