Ahimsa the Ultimate Winner

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

Page 52

pleasures and should learn to steadily give up possessive and acquisitive temptations. It is the desire lust which distracts a human soul from its rational moorings.
o Attitude of tolerance and appreciation through Anekant of diverse points of views.
5 Austerities-include broadly six external forms of physical penance and restraint through fasting, moderate eating and moderate activity, abandoning greed, control of body and senses, eating without attachment to food and self imposed voluntary hardships to discipline one's mind and emotions. Internal austerities include genuine repentance for one's misdeeds, practicing modesty, respecting saints and spiritual leaders and offering them food and shelter, meditation, inculcating virtues through right reading of good books and realizing through meditation that the soul has an identity separate from the body.
RELIGION OF NON-VIOLENCE
Of utmost significance for the new Millennium is that Jain religion stands out from all other religions in its focus on Ahimsa as the Supreme Religion. What the world needs today and would need even more tomorrow is increasing global commitment to the culture of non-violence. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King once observed:
The choice is no longer between Non-violence and violence
it is between Non-violence and Non-existence
We must bring home to the wider strata of global human society that Ahimsa has to become the bedrock of our individual as well as collective survival because violence only begets more violence, violence fouls the atmosphere and nurtures conflict, suspicion, hatred and intolerance. Non-violence has a tremendous potential to be the catalyst and the core civilizing principle of the new global order.
Ahimsa: The Ultimate Winner
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