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The Practice of Non-violence in Muticultural Perspective
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conceptual matrix and sustains the profound dualism of the modern, Western mind-between humanity and nature, between self and other, between experience and reality --- and it is not difficult to understand why the condition of alienation has become virtually pandemic in the West. At its most poignant this condition may be described as"... that pervading sense of a separate cgo irrevocably divided from the encompassing world."
In the midst of this cultural milieu there is an almost palpable yearning for a place in which one may feel secure, a place from which strength of character may be drawn, a place from which it is possible to speak one's deepest beliefs, Ironically, the spanish noun la querencia refers to such a place. Derived from the verb querer, to desire, it also carries the sense of being challenged by something lethal which one may want to avoid.? Lopez expands the meaning of querencia in order to suggest that it applies to the challenge that confronts us in the postmodern world. "Our search for a querencia is both a response to threat and desire to find out who we are. And the discovery of querencia... hinges on the perfection of a sense of place."
What I am suggesting here is that the practice of Ahimsācan evoke, perhaps more powerfully than anything else, the intensification of human consciousness required for the creation of this special sense of place. From there it may be possible to begin to ameliorate the devastation inflicted upon the North America continent by wanton abuse that has contributed to what is now called the environmental crisis. It is commonly thought that issues of spirituality have little to do with the practical concerns of life in a economy based upon consumerism. But Jainism, certainly one of the world's wisdom traditions, and ahińsă, one of its core teachings and practices, "are thoroughly subversive to the monstrous reduction of the fullness of being that the earth community currently faces through the dynamics of an increasingly manipulative, globalized, consumption--oriented political economy basedon rapacious growth and the supposedly pragmatic destruction of being-in-relation."
As practitioners of non-violence members of the Jaina community can aid and abet the development of this intensification of consciousness by highlighting the value of the enormously differentiated expressions of
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| SR No. | 014010 |
| Book Title | Jainism in a Global Perspective - Collection of Jain papers of 1993 Parliament of World Religions, Chicago |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Sagarmal Jain, Shreeprakash Pandey |
| Publisher | Parshwanath Vidyapith |
| Publication Year | 1998 |
| Total Pages | 402 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Seminar & Articles |
| File Size | 23 MB |