Life of Bhagwan Mahavir
The Night of Lamps
The Night of Lamps is a Jain story from the Life of Bhagwan Mahavir collection about letting go, devotion, impermanence, liberation and diwali. Sixteen years after Shravasti, Bhagwan Mahavir spends his last rainy season in King Hastipal's hall of the scribes at Pavapuri, in the same town where his order was founded. He sends Gautam Swami away on an errand, teaches for two days and nights, and on the new moon night of Kartik eighteen kings light lamps in the dark. Then a grieving disciple sits alone on a road before dawn. The last of six long reads on the life of Bhagwan Mahavir, told the way the Kalpa Sutra and Acharya Hemachandra tell it.
| Teaches | Letting go, Devotion, Impermanence, Liberation, Diwali |
|---|---|
| Collection | Life of Bhagwan Mahavir |
| Tellings | The full story (18 min) |
| Who it suits | For grown-ups |
| Tradition | Shvetambar telling |
| Thought to keep | A lamp does not bring back the light that has gone; it only says that someone remembers it and means to keep it. |
Read the opening of The Night of Lamps
The opening of the story
Sixteen years is a long time to walk. When the fever of Shravasti had left him, Bhagwan Mahavir took up the roads of the Ganga country again, barefoot, owning nothing, stopping where the rains stopped him and moving on when they lifted. The Kalpa Sutra keeps the towns of those years in its list: Vaishali and Vanijagram, Rajgruhi and Nalanda, Mithila and the rest. Kings rose and fell in them. Old disciples grew older. Children who had once sat at the edge of his assemblies came back with children of their own.
By the end, the Kalpa Sutra says, he had gathered "an excellent community", and it counts that community with great care, the way a family counts what it has been given. There were fourteen thousand monks with Indrabhuti Gautam at their head, and thirty-six thousand nuns with Chandanbala at theirs. There were one hundred and fifty-nine thousand laymen, led by Shankh Shatak, and three hundred and eighteen thousand laywomen, led by Sulasa and by Revati, the same Revati whose medicine had once brought back his strength. Seven hundred of his monks had attained perfect knowledge while he lived, and seven hundred monks and fourteen hundred nuns had already been freed.
Read the whole story of The Night of Lamps See plans
What The Night of Lamps teaches
Values Letting go Devotion Impermanence Liberation Diwali
To carry into the day
A lamp does not bring back the light that has gone; it only says that someone remembers it and means to keep it.
To talk about together
Gautam Swami's love for his teacher was pure, and still it was the last thing he had to let go. Is there a love in your life that you hold so tightly it keeps you from growing?
Sources
Retold for JainStory from the traditional story and checked against 3 published sources: