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590
The Unknown Pilgrims
Dākhi: "If it is your duty to do so, use the risle. I have no fear of
death, one must die some day. It's all the same, whether I die today from a gunshot or tomorrow from some illness. It is a great thing to die for one's ideal."
The formative years with Sadhvi Suvarna 39
After the dikṣā, the young Sādhvi Vicakṣaṇa became a disciple of Sādhvi Jatana Sri. Her two first căturmăsyas were spent in Rājasthāna, at Badalū and at Jayapura where she gave evidence of her capacity for study. Then, to her great joy, she was summoned to Dilli to the side of the pravartini, Sadhvi Suvarana. She stayed there until the latter's Great Departure, that is to say, about seven years. These years of training were thus passed under the direction of a remarkable guruņi. Sādhvi Suvarana continued in the same line as Sādhvi Punya. She inherited all that the great pioneer had brought into being and was able to discern wisely how, at one and the same time, both to consolidate and deepen the inheritance and also to make further advances. She attached prime importance to dhyāna, svādhyāya and adhyayana. She was herself the example and also the inspiration of her disciples. For her, dhyāna did not consist solely in a technique that one followed for a limited time; dhyāna was, as it were, the breathing of her whole being. Her depth of contemplation, people say, was most striking. She habitually remained for six to seven hours in deep concentration, in which japa alternated with long moments of silence. Whoever her interlocutor might be, she brooked no idle talk. During the last years of her life, her concentration intensified and she was used to remain thus silent and absorbed for about twelve hours. Her favourite, because very short, mantra was arham (arhat).
Thanks to her openness of spirit she was able, even in her own day, to impart fresh impetus to the sādhvis' studies, as being a necessary aid to svādhyāya. She laid great stress on more thorough study of the Agamas; during the life-time of Sādhvi Punya, she had already obtained permission from this latter for pandits to instruct the sadhvis, which thing until then had never taken place. In her far-sighted way, she reckoned that times were changing. From the turn of the century
39 Ibid., ch. 6.
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