The Tirthankaras
The Ten Lives of Parshvanath
The Ten Lives of Parshvanath is a Jain story from the The Tirthankaras collection about forgiveness, anger and its fruit, karma and rebirth, renunciation and the last thought. A priest's younger son is betrayed by his elder brother, reports him to the king, and then goes to the forest to beg his forgiveness. From that meeting on a mountain grows a hatred that follows two souls through an elephant's lake, a mountain bower, a hunter's cave and a lion's forest. The first of two long reads on the ten lives of Bhagwan Parshvanath, told as Acharya Bhavadev and Acharya Hemachandra tell it.
| Teaches | Forgiveness, Anger and its fruit, Karma and rebirth, Renunciation, The last thought |
|---|---|
| Collection | The Tirthankaras |
| Tellings | The full story (19 min) |
| Who it suits | For grown-ups |
| Tradition | Shvetambar telling |
| Thought to keep | The one who was struck five times never once struck back. |
Read the opening of The Ten Lives of Parshvanath
The opening of the story
Jain teachers say that anger is a debt that does not die with the body. It travels with the soul from birth to birth, and it finds its creditor again. In the year 1255, in the city of Patan in Gujarat, a monk named Acharya Bhavadev finished a long poem about how one such debt was carried, and how it was finally cancelled. A century earlier Acharya Hemachandra had told the same story in his lives of the great souls. Both begin in the same place, with two brothers, and both count ten lives before the end. The younger brother of the first life would become Bhagwan Parshvanath, the twenty third Tirthankar. The elder would hate him through every one of those lives.
The city was Potanpur, and its king was Arvind, a just ruler and a stern one, with his queen Dharini beside him. The king's family priest was a learned Brahmin named Vishvabhuti, and his wife was Anuddhara. They had two sons. The elder was Kamath, quick tempered and hungry for pleasure, a gambler who could not refuse himself anything. The younger was Marubhuti, quiet, honest and steady. Kamath married a woman named Varuna, and Marubhuti married Vasundhara.
Read the whole story of The Ten Lives of Parshvanath See plans
What The Ten Lives of Parshvanath teaches
Values Forgiveness Anger and its fruit Karma and rebirth Renunciation The last thought
To carry into the day
The one who was struck five times never once struck back.
To talk about together
Marubhuti blamed himself for reporting his brother, though his brother had done the greater wrong. When is it right to ask forgiveness from someone who has wronged us?
Sources
Retold for JainStory from the traditional story and checked against 2 published sources:
- archive.org
- Wisdom Library (15 pages)