Ahimsa the Ultimate Winner

Author(s): N P Jain
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 33

Mahavir's sermons bring out forcefully Man's obligation and responsibility to protect and preserve the environment around him instead of indiscriminately exploiting it for human greed. Human beings cannot and should not work in isolation for their own emancipation from the cycle of birth and death. Health of your inner soul environment is deeply influenced by the healthy outer environment around you. Thus with this motto, Mahavira transformed Jain religion into an ecological faith and put primary responsibility on the human being to preserve and enrich natural environment.
✡ Mahavir gave the added-value orientation of a reformation movement to Jain religion at a time when in the wider spectrum of Hindu society, orthodoxy, dogmas, blind beliefs and violent sacrificial killings had become the vogue. He eloquently and ardently asserted the courage of nonviolence as well as its practicality as an effective weapon to promote tolerance and fraternity. Far from being confrontational, his approach was peaceful, persuasive, logical and compassionate.
Mahavir put great emphasis on the democratic nature of Jain religion. One did not have to be born as Jain to practice Jain religion. Jain religion was open to anyone to embrace it irrespective of caste, colour, creed, sex or territorial location. Jain religion rejected the caste system. It is this aspect we need to emphasize in the world of today to bring home the point that Jainism is not a narrow closed sectarian creed, but a rational and ethical way of life open for all humans to follow.
✡ Mahavir infused fresh vigour into what had been dubbed as a dull and austere religion followed by a small minority. Through his own practice of meditation, contemplation, vrat and tapasya, he reached the realization that the way to bliss lay in abjuring violence, restraining your wants, curbing your desires and rejecting absolutism in your
Ahimsa: The Ultimate Winner
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