Atmanandji Jainacharya Janmashatabdi Smarakgranth

Author(s): Mohanlal Dalichand Desai
Publisher: Atmanand Janma Shatabdi Smarak Trust

Page 93

The Child of Promise
thus, when the teachers taught the youths and possibly also the maidens the so irrational sounding Tat tvam asi, this mantra had really the much more possible and plausible meaning of Tat tvam bhavasi. As it they meant to sayand possibly did go on to say in expounding-Very children are you yet so too are all of us older men. But in you and in us is the promise and potency of the Man, yea, of the More in Man, yea, even of the Most, the purusuttama. That' neither you nor we can yet find words for. That none of us can yet know. For none of us is That yet in very fact. That is matter of faith, matter of hope. Each of us is as a child who is told You are a man like father.' He will say 'I am yet small; I'm weak.. I. will to be a man like him, but I cannot be it yet,'
Now we are like this boy. We are as to our More in a state of will. We are, as to the Most, only yet in will; not remotely the Most in fact, not in achievement, not in fulfilment, not in realization; only as yet in will. Or are we yet even so far as to be That in will? Do we not hold in worth the Highest as a state we do not want to be in? And is not this true of the stage of childhood? Is not the maturity they witness too grown up to attract them? We appreciate what we are ready for. It is the things of the child we are yet holding in worth:the fancy for now this, now that; the fighting for this or that; the wanting to possess this or that; the tiring of this or that. We value just that only for which we are fit, We will only to the extent of our vision. And that is only to the next bend in the road. It is not given to many to see even just round that next bend.
It is not given us yet to find fit words for the Uttermost. We are here but in a More. We shall be but in a More for many lives yet to come. We talk glibly of Deity; we have for That each our distinctive God-word, yet are we quite unable to frame any clear idea of Godhead. Our values are those of a 'to have, 7 not a 'has; of a to-be, 'not of an 'is.' We speak bravely of our will to-be. But our will is the instrument of a valuer who is yet a child.
I am reminded here of a striking, I may say, a unique passage in the Pali Sutras, as yet totally overlooked by writers on Buddhism. A brahman is said to affirm before the Sakyamuni: There is no agency of the self, no agency of another (Or as one recension reads: no self-doer [attakari], no other-doer). The response is in swift protest: 'say not so! Never have I heard of such a saying. What? When you stretch forth a limb, is not that an element of initiative (arabbhadhatu) made by the self? This is contiuned in detail.
Now the 'self' here is the man initiating an act by will. He reckons what he calls initiative, for want of a word for will, as being the starting of an action. Ct. the Taittiriya Upanisad. •Anguttara-Nikaya Chakka-nipata, Devata-Vagga.
.: 28:.
Shree Atmaramji