Book Title: Family and Nation
Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya, A P J Abdulkalam
Publisher: Harper Publications India

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Page 145
________________ CREATING HEALTHY INDIVIDUALS 131 the theory of compassion. It gets a practical form through control over various emotional impulses. The frenzied state of mind makes a person sick and eventually makes the society sick. It will be futile to expound the concept of holistic health by excluding from our consideration these two phenomena, namely, frenzy of the mind and subsidence of passions. It is impossible to over-emphasize the point that the key to the process of induction, as used either in science or in our ordinary life, is to be found in the right understanding of the immediate occasion of knowledge in its full concreteness. Just as the minute living beings in a drop of water become visible only through a microscope, so too the exceedingly short-lived processes in the world of mind become cognizable only with the help of the instrument of mental scrutiny. A bias for a chosen few impedes the basic state of mind that is the soil of good health. It is important to capture and understand even momentary feelings of dislike or attachment. English author Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) wrote in Three Men in a Boat: 'A family system is your boat in the river of life. It is a complete system in itself. As such, it is not possible that one member of the system can change without causing a ripple effect of change throughout the family system. The key elements of a family system are its members + beliefs + roles + rules + assets + limitations + goals + boundaries + subsystems (for example, siblings) + environment, a larger system of systems, or metasystem (for example, community).' In the next chapter, we will try to understand these elements and how their interaction can help family members to assess the nurturing role of the family. Having met and interacted with youth and families, we discuss at this point the important elements that can remove the urge in young minds for acquiring wealth through wrong means and that can cultivate in them the yearning for a higher goal. Above all, we stress the ability to enjoy the Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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