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Lord Malāvira and Emotional Integration
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There is no “absolute truth' regarding anything. The spirit of enquiry and multiplicity of results are best explained by the anecdote of seven blindmen and an elephant. Each experience is a fragment of truth and the totality constitutes comprehensive truth. There can be as many expressions of an event as the spectators. This vision wards off obstinacy, doggedness and tenacity of the seeker of truth and wards him with a spirit of accommodation, charity and pure catholicity. Lord Mahāvīra discovered this panacea to eliminate discords, dissensions, quarrels and quibbles which lead to conflicts and wars. Difference of opinion must be respected if human society wants to have co-existence and co-operation of individual units. Syadvada is an effort to accommodate and harmonise the viewpoints of others. This mental attitude born of the concept of Anekāntavāda is pregnant with the possibility of eliminating the chances of war and offering the war weary humanity prospects of peace and progress. This scientific system has attracted the attention of many renowned thinkers of the modern world.
Thus, the role and relevance of Mahāvīra's teaching in contemporary age cannot be disputed. Modern India especially of post-independant period is fast deteriorating, degenerating and disintegrating in almost all spheres of human activity. Politically at cross roads, economically depressed, socially suppressed at all levels, morally doomed, and culturally bankrupt - India appears like an incurable patient. At such a time, it seems to me that Mahāvīra's message of Ahiṁsā Anekānta and Aparigraha is the only guiding lighthouse which can save the nation and humanity as a whole from the ship-wreck in the turbulent ocean of life.
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