ĀTMĀNUŚĀSANA – PRECEPT ON THE SOUL by Ācārya GUṆABHADRA (ca. 818–900 A.D.) [166]
Gātha 165
The happiness obtained as fruit of austerities (tapa) is unparalleled (beyond worldly souls), self-dependent (generated by the soul itself, with no role of karma), and eternal. There is no wonder if the king-of-kings (cakravartī) leaves his kingdom for the sake of austerities (tapa). The great wonder, however, is when the wise man who had earlier renounced, like deadly poison, the sense-pleasures, later on, leaves great austerities to indulge again in those sense-pleasures.
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Note 1:
EXPLANATORY NOTE
Lord Śāntinātha (the sixteenth Tīrthaṅkara), as the king-of-kings (cakravartī), had subjugated the entire community of kings, but, later on, took to asceticism to tame the invincible army of deluding karmas.
Ācārya Samantabhadra’s Svayambhūstotra:
Lord Śāntinātha was the mightiest of emperors; domineering over all imperial enjoyments, he shone with unrivalled magnificence among the kings. Subsequently, absorbed in his pure Self, he shone with divine splendour appertaining to the Arhat in the majestic congregation of the devas and the men.
Lord Aranātha (the eighteenth Tīrthaṅkara), another king-of-kings (cakravartī), did the same.
When you aspired for liberation, you left behind, as a mere blade of grass, your boundless empire which was endowed with the abundance matched only by the splendour of goddess Lakṣmī, and whose emblem was the divine Sudarśana cakra.