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V.
HOW I LOOK AT MYSELF (1)
A man is limited by his physical organism, which in itself constitutes a natural limit. No one is free of his body, or from the limitation thereof. The limitation marks a separation. However close one person may be to another, however intimately related, the natural separation caused by the body cannot be done away with. Imagine two men sitting together. They are close to each other, and yet might experience different sensations, one drowned in anxiety, the other exalted by joy. They may be blood-brothers, father and son, bosom friends, deeply intimate and very well-known to each other, and yet their feelings are different, one happy, the other unhappy. Why so? It has been said that one's knowledge or experince is one's own. The guru's experience is of little avail to the pupil; or that of the father or the elder brother to the son or the younger brother. If experience were trasferable like money from one person to another, then it would suffice for one member of the family to study; all others need not go to school or college at all. If one member of the family can earn enough money, the life of the family goes on undisturbed even if nobody else makes any money. Not so with knowledge or experience.
One's experience is exclusively one's own. Similarly, the sensation experienced by one person cannot be transmitted to another. Each person's sensation is personal and incommunicable.. The same event happening to five different persons would call forth different sensations and different responses from each. One man is so much affected by a particular event that he cannot even eat or drink and life becomes for him a great ordeal, while the same event leaves the other indifferent. "Life is like that!" he says and there is an end to it.
A man came to me and said, "Everything affects me terribly. Any little happening haunts me for days together; I cannot get free of it. What am I to do?" I said, "Why don't you adopt this maxim? Whenever anything happens, say to yourself, 'Life is like that? Such a happening is just in the nature of things. There is nothing novel about it. Rather it would be surprising if such a thing did not happen!"
Jain Education International
You are deceived by a friend and wonder at it. Actually you have not observed the truth of life; you have not really understood the true nature of your friend. That a man should deceive his friend, is an
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