From Diet to Service

Diet
The noble aspirants do not consume food for taste or pleasure; they regulate their diet solely for religious pursuits.

Flavoured Food
Excessively flavoured food is an instant poison for an aspirant.

Own Physicians
Those who take wholesome and healthy food, in lesser quantity, never fall sick and do not need the services of a physician. They are their own physicians.

Night Food Prohibited
Intake of food after sunset is prohibited.

Company
The company of the pious enhances one's wisdom and the company of the wicked distorts one's understanding. Just as water becomes aromatic in contact with fragrant lotus, but tepid and tasteless in contact with fire.

Wise Friend
Knowing righteousness and non-violence in its entirety, the equanimous and restrained aspirant should always seek the company of the wise friend.

The Wicked
The reputation of a noble person gets tarnished in the company of the wicked people just as a fragrant garland becomes worthless when offered to a dead body.

Immodest
A person who is not modest should not be instucted about right conduct; of what use are the ornaments for the person whose hands are muted ?

Meditation
Just as the head is most important to the body and the roots to a tree, meditation is fundamental to all religious practices of a monk.

Samayika (Equanimity)
Samayika is to be devoid of attachment and aversion and to be indifferent to life and death, gain and loss, fortune and misfortune, friend and foe, joy and sorrow.

Fire of Meditation
Just as fire fanned by powerful winds destroys heaps of firewood in no time, so also the fire of meditation destroys heaps of Karmas in a moment.

Fuits of Meditation
A person whose mind is absorbed in meditation is not perturbed by jealousy. dejection and grief, nor by miseries born of passions.

Sons
There are four types of sons : Some are more virtuous than their fathers, some are evenly matched, while some are more worthless than their fathers and some sons are so lacking in character that they bring disgrace to the family.

Meetings
Meetings are of four kinds : With some an encounter may be pleasant but their company may not be good, while with some others an encounter may not be pleasant but their company may be enriching. However, with some the encounter as well as their company are rewarding while with some others the encounter as well as their company are harmful.

Four Types of Philanthropists
Like the clouds, philanthropists are of four kinds—some talk proudly of donating but do not donate, some donate liberally but do not utter a word about it, some donate as well as indulge in self-appraisal while some others neither speak nor donate.

Human Virtues
Simplicity, humility, compassion and serenity—these are the four virtues that enable the soul to acquire human existence.

<font color=#FF1493>Non-Liberatable
A non-liberatable person may study innumerable scriptures but he remains unable to shed his wicked nature. However much milk a snake may drink, it is unable to give up its poisonous nature.

<font color=#FF1493>Secret Sin
Will a person who drinks poison in secrecy not die ? Surely he will die. So also will a person who sins in secrecy not get corrupted ? Surely he will.

<font color=#FF1493>High and Low Caste
Every person has been born several times in high caste as well as in low caste; hence none is either high or low. After knowing this, who will feel proud of taking birth in respectable of high caste ? And who will evince attachment to any particular caste ?

<font color=#FF1493>Persent Moment
The persent moment is important, strive to make it fruitful.

<font color=#FF1493>III-Natured
Just as a diseased bitch is driven away from everwhere, so also the ill-natured, insubordinate and talkative disciple is expelled disgracefully from all places.

<font color=#FF1493>Humiliation
He who scorns others wanders aimlessly in the cycel of births.

<font color=#FF1493>Secrecy
A monk hears many things with his ears and sees many things with his eyes but it is not proper to reveal all such things in public.

<font color=#FF1493>Futile Gossips
``I have this and not that, I have done this and not that'', even while a man fondles such thoughts, death lays its jaws on him. Why then should a person be indolent ?

<font color=#FF1493>Seeing Other's Faults
The wicked does not make light of his own major faults but invariably blows out of proportion even the minor faults of others.

<font color=#FF1493>Remorse
Those who exert themselves at the proper time, do not repent afterwards.

<font color=#FF1493>Service
By service one acquires the meritorious karmas which bring about for him the form and status of a Tirthankara.