Acharya Mahaprajna
Lord Mahavira was asked:
"What is achieved by devotion to religion? What is the result?"
Lord Mahavira said:
"Devotion to religion produces non-curiosity; all curiosity comes to an end."
With the awakening of faith in religion, all inquisitiveness regarding material vibrations vanishes. With the ending of this inquisitiveness, one starts experiencing the vibrations of spirituality.
Dharma BhavanaDharma means character and the means by which an individual gets established in himself. Dharma has been variously called as vitality, an island, establishment and salvation. Once an individual comes to know what religion is, is rightly acquainted with it, then everything becomes religion for him.
In my view, dharma may be defined as follows:
- Radiance in our life which illuminates our senses, mind and intellect, fills them with light.
- Which illumines the darksome layers of our mental culture.
- Which purifies our senses, intellect and mind.
- Which makes our senses, intellect and mind powerful.
Nobody wants to live in the cave of darkness, nobody wants to remain ignorant and no powerful person wants to lose his vitality. All persons want to be enlightened, wise and strong.
To purify the past, to empty the treasure of the past - that is religion. That is the result or the objective of meditation. To avoid the consequences of past actions, is not the aim of religion. It is however possible that a person starts the worship of religion today, becomes so very alive to the past, to past accumulation, that he is able to influence it. He certainly creates a hurdle in the unfolding of the conditioning of the past. The worship of religion means to be fully awake in the present. The person who is fully awake in the present builds up a line of device and is thus able to avoid the results of past actions. The body keeps itself from disease-not because of drugs, but due to its own defence-mechanism. There is a defence mechanism in our body which is always fighting the germs of disease. The hole body is full of the germs of disease. It is in the body that these germs are being nourished and getting stronger. How can a man keep healthy under such conditions? There are germs of disease in our body, yet we keep healthy because of the power of resistance in our body. That is the antibody. This antibody saves us from disease, kills the disease-germs. But for this power of resistance and the action of the antibody, a man would be permanently confined to bed. We practise meditation. We worship religion. It means that we are creating a counter-conditioning to oppose the earlier conditioning of our mind. The accumulation of past karmas which influences our fate, the conditioning that is influencing our present, we create against it a line of defence which saves us from its onslaught. This is the result of religion and meditation. We often ignore this fact when we wonder why misfortune should ever befall a religious person. After all, there is nothing very special about a religious person. One who practises meditation does not hail from an altogether different world. Such a person also is tied to the past. Who knows what things he did in the past? What crimes he committed? What obstacles he put in the path of others? Now when he encounters hurdles in his path, he says, "Well, I wanted to do good but this interruption has come" But why do you not look at your past? How many impediments you created for others? Now you are reaping what you sowed.
A man wants to do something good. A thousand obstacles appear. When one does evil, one attracts little opposition. A whole lot would gather to oppose a good reform. That is the way of the world.
