Jain Spirit 2000 03 No 03

SR No.: 528983
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 66
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, UK_Jain Spirit, & UK
File Size: 14 MB

Page 21

FEATURES
165
had to walk down this path of rectification already, and Jains should not be left far behind.
Having drawn attention to some house cleaning matters, let us now mention areas in which we can proudly affirm our Americanism, and do it with the verve of a Jina. First is the area of education. Since most of you are students, some of whom have just graduated from school or college, and others have climbed to the next rung of the educational ladder, I start with congratulating you. You bring honour to your teachers and parents, and help maintain the Jain community as the best-educated group in all of these United States! I hasten to add there is an ancient Indian tradition that 'what you receive you must pass on to others'. You must not lock up the knowledge you have acquired in your brain; you are obligated to share it. This is the
concept of rnam, which in Sanskrit means
'debt'. You are a debtor! In addition, Jainism places a high | hatreds are on the rise in almost all countries of the world,
including our own, often in the form of religious fanaticism that bombs abortion clinics, burns Black churches, and desecrates synagogues. One source of all religious fanaticism is the tendency to claim God as ally for one's partisan values and ends. A fanatic is usually a person who does what he thinks the Lord would do if the Lord knew all of the facts of the case.
premium on knowledge. Right knowledge (samyak gnana) serves as a connecting link between right faith and right conduct, on moksa-marga or the path to salvation.
Related to education, a second area in which Jains can make a special contribution is civility. By civility I mean, being prepared to sacrifice one's own private impulses in the interests of the common good. The Jain emphasis on the control of passions is highly appropriate for a nation that has been brought to its knees by the Civil Rights movement. Civility, and its impulse to oblige, is at the heart of tolerance - an essential virtue in a pluralistic society. By the opposite token, incivility makes for fanaticism. Fanaticism is the enemy of culture, especially when it is the culture of someone who talks with a peculiar accent. The fanatic opposes culture, because culture is born of imagination, and the fanatic is always afraid of the imagination of others. Thus the fanatic, who uses fear, is karmically doomed to live and die in fear. Fanaticism wears three masks: racism, religious bigotry, and ethnic hatred. These three hatreds are held together by violence. These
20 Jain Spirit March May 2000 Jain Education International 2010_03
This country has to come around to a Jain type of ethic of relativity (anekantavada). It teaches, like no western religion does, that things are not always as they seem, that contradictions abound in our everyday perceptions, that we all occupy subject worlds, that sincerity is no guarantee for truth and certainty, and that in order to claim a knowledge of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you must first pay your dues by becoming a perfected soul, a siddha - but don't bet on it in one life-time!
Jains should feel politically at home in America because,. philosophically and historically, their religion is based on democratic aspirations and principles. Essentially, Jainism is a system of quiet contemplation and asceticism, in which
CREDIT: HINDUISM TODAY