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are means, practice and goal, all three combined, while punya is just means and practice not the goal. Punya is like medicine to remove the disease, which is given up once the disease is cured. It is like ‘as enunciated conduct that is also separated when the final deliverance is achieved.
Even the corporeal omniscient Lords have the activities of the mind, body and speech. They give discourses; they peregrinate from place to place. That is why to be active is neither bad nor a cause of karmic bondage. What are bad are the mundane desires, passions and attachment and aversion associated with these activities. These are the causes of karmic bondage. What are abandonable are these inauspicious things and not the meritorious activities. An activity is auspicious if the passions associated with it are lean while it becomes inauspicious if the passions associated with it are gross and deep-seated. Such activities are abandonable.
The activities can be categorised into these three - 1. Activities that increase attachment and aversion, 2. Activities that destroy attachment and aversion and 3. Activities that are free from attachment and aversion or the activities that are fully detached. Out of these the first kind of activities are sinful and are abandonable; those of the second kind are means of getting free from these flaws and achieve destruction and separation of karmic bondages, and the third kind of activities are natural and free from all kinds of desires and attachments and they happen of their own. These latter two kinds of activities are auspicious activities and they are not harmful in any way. These auspicious activities are not abandonable but acceptable. So much so that even the inspiration and giving of discourses by the world renounced monks and fully detached omniscient beings are also auspicious activities but they do not cause any karmic bondages. The reason being that they do not indulge in these auspicious activities for deriving any mundane pleasures but they do so for the welfare of the world at large.
It is not that all activities cause karmic bondage. The activities can also destroy karmic bondages. That is – karmic separation can
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Positive Non-Violence
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