Acharya Tulsi
Paryushan Parva is a great Jain festival. The coming of this festival marks the arrival of joy and enthusiasm. If the mind is not filled with delight on this occasion, it is as if the sun has risen but there is no light. It is possible that the sun mortgages its light, but a religious festival and joy are inseparably connected. Without joy, there is no celebration of the festival. By performing worship on this occasion, all the knots of the mind are loosened. The peace and joy which follow the unloosening of the knots or the extrication of a thorn create an atmosphere of elation all rounds.
Paryushan Parva is an extraordinary festival. It is connected with the purity of the soul. It provides an occasion for opening the windows, ventilators and doors of the mind. The man, who succeeds in opening them, is blessed with a light which fills his life with splendour. This light resides within man. It calls upon him to turn inwards, makes him extroversive and sense to acquaint him with himself.
Paryushan Parva provides an occasion for extinguishing disturbing emotions. If the mind is filled with distress on account anything, individual, or situation, this festival helps to remove it. There can be no worship in a state of agitation. All agitation symbolizes extraversion. An introvert, even when confronted with a highly provocative situation, keeps cool. The ebullition of boiling milk is calmed by the sprinkling of water. Similarly,self-contemplation can still the mind's unrest. Only he can contemplate himself, who is simple and straightforward. In the absence of simplicity and straightforwardness, all talk of looking within becomes a mockery of itself.
Paryushan Parva is a festival of amity. He who yokes I0 the chariot of friendship horses of self-interest, can never truly perform the rites of worship. A friendly relationship is utterly without guile; such a relationship is above all other relationships. It is relationship with a living being. Contemporaneity, identical ideas, the parity of social status, and the similarity of conduct offer only a partial view of friendship, dividing it into disparate parts, whereas this relationship is an indivisible whole. Friendship towards all living beings of the world means the total ending of malice and ill-will. To achieve this great ideal, a subtle analysis of friendship is necessary. To maintain the spirit of friendship towards all continuously for one year and then to take the pledge of friendship for all living beings on the occasion of ‘Sanvatsri’, the Annual Festival, is in itself a unique rite.
Paryushan Parva is not just an occasion for merry-making, but a great and significant festival. That is why it is celebrated for eight days together. There is a precise way of celebrating it. To reduce attachment and pride, to engage in meditation and study, to practise recitation of the deity‘s name and Anupreksha meditation, to exercise control over eating and speaking, to move from the gross to the subtle, to transcend the merely physical and proceed in the direction of the soul, to purify the body and the soul through complete fasting, to examine oneself thoroughly in the mirror of self-contemplation to operate upon anything found undesirable in the inmost recesses of the heart and then to experience total health—in that sense Paryushan Parva is a festival of health and sanity. What is required is that we become healthy and self-dependent ourselves and inspire others also to become healthy and self-dependent.
