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said to their parents, "The guy in mukhvastrika looks funny with his face covering," and asked why a stone was there [referring to the pratima]. This was very embarrassing for all of us and parents kept on telling their children to keep their mouths shut and not say such bad words.
At this stage, I told the parents that the fault lies with them, the parents and not with the children as they had no grounding, in any shape or form, about Jainism and items of worship and reverence and hence the pratima was just a piece of stone. About a month later, another Indian couple -but non-Jains—came to visit us for dinner. Then too, I did the same ritual with them. As soon as I opened the temple doors and put the lights on, the couple along with their three teenage boys lay prostrate (in shashtaang) on the ground and paid their respects and reverence to the temple, and to all the objects of worship there in. No one questioned what and why. I was a bit surprised since none of them was Jain. To this, the father replied, "Sulekh-ji, from their birth, all the kids have been given grounding in showing respects and reverence to all religions."
This is where proper and early grounding comes in. I believe that if a proper, practical, and early grounding in ahimsa can be provided during the important developmental years, when young people become adults, they will not easily go astray. I have heard of and seen several Jain youths who grew up in strict Jain families in India, and as soon as they boarded a flight to come to the US from India, ordered non-veg foods at the very first opportunity, far away from the watchful eyes of their parents in India. The clear reason for this transgression is that these young people never received any real grounding in ahimsa from their parents, sadhus, temples, or from the environment in which they grew up.
Quite often, I meet Jain boys and girls in their twenties who are in US as temporary IT professionals. When I ask them about their grounding in Jainism and Ahimsa, they look at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.
An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide
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