COMPASSION DEVOTION Simandhar Swami, Jaina Universe and Our Era Dharmpal Mahendra Jain
Dharm is a Toronto-based author who has published nine books: seven collections of satirical essays and two collections of poetry. Dharm is also a columnist for five prestigious Hindi journals. He served as a JAINA director from the Jain Society of Toronto (2009 to 2011) and was the Managing Editor of Shashwat Dharm, a Hindi-Gujarati monthly magazine (1976 to 1979). His English poetry has been previously published in Poetry Pause, Fresh Voices, Harbinger Asylum, Akshara, Ipspired, Piker Press, Scarlet Leaf Review, Dissident Voice, and Setu. https://dharmtoronto.com. e-mail: dharmtoronto@gmail.com Bhagwan Simandhar Swami was born in Mahavideh during the lifetime of the seventeenth Tirthankar, Shri Kunthunath Swami, and the eighteenth Tirthankar, Shri Aranath Swami, on our Earth. Simandhar Swami's father, Maharaja Shreyans, was the king of Pushpa Kalawati Country, and his mother's name was Satyaki. The child was born with three kinds of special knowledge: Mati Gyan, Shrut Gyan, and Avadhi Gyan. The prince married Princess Rukmani. During the reign of King Dasharath on our Earth, Bhagwan Simandhar Swami renounced the world by accepting diksha in Mahavideh Kshetra. This was during the presence of the 20th Tirthankar Munisuvrat Swami and the 21st Tirthankar Naminath Swami on our Earth. At the time of his diksha, he acquired the fourth kind of knowledge, Manahparyav Gyan. In one thousand years of his ascetic life, he eliminated all his knowledge-obstructing karma and obtained Keval Gyan, the absolute knowledge.
Among all the living Tirthankaras, Bhagwan Simandhar Swami is the closest to Earth. Currently, he lives in Mahavideh. With devotion and dedication to Bhagwan Simandhar Swami, we can have our next
birth in the Mahavideh region and attain ultimate liberation by experiencing his spiritual blessings. However, the first obvious question that arises is, where is Mahavideh? If there are places like Mahavideh, Mount Meru, Bharat Kshetra, Airavat Kshetra, and hundreds of other such places named in Prakrit language, then what is the complete scheme of the Jaina Universe provided by Bhagwan Mahavir and his predecessors? And when Tirthankaras define millions of years of the time-cycle, where does our Era fit in? In the twenty-first century, modern science considers the Universe as the largest structure of the Nebulae. In our observable universe, there are billions of galaxies, and the Milky Way is one such galaxy that contains our solar system. In turn, a solar system is a collection of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and other objects orbiting around a star, typically held together by gravity. Our solar system includes eight planets, including Earth, and a host of other objects orbiting around our star, the Sun. It was in 1908 that scientists added 'time' as the fourth dimension that formed the basis for Einstein's theories of relativity.
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