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"HOW I LOOK AT ANOTHER!"
a man looks upon himself as the wisest soul in the world and seeks gratification in displaying to advantage his own virtues. About others, he maintains very strange notions.
A man in power perceives many shortcomings in the general public. He would criticize everything and every person except himself. Of course, he does not directly claim that he alone is virtuous, but then he does not seem to see anything wrong with himself. This negative approach to another makes us find fault with another. Consequently, we are not able to appraise another rightly and give him his due importance.
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Values are of great importance in social life; for society cannot do without them. However, to determine what is of real value is very difficult. We find ourselves incapable of right evaluation, because our approach is largely negative. Without first establishing nonviolence, no right appraisal is possible in any social set-up.
Indeed, the first condition of right appraisal is non-violence.The mind is steeped in violence. By violence is not meant merely the obvious 'killing and being killed' that goes on in society; rather it is intimately connected with the whole of our consciousness and colours our vision. The greater the identification of our consciousness with persons and things on the principle of pleasure and pain, the more vitiated our vision. But so deeply ingrained in the individual is this consciousness of like and dislike that apart from love and hatred, no third dimension seems possible. Like and dislike ever colour our vision. Our perception of people and things just as they are seems well-nigh impossible. It does not seem possible to see a man as he is. Someone may say, "I see that man as he is." Actually, there is no real perception. A thousand hurdles block our vision. There are so many impediments, such walls of prejudice, that the object is quite lost from sight. The feeling of enmity, friendship, love, pity, etc., stands like a wall between the perceiver and the perceived. It is rare that a man perceives another man just as he is. No man seems capable of pure perception.
Someone asked, "Who is your friend? Who is your foe?"
We are caught between the opposites. Either a man is our friend or our enemy. Either there is love or there is hatred. Either we like or we dislike. There is no other alternative. "Who is your friend? And who is your foe?" seems unanswerable. One must first know another before one can determine whether he is a friend or a foe. If one does not know another at all, there is no basis for determination. And most people do not know. But there must be some who know. For those who know and are capable of seeing things as they are, there is no friend, nor enemy. He who knows transcends like and dislike; he who is caught in like and dislike does not know.
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