Attachment and aversion are the root cause of karma, and karma originates from infatuation. Karma is the root cause of birth and death, and these are said to be the source of misery. None can escape the effect of their own past karma.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how our attachments and aversions lead to karma, which in turn causes suffering through the cycle of life and death.
In this quote, Mahavira emphasizes the interconnectedness of attachment, aversion, and karma. He explains that our emotional ties and dislikes create karma, which shapes our experiences in life, including birth and death. The suffering we endure stems from this cycle of karma, suggesting that understanding and transcending our attachments can lead to liberation from misery. Ultimately, the quote serves as a reminder that one cannot escape the consequences of their past actions, urging us to reflect on our choices and their effects.
In practice
During a philosophy discussion about the causes of suffering.
If one undertakes retrospection of the day's events, one must do it regularly at the appointed hour, not fitfully, not doing it today, neglecting to do it tomorrow and the day after and then taking it up again on the fourth day. Such irregular practice is not conducive to the confirmation of the habit of retrospection.
If you want to cultivate a habit, do it without any reservation, till it is firmly established. Until it is so confirmed, until it becomes a part of your character, let there be no exception, no relaxation of effort.
Start the practice of self-control with some penance; begin with fasting.
Anger begets more anger, and forgiveness and love lead to more forgiveness and love.
Modes are infinite, and laws are infinite.
Eating constitutes the greatest obstacle to self-control; it gives rise to indolence.
And the greatest calamity that has happened to the human mind is that he is against death. Being against death means you will miss the greatest mystery. And being against death also means that you will miss life itself - because they are deeply involved into each other; they are not two. Life is growing, death is the flowering of it. The journey and the goal are not separate; the journey ends in the goal.
Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.
Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.
The efficacy of a prayer depends not on the words but on the sincerity of intention.
If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.
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