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Sugandha: Sweet Fragrance
583
Fired by this same zeal which took in all the aspects of asceticism, Sādhvi Punya attached also great importance to tapas, the means of personal purification. Her example and her teaching captivated the sādhvis, śrāvakas and śrāvikās wherever she went. We know that the căturmāsya is the favourable period for fasting and the other forms of tapas. The biography abounds in details concerning the fasts undertaken by Sadhvi Punya and her disciples during each căturmāsya. Tapas is the fire which burns, destroys, purifies. Sadhvi Punya, thanks to her regular fasts, was considered to have attained a high degree of purification. Because she was herself free from attachments, she was available to all. Her ātman, fully awakened because fully purified, was extremely sensitive to persons and situations; she was able to give counsel and direction with remarkable wisdom.
At Jayapura, at the age of sixty-two, when her vital breath was diminishing, Sadhvi Punya, fully lucid in mind, blessed her disciples and then addressed to them once again a few words: she exhorted them to maintain among themselves a sisterly understanding, not to allow themselves to sink into indifference in the course of their earthly pilgrimage, to persevere in renunciation, to put themselves at the service of the aged sādhvis and to give to Sadhvi Suvarna, their new pravartini, the same filial obcdience that they had had towards herself. She asked pardon from all with all her heart, if certain of her words had perhaps appeared harsh, or if her manner had offended them.29 Two days later, while preparing for the Great Departure by a total fast, her ātman left this world.
Sādhvi Sajjana avows, at the end of the biography, that she feels little satisfied with what she has attempted to write, to pass on to others. How to communicate the message of so holy, deep and radiant a life? Then, to fill in the gaps and make up for deficiencies, she brings together, in one final chapter, as in a shining cluster of rays, the outstanding qualities of Sādhvi Punya: docility, deference towards the elders and to authority; a simplicity totally free from pride which enabled her to exercise her functions as pravartini with complete
29 Ibid., pp. 407-409.
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