PS: Please don’t take it personally if you are follower of Jainism or of Brahmana varna.
One specific period of last 5000 years, during when even Buddha and Mahavira’s teaching was diluted, I call that period निवृत्ति काल , time period when society considered तमस as सत्व and stopped performing daily rituals. Complete negation of राजस & सत्व. Intense तमस.
Read this Chapter 12 of Uttaradhyayana Sutra to realize what I am trying to convey.
I will not pass on any conclusions. Just imagine the impact of literal words on followers following book religiously.
I wondered, was it need of the hour then? Why such conversations took place? Or our Sanatan-dharma aligned पंथ(s) scriptures were doctored? I am no authority so cannot comment.
What I feel is, it is comparison of Apple(प्रवृति) with Orange(निवृति). Both are needed.
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“The value of penance has become visible, birth appears of no value! Look at the holy Harikēśa, the son of a Śvapāka, whose power is so great.” (37)
“O Brāhmaṇas, why do you tend the fire, and seek external purity by water? The clever ones say that external purity which you seek for, is not the right thing. (38)
“You (use) Kuśa-grass, sacrificial poles, straw and wood, you touch water in the evening and in the morning; thereby you injure living beings, and in your ignorance you commit sins again and again.” (39)
“How should we sacrifice, O monk, and how avoid sinful actions? Tell us, ascetic, whom the Yakṣas hold in honour, what do the clever ones declare to be the right method of sacrificing?” (40)
“Doing no injury to living beings of the six orders, abstaining from lying and from taking what is not freely given, renouncing property, women, pride, and deceit, men should live under self-restraint. (41)
“He who is well protected by the five Saṃvaras8 and is not attached to this life, who abandons his body,9 who is pure and does not care for his body, wins the great victory, the best of offerings.” (42)
“Where is your fire, your fireplace, your sacrificial ladle? where the dried cowdung (used as fuel)? Without these things, what kind of priests can the monks be? What oblations do you offer to the fire? (43)
“Penance is my fire; life my fireplace; right exertion is my sacrificial ladle; the body the dried cowdung; Karman is my fuel; self-control, right exertion, and tranquillity are the oblations, praised by the sages, which I offer.” (44)
“Where is your pond, and where the holy bathing-place? how do you make your ablutions or get rid of impurity? Tell us, O restrained monk whom the Yakṣas hold in honour; we desire to learn it from you.” (45)
“The Law is my pond, celibacy my holy bathing-place, which is not turbid, and throughout clear for the soul;10 there I make ablutions; pure, clean, and thoroughly cooled I get rid of hatred11 (or impurity). (46)
“The clever ones have discovered such bathing, it is the great bath praised by the seers, in which the great seers bathe, and, pure and clean, they obtain the highest place.” (47)
Thus I say.
References
उत्तराध्ययन सूत्र
The Uttarādhyayana Sūtra
From the
Jaina Sutras
(Sacred Books of the East vol. 45)
http://www.universaltheosophy.com/sacred-texts/uttaradhyayana-sutra/
