17.02.2018 ►JAINA ►Newsletter

Jain Sangh of Greater Austin is honored to inform you all about their upcoming “Pratishtha Mahotsav” which will take place from July 13-16th, 2018.

Since 2001, JSGA has been one of the fastest growing Jain communities in Texas. The Sangh currently comprises of around 125 families. With Dev-Guru Krupa and Blessings, their long-awaited dream of an Austin Jain Community Center and Derasar has finally come to fruition. Please forward this information about their auspicious event to your Sangh members and encourage them to attend the events. A registration link and invitation will be sent out in a few weeks. All events will be free for devotees and guests, however, registration will be mandatory.

Vis means twenty. Viharman loosely means, “residing”. Here we see 20 sets of handprints and 20 sets of footprints covered in silver.

These represent the 20 living tirthankars that currently reside in Mahavideh, another world within the Jain mythological universe.

According to Jains, every time-cycle era is half “waxing” and a half “waning”. Imagine the face of a clock. The “waxing” half is the positive half. All 24 Tirthankars are born and attain salvation during that half of the era. The final tirthankara was Mahavir, whom historians estimate lived between 599-527 BCE.

We are currently in the second half, the negative “waning” half when tirthankars do not incarnate.

However, on Mahavideh, a separate world from ours, a “positive” time-cycle exists continuously. There, living Tirthankar perpetually incarnate.

Click to read the story & listen to an amazing audio clip in or .

What you see before you is Ashtapad. In Jain literature, Ashtapad is recorded as being a four-sided, eight-stepped, and probably very extensive structure. The identity and location of Ashtapad have been lost to time. Mount Kailash in the Himalayas is frequently thought to be this mountain. Adinath attained salvation on Ashtapad.

Look closely at the representation in front of you. On one side of the two idols of tirthankars is a ten-headed representation of Ravan. On the other side is his queen Mandodari.

Legend has it that Ravan and his wife Mandodari were praying at the Ashtapad temple. Mandodari was in a state of trance while dancing in devotion as Ravan played a musical instrument called the veena. Suddenly, a string of the veena snapped. But Ravan determined to not let that come in the way of Mandodari's divine dance, plucked out a vein from his thigh to keep the instrument playing.

Look for another representation: see if you can find a monk feeding many other hermits. This is the story of Gautam Swami, a disciple of Mahavir, who was able to feed 1,500 hermits from a single small bowl of Rice Pudding or “Kheer”. While serving, he kept his thumb in the bowl in order to feed all of them.

Click to read the story & listen to an amazing audio clip in or .