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A Multi-Cultural Vision of the 21st Century
answer to this is, of course, found in ancient Rgvedic wisdom "ekaṁ sat viprābahudhā vadanti." The truth is one but it is expounded and propounded in different ways and has many facets. The Jaina tradition was represented in 1893's Parliment of World Religions by a young lawyer Virchand Raghavji Gandhi. That point of view has what is called the logic of seven facets of the truth. The logic of seven facets of truth is very metaphorical way in which the different facets, the wide variety of aspects of truth, and a harmonions opportunity to reconcile them or atleast to concide in all tender that what we do not know but is not necessarly untruth. To provide for the sanctity for other points of view that corollary is very important for us. Therefore, the opening address of 1893 would have to be readdressed by the present generation. When we say that we meet on the heights of mutual respect we must not necessarly say that we cannot claim that ours is the only religion of truth, that ours is the truest and best of all. Because comparative religious studies must lead to an acknowledgement and not to the cult of the exclusive point of view. The universality of the absolute and the relativity of the many different facets of the absolute, have to be reconciled for each religious tradition. Each religious tradition has to address this in term not of abandoning what is the perceptional truth in that tradition. The root to the truth is tradition but it must also start by conceding that many of the roots and many of the paths which lead to that understanding of truth are important. Not only in 1893 but in the great assembly of the religions of the world which was held in Calcutta to celebrate the centenary of the great Ram Krishna Paramhans, they discussed the subject of religion and culture which forms the basis for my presentation this morning. I shall come to it in a moment but I would like to recall to you the address on that occasion by the great Indian poet Dr. Rabindra Nath Tagore who said 'he does not belong to the prison house of any particular tradition. Now he called it a prison house not because he regarded faith tradition as a prison house, but because he regarded every dogma a prision house. A dogma which refuses to interact, which refuses to communicate, which refuses to coincide the truth of other's points of view. This is very beautifully put in the conclusion that Dr. Rabindra Nath Tagore, Gurudeva Rabindra Nath Tagore as we call him in India, said "I am only a poet, I am only a philosopher, I am not an exponent or a leader of any particular faith or
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