Jain Digest 2000 02 Vol 16 No 02

SR No.: 527078
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 36
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, USA_Jain Digest, & USA
File Size: 9 MB

Page 16

Shrimad Rajchandra
A GREAT SEER
Kavi Rajchandra was born in a place called Vavania in Kathiawar (Saurashtra). I came in touch with him in 1891, the day of my return from London, at P. J. Mehta's residence in Bombay. Kavi, as I used to call him, was closely related to Dr. Mehta. He was introduced to me as Shatavadhani i. e. one who can remember a hundred things at a time. Kavi was quite young at the time, not much older than I was then i. e. 21 years. He had however given up all public exhibition of his powers and was given up to purely religious pursuits. I was much struck by his simplicity and independence of judgment. He was free from all touch of blind orthodoxy. What struck me perhaps more was his combining business with religion in practice. A student of the philosophy of religion, he tried to practice what he believed. Himself a Jain, his tolerance of other creeds was remarkable. He had a chance of going to England for studies, but he would not go. He would not learn English. His schooling was quite elementary, but he was a genius. He knew Sanskrit, Magadhi, and I believe Pali also. He was a voracious reader of religious literature and had acquired through Gujarati sources a knowledge, enough for his purpose, of Islam, Christianity and Zorostrianism.
Mahatma Gandhi
Such was the man who captivated my heart in religious matters as no other man has till now. I have said elsewhere that in molding my inner life Tolstoy and Ruskin contends with Kavi. But Kavi's influence was undoubtedly deeper, only because I had come in close personal touch with him. His judgment appealed
Age 24
to my moral sense in the vast majority of cases. The bedrock of his faith was unquestionably Ahinsa. His Ahinsa was not the crude type we witness today among its so called votaries who confine their attention merely to the saving of aged cattle and insect life. His Ahinsa, if it included the tiniest insect, also covered the whole of humanity.
14/JAIN DIGEST SUMMER 2000 Jain Education International 2010_02
Yet I never could regard Kavi as a perfect man. But of all the men I knew, he appeared to me to be nearer perfection than the rest. Alas! he died all too young, when he felt that he was surely to see truth face to face. He has left many worshippers but not as many followers. His writings, largely consisting of soulful letters to inquirers, have been collected and published.
God is Atman, free from. all bonds of KARMA. Atman, in its pristine state, is pure consciousness, total intelligence, all-strength, all-knowledge. There is no First Cause mightier than or exterior to the Atman in its pure, pristine state.
Both the Atman and the Universe are eternal-without beginning and without end. My reason cannot envisage either. final extinction or permanent liberation of all Atatans nor dissolution, in the sense of utter annihilation, of the entire Cosmos. Both Cosmos and the Atmans are in a perpetual stttte of flux, and will endure for all time.
Shrimad Rajchandra's reply to Mahatma Gandhi's question translated by Pyarelalji