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DISCOURSE 68
263
Your family comprises your parents, your wife, your servants and your friends and relatives, who seek your protection. You have to take care of your sons, who are not earning members. Some other non-Jain Shastras say that a man has to take care of his parents, his wife and his children even by taking recourse to foul means if necessary.
वृद्धौ च मातापितरौ सती भार्या सुतान् शिशुन् ।
अप्यकर्मशतं कृत्वा भर्तव्यान् मनुरब्रवीत् ॥ (Manu says that a man should take care of his old parents, noble wife and children who cannot support themselves, even by taking recourse to foul means if it is inevitable.)
If one has enough wealth, one must take care of others also. You must take care of such people as your friends who are poor, your sisters who are childless and helpless, your old relatives and men of noble birth, who are in distress. If you do not have the capacity of taking care of all these kinds of people, you must, as a matter of duty, take care of your parents, wife and children.
Manu has laid a great emphasis on this point. He says that if a man cannot take care of his family by just, moral and honest means then he may take recourse to some foul means of earning money to be able to take care of his family. It is absolutely necessary to shoulder the responsibility of taking care of your family.
THE DUTIES OF THE AFFLUENT PEOPLE
From the Audience: If the head of the family is suffering from some disease which incapacitates him and if there is no earning member in the family what can be done ?
Maharajashri : When a family is in such a condition, it is the supreme duty of well-to-do friends or the fellow-members of their faith to extend financial aid to that family. It is the supreme duty of affluent people to give protection to such families as are in distress. If each wealthy man takes care of one such family, the problem gets easily solved.
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