Atma Dharma

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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observed and daily brought into practice, before anything approaching steadiness in meditation can be attained.
Mental and physical equilibrium is necessary as an accompanying cause to meditation, if one's efforts are intended to bear the desired kind of fruit; and attachment and aversion are the chief disturbers of that equilibrium. The beginner should, therefore, proceed by eliminating attachment and aversion from his soul.
To make a real beginning, hatred is to be eliminated from one's life. How is this to be accomplished ? By love, service and mercy for all that is living, --for every form of life. One should be a well
wisher of all living beings, but a hater of none. : 'Serve all, injure none,' should be the motto in life of
the aspirant for perfection. This is ahimsa, the true service of our fellow-beings, the giving of a full chance to every manifestation of life to develop itself. limsa (injuring others), whether in sport, or for food, trade, and the like, only spells ruination for its author and the victim both. “I will have mercy and not sacrifice"-is the noble message of every true Christos. But if himsa, i.e., the taking of life, is cruel and calls for the exercise of mercy when practised as a sacrifice to a god or gods, should it be otherwise when indulged in for any other, especially a more selfish, purpose ? In different