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earth) deep in his meditation, Kamath who was a celestial being
(Deva) was passing by from above, he really did not want to
look down but even then he happened to see Lord Parshvanath.
He started to trouble the Lord by throwing balls of fire on Him,
he hurled big stones and created a torrential rainfall on the Lord,
he did everything he could to create havoc on the Lord. At that
time Dharnendra, another celestial deva, upon whom the Lord
Parshvanath had bestowed blessings in the previous life, gained
knowledge of Kamath’s malicious acts towards the Lord
through his divine powers of clairvoyance (avadhignan). He
came down to earth and turned into a shield of canopy over the
Lord’s head to protect him. The celestial goddesses also created
a huge lotus flower to lift the Lord out of the rising floods.
Despite all this, the Lord remained in his meditation; He did not
have the slightest of abhorrence towards his tormentor Kamath
or the slightest attachment towards Dharnendra, the goddesses
who protected Him. Such was his state of non-attachment
(vitaragata) and this you can see openly in his deity;
tremendous non-attachment. For the darshan of vitaragata
amongst the twenty-four tirthankaras, the idol of Lord Parshvanath
displays vitaragata.
Today people have hardly anything to suffer and yet they
complain so much. If you take all the suffering of their entire life,
it is not equivalent to even one day of suffering of a spiritually
elevated being and yet people go around complaining.
‘We’ constantly see in our Gnan that everyone in the
world is bound through vengeance and that is why their faces
look so miserable. Vengeance causes clash and conflicts. If you
were to have even the slightest understanding of what Lord
Parshvanath stands for, seeds of vitaragata will begin to sprout
within you, but alas, how is anyone to attain such an
understanding? People refer to the vitarag Lords as ‘Lord
Parshvanath; the one with the snakes over his head’ or ‘Lord
Mahavir; the one with the lion.’ They are able to distinguish the