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wants to live a life, as free and independent as she had lived in her parental home, against which her in-laws' members expects certain restraints on her part. All these leads to conflict and unless there is a feeling of tolerance and understanding on both the sides, the problem can't be resolved. As per the view of Ācārya Mahāprajña, "Tolerating each other instead of prevailing differences is the first step for peaceful co-existence."! If a group of people can be trained to live together peacefully, one can say that they have learnt the first lesson of non-violence. For this, one has to develop a spiritual consciousness that "I am a sole entity and he is not mine”. So every man is at the same time separate from his fellows and related to them. Such separateness and relatedness are mutually necessary postulates. Personal relations can exist only between being who are separate but who are not isolated.? This spiritual perspective will establish healthy and peaceful relationships between the family members, whereas a man of selfish consciousness desires to lead a happy life, which is confined to him. This selfish attitude engenders the seeds of greed, possession or accumulation and gives rise to many problems within a family. So according to Acārya Mahāprajña, the development of spiritual consciousness is the stepping-stone for peaceful coexistence of a family. The problem today is that, no attempt is made to awaken spiritual consciousness neither in children nor in elders. People don't even know how to subside these emotions. In order to achieve the goal of peaceful co-existence, one should teach the children to breathe properly and make them practice long breathing from the very beginning. Automatically, the doors of our destination i.e. 'peaceful coexistence' will be opened.
'Mahāprajña. Happy and Harmonious Family, Trans. Sadhvi Vishrut Vibha.
Ladnun: Jain Vishva Bharati, 1st edn., 2008, p. 16. 2 R.D. Laing. The Divided Self, Preface to the Prelican. Edition, 1965, p. 11. - 3 Ibid, p. 18. .
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