It is Paryushana in 4 days time. Thus in preparation of the 8 days to come, I thought it would be good to blog about the Bhavnas beforehand. Some food for thought! 🙂
So what’s a Bhavna? Well…Jainism puts a significant emphasis on the thought process of a human being. A person’s behaviour and his actions are the reflection of his internal thoughts, day in and day out. Our thoughts and actions result in the accumulation of Karma. Thus we should be mindful in our thoughts. Jainism expresses a need to make room for pure thoughts, and to drive out the impure ones. A way to do this would be through reflecting or meditating on the twelve thoughts or Bhavnas.
The purpose of the Bhavnas is to aid spiritual progress, produce detachment, and lead the aspirants from the realm of desire to the path of renunciation.
Anyatva Bhavana
This Bhavana reflects the fact that the body is separate to the soul. Here are some examples to illustrate this Bhavana.
As time passes, the body will age and decay. Eventually, it will perish. However, the only thing which is imperishable is the soul.
The soul is the embodiment of consciousness. For this reason we shouldn’t get attached to the body that we are born into as it will not come with us in our next birth.
This applies to the relationships that the body identifies with. They are separate to the soul. They are not everlasting! In one lifetime we may be the parent of a being. However, in another lifetime we could be a sibling to the same being. Therefore we should not be attached to the body or the relationships that the body can identify with. We also need to refrain from indulging in the passions of the physical body, through emotions, such as, greed, anger, ego or lust.
Mahavir Bhagwan experienced 27 significant births prior to liberating his soul. His soul was born into different gatis. Every time his life ended, the body perished and the soul was born into a new form with a different body. For this reason, we should not be attached to the body as it is not ours. As our soul moves from one life form to another our body will not.
Now the bliss in this understanding is all to do with the human birth. Through the human birth one can attain Moksha. This gives us freedom from pain, suffering, greed, lust, ego, loss and much more. So let’s focus on the soul, rather than, the body and let’s empower the soul  so that we can be rid of birth, death and rebirth.
2 Comments
Bagmar Satish · April 21, 2012 at 10:42 pm
When Gautamswami asked Lord Mahavir HOW SEA MAINTAINS ITS LIMITS?
Mahavirswami replied that solong as required numbers of pure souls are on earth sea maintains its limit.Excessive greed resulting in lot of hidden damages to Human souls is rootcause of the present threats to this plannet and mankind.
True, 3 years post Mahavir Nirvan PANCHAM KAL had commenced.Mahavir himself with his infinite knowledge had elaborated how in this Pancham Kal the impurity of Materiality (DRAWYA) and Souls (BHAV) shall be infinite times deteriorating and there shall be no TIRTHANKARS in this area for 84000 years and also superior Vaimanik Devtas shall not appear as they simply cannot bear the impurity here.Thus materiality shall be impure and souls here shall be tedious and as aresult impure materiality shall be produced by impure souls and on impure materiality impure souls shall conserve.THIS VICIOUS CYCLE SHALL CONTINUE in Pancham Kal rapidly.And all environment shall be pinful and to run away from it Human shall find new ways which shall be more dangerous only.
But Lord Mahavir had prescribed how to keep soul pure even in such worst PANCHAM KAL.Soul is permanent and this PANCHAM KAL is temporary and for infinite time in past such situation has taken place and shall also take place for infinite time as TIME changes cycle by cycle and accordingly Materiality too changes from infinite purity to impurity.
Lord Mahavir has prescribed to mediate on the following 12Facets Of Reality widely known as 12 BHAVNA in Jainology.AS PER JAINOLOGY MEDITATION DOES NOT MEAN THOUGHTLESSNESS.MEDITATION MEANS POSITIVE AND TRUE THINKING which purifies soul.And purity of soul with true Knowledge, True Faith and true Character is with tremendous soular power and even one such pure soul like TIRTHANKAR can make miracles.Though Tirthankars are not likely for comming 82000 years but collectively some souls can with the meditations of Following 12 Facets daily for 48 minutes can save self and with own purity of soul can create positive waves in environment too.
I personally have experimented it all when my brain and mind got tired with my 20 years negativity in political environment damaging my own soul and environment around.
The earthquake in 28 nations during last 1 minth would have resulted in psunami too.One can imagine the Psunami effects as we saw in Japan.The soular Physics Chemestry and Biology is very different from the known science and technology.e,g. can present science explain why trillions of stars and plannets in this huge cosmoss rotating? If it had been due to rule of Gravity why Gravity is not resulting in Break too?
Pureity of soul only can know such hidden aspects as visible aspects are just 5%.And Pure souls make huge difference too.
Bagmar Satish C. A. Pune
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» Up and coming posts about the Jain Bhavnas/Reflections… | Heena Modi · August 18, 2009 at 1:16 pm
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