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LEONA SMITH KREMSER
Even the desire-karma for curling incense. The Self upon the Selfsame fixed, In-knowing ... here ends the space-time world That karma built, the delusive world That overlays the Pure Soul. Indeed, did ever live a Wondrous One, Purified of cause and effect, a historical person? Awestruck, the poet sees, Like floating lotus stone, The temple image of the Great Hero, Victor of the karmic battle of self-liberation. -For within is the worthy battlefield, Within is the anger, pride, deceit and greed That plunge the soul into suffering rebirths. Freedom Knower, he put down guideposts For all following him, the merciful Mahāvīra.
No more, no less a god, He was born the son to Siddhārtha of Bihar And to Trišala of the lotus dreams. Ruby cups, he drank for thirty years Till spiritual famine forced his soul, By way of twelve years on the thorns, To kevala-knowledge, O spiritual vision of truth! Thirty years skyclad, then, he dedicated To Right Faith, Knowledge and Conduct, -The Three Jewels and the flesh penitential Making the One, the Liberated Soul.
Thus the hero of the spiritual world Made answer to the primeval question of the universe.
Yes, God is the in-knowing soul, The transcendence beyond the senses, In every living being, —Pure from beginningless time, Individual as a lamp in a cave of lamps, Eternal in or out of the temporal body.
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