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HERITAGE OF LORD MAHAVIRA :
whatever conditions imaginable. And conversely, the merit of a religion can be ascertained by the stability and measure of perfection which mark the harmony of the above two factors.
Measured by this standard, there can be no question as to the high value of Jainism as a religion. A timehonoured religion, it goes back to the teachings of Vardhamana Mahavira, the great contemporary and countryman of Gautama Buddha, and to his predecessors. Its greatness lies in that its teachings seem to assure indeed “the greatest happiness of the greatest number ", not only of men, but of living beings, under all circumstances imaginable. That is why I venture to draw your attention to this extremely attractive and important subject to-day.
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According to Jainism, everything that lives has a soul, or, if we choose to speak in the pointed and beautiful
language of the Scriptures, is a soul. Perfect Social And all the souls are fellow-creatures : Welfare gua- the godlike saint in his purity and imranteed by movable peace, the active man of the Jainism world with his never resting ambitions,
the innocent infant and the confirmed criminal. So are the lion and the nightingale, the cobra and the dragon-fly, the green leaf and the rose flower. Even so are the tiniest particles of water and the smallest corpuscles that compose the shining crystal, those myriads of beings that form the wings of the breeze and
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com