Thursday, January 14, 2010

Journeying through the Pages of Nine Lives

from now on i have decided to comment on the issues i come across daily through books, television, friends, newspapers and most importantly life.
for instance today i was reading William Dalrymple's book "Nine Lives".
the first story is about a nun .or so to say a mattaji a jain one at that. the short story talks about the jain way of life .
How jains think that in this world of ours we are all running after the wrong things moving around the same circle with nonet displacement.the nun says that greed , sex, attachment , etc weigh down our souls preventing them to fly higher and higher.she says that we should leave all attachment to parents , friends. stating the reason behind to be the fact that it is all temporary .
i think about it deeply and my mind gives me an obvious rebuttal , if parents , love, attachment to a particular thing are temporary then so is life and so is death.Isnt it?
Well as it turns out the wise nun has the answer. it is believed not only by jainism , but also by buddhism and Hinduism that our purpose in life is not to enjoy life king size but rather to get out of this cycle of life and death to do so we have to make our soul pure . And purity is never obtained or taken in, it is attained by sacrifice and removal of all the unnecessary bindings.
If I may , i would like to think of a great example in support of this.
William Dalymple
As you might know there are certain bacteria and arachnids whose eggs are so light that they go higher and higher unaffected by the bindings of gravity into the endless gravity. Me thinks that in such a state the egg is totally free , free from fear of predator , free from hunger for motherly love,free from everything. it might not so much as grow to become a proper arachnid , but what alas! is proper , so long as the soul lives , the soul in this form will reach the enlightment ours need.
In similar comparisons we can say that when our souls are free from the shackles that weigh them down our souls will also rise higher and higher,hence joining those of the 20 tinthankara's of whose last was a prince named Mahavira
i will keep updated you on this journey of a book (which is more of a journey) called Nine Lives