L
Jain Alphabet Pictures with Write up
L is for Leshya
Leshya is the color of your thoughts.
There were six friends going to a big city. On the way, they got lost in the forest. They were hungry and thirsty, but they couldn’t find anything. Then one of them noticed a fruit tree. They ran to it.
The first friend wanted to chop down the whole tree and get the fruit. The second friend thought that they should just chop off a big branch. The third friend said that they only needed to chop off a small branch. The fourth one thought that they didn’t need to chop off a branch, they should just get big bunch of fruit. The fifth friend asked why they should waste any fruit. He wanted to pick what they needed so there would be no waste. The sixth one asked why they should climb the tree, when there were many good fruits on the ground.
See how differently the six friends thought? The first one wanted to destroy the whole tree while the sixth one didn’t want to hurt the tree at all. You can see how differently people can think. The way the sixth man thought was the best way to thing and the way the first man thought was the worst way. There are six leshyas that described the way the people in the story thought. The first leshya is the worst one. It’s called the Black (Krishna) leshya. The second one is called the Blue (Neel) leshya and the third leshya is called the Brown (Kapot) leshya. The fourth one is called the Red (Tejo) leshya and the fifth leshya is called the Yellow (Padma) leshya. Last, the sixth leshya, the best one, is called the White (Shukla) leshya.
Our thoughts change all the time and so will be our Leshya. We should thrive to think like the sixth man did. This will happen when we keep our needs as little as possible.