YJA Convention 1994 07 Chicago IL First

Author(s): Young Jains of America (YJA)
Publisher: Young Jains of America YJA USA

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fountain of blood spurted from my neck and my entire body was filled with pain. Now there was no other alternative, but to pray for instant death. I only wished they would kill me with one blow and not prolong my agony. But no, I was destined to suffer more because the knife went only half way through my neck. Death was still far away and every moment of this torture dragged on like an year. Cursing my faith and remembering God, I continued praying and waiting for death.
Darkness gradually began to descend before my eyes and I started losing consciousness. Perhaps breathing had also stopped. It seems as if I were dead and messengers of death were carrying me to the sky. But wait, what is that? My body still lay in that slaughter-house and now two persons were pulling my hide away from the flesh and fat below the hide. They threw my hide one side and flesh on the other. After some time, a person purchased my flesh and took it to the kitchen of a hotel. There a person sliced my whole flesh into small pieces. Probably all these tortures were too little for this God-like man, because it is his hereditary habit to rub salt on the wounds and this was still due. Why should they live it for me? So after changing my meat to pulp he not only added salt and chillies, but fried me on a fire too, and thus gave ample evidence of his barbarity. I was wondering, "What next?" when I saw another person arranging my meat in a plate and taking it out of the kitchen into a big decorated room where a young couple was sitting. As soon as the plate was laid before the couple, the male among them started eating my meat with a flourish of delight. But the female sitting opposite him appeared to dislike eating my meat and it seemed that she was just giving company to her husband.
By now, I had reached the court of Dharmaraj and was standing in the queue of many souls. The loud voice of Chitragupta, who was narrating the account of good and bad deeds of everybody, attracted my attention. On my turn, Chitragupta revealed that in my previous birth I had feasted on the flesh of a goat. As
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a consequence of that, I had to be born as a goat and had to offer my meat for others. He also revealed that the persons I had seen in the hotel eating my flesh were my own loving children of my previous birth, who I had loved so much that for their sake I had staked everything in life. "Now that they are eating your meat in their present birth, they will have to suffer similar punishment for this in their next birth". Hearing this my soul trembled. How could I like my progeny to suffer the same tortures as had been inflicted on me? I therefore requested Dharmarajji to forgive all of them because I too, had forgiven them and wanted no revenge of any kind. Dharmarajji took pity on me and graciously ordered that, since as a goat I had eaten only leaves and creepers, and had done no one any harm, and had forgiven everyone, I should be reborn next as a man. My soul was thus sent to earth to take the human life.
Entering into my next reincarnation, I vowed that now I would behave with the utmost rectitude and be a votary of truth and nonviolence. Far from killing any bird or animal or eating its flesh, I would desist from causing the least pain to any living being. With these thoughts, I entered the womb of my new mother.
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Illusion in this world
Who hath known this knows the Real. All the pleasures of this body, Riches and youth
ï ï
Are but transient
Like the floating clouds.
All are transitory
Like the decomposing frame of an ox. Says Cidananda,
Have no affection for anything Right preceptor has shown the way.
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By Cidananda
。。