Best of Jain Stories Part- 1

About the Author Upadhyaya Shri Pushkar Muni Ji enjoyed a revered status among the spiritual leaders of his time. He was a great scholar of Jain, Buddhist as well as Vedic literature. He was an accomplished poet and orator having equal command on Sanskrit, Hindi and Rajasthani languages.

Upadhyayashri gave special stress on chanting and meditation. He himself devoted 8-10 hours daily to meditation sitting in the lotus posture.

Besides all this he was a prolific author. His III volumes of Jain stories is a record of sorts even today. The publication of this series in Hindi was completed in 1980. Now a free flowing translation of these volumes has been started, this being the first volume.

Preface Stories are like sweet flowers that provide visual pleasure with their beauty and at the same time enrich the mind with the fragrance of ethics, pious attitudes, upright conduct and other such universal values. Narrative literature is a compendium of folk experiences and that is why this style is universally popular.

In Jain narrative literature the central purpose is to impart an abiding message of this-worldly and other-worldly reality through the multi-dimensional and multi-directional ebb and flow of life. Entwined in these stories are human and superhuman acts and incidents that display the ultimate superiority of human power and its superhuman potentialities that sometimes even appear to be divine. All this is normally beyond human imagination. But nothing is impossible.

Just as the true scope of scientific advance cannot be fully visualized, it is also extremely difficult for us to come to a complete understanding of the sources of the knowledge and energy of the physical and para-physical realms tamed by the men of the past. That is why a true appreciation of the infinite scope of human advance lies in accepting the strange incidents included in these stories of the past and seeing them as astonishing evidence of how extraordinary human powers and the inherent potential of science can be combined. They are thus much more than mere 'fantasy'.

Only with this open attitude will we be able to understand the underlying lessons conveyed by the strange happenings described in this ancient narrative literature and make use of the information contained therein. This, in turn, will be of immense help in preparing ourselves for a breakthrough into new and hitherto unforeseen levels of human achievement and advance.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages