Way of Life Part 1

Author(s): Bhadraguptasuri
Publisher: Vishvakalyan Prakashan Trust Mehsana

Page 159

DISCOURSE 9
149 THE ATTITUDE OF SEARCHING FOR FAULTS IN VITRAG ALSO
If you examine your inner self you will understand whether you love virtues in others or not; and whether you hate virtuous people or whether you admire them. Yes, you must realize that in this world, there is no one who is absolutely faultless. How are you? Are you faultless and absolutely virtuous ? I am not faultless at any rate. If you are so, you please tell me. I would be very happy to hear it. If there is one who is completely faultless and who has only virtues he is a VITRAG. Even if a Vitarag appears here, you would try to search for faults in him also. You have such a strong and powerful tendency to find faults.
YOU MUST DEEM A SIN, A SIN IN CASE YOU HAVE TO COMMIT A SIN :
Supposing other people have faults, do not see the faults. You must see only virtues; you try to see at least one merit in others. Pethad Shah had developed that kind of attitude of seeing merits. He greatly respected Bhim shravak's virtue of celibacy. He gave great value to celibacy. Of course, he was not a celibate person. He was married and he was leading a noble and austere life. He was enjoying sensual pleasures but he did not really like them. He did not think they were acceptable because he was a pious house-holder who had attained the right vision; the right way of looking at things. He had acquired the power of intellectual vision. He used to consider a sin as a sin, and he believed that sin was despicable and that it should be discarded. It is necessary that we should understand that the sins, which we commit are fit to be discarded. The possibility is that even after we realize that sins should be discarded, we cannot discard them. Certain sins are committed even by people who possess intellectual vision but those people view those sins, as fit to be discarded, and they despise those sins. “When can my inner self become strong enough to enable me to discard these sins". This kind of feeling keeps appearing in their minds off and on. Pethad Shah was enjoying sensual delights, but he used to think that those pleasures were sinful;