Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

Page 102

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
rate, the limits of what is possible to determine, by any method which the human mind may be rationally supposed to possess. It promises to reconcile all the conflicting schools, not by including any of them necessarily to abandon their favorite 'standpoints', but by providing proof to them that the standpoints of all others are alike, tenable, or at least, that they are representative of some aspect of truth which under some modification needs to be represented; and that the integrality of Truth consists in this very variety of its aspects within the relational unity of an all comprehensive and ramifying principle."
Life of ordinary worldly man Story of Man & drops of Honey - "Madhubindu"
the man, as if they were about to sting him, lower down at the bottom was a huge serpent reaching up towards the man with his great open mouth. Two rats, one black, one white, were gnawing at the trunk of the tree to which the man was holding on Higher up on the branch was honey-comb and a swarm of bees. The efforts of the elephant to shake the man loose, by swaying the branch had caused the honey to
trickle down in drops, which The presented this MM Conwy into
were falling, on the lips of the मुखं विषयसे वाया मत्थव्यं सर्पपादपि
man. A, monk, a teacher of दुःखंतु दे हिन: पाज्यं मधुविन्दा टिपुंगवत ।
religion, in his white monk's garb stood on the opposite side of the well from the elephant, as if offering assistance to the man to escape from the many dangers surrounding him In the given picture instead of monk we see a divine person in the sky above the elephant)
When I was a small boy of about eight years old, I was accustomed to attend, with my father the sermons of the Jain monks who visited our town from time to time in those days. The sermons were delivered in the lecture hall built especially by our community. On one occasion, we went to the hall half an hour earlier than usual, which gave me ample time to look around, which I did with much interest and some curiosity, at the paintings on the walls.
One picture in particular impressed me and interested me more than all the others. It was a picture of a man suspended in the middle of a well by holding on to a branch which grew by the side of the well. A huge elephant stood at the brink of the well and not being able to reach the man with his mighty trunk, was trying to shake the tree and thus force the man out. Down, in the walls of the well were four snakes in an attitude of hissing at
I could understand all the dangers to which the man was exposed, but I felt assured that there was a deeper meaning to it all, and after gazing for a long time at the picture trying to solve its meaning but failed, I appealed to