Int Jain Sangh NJ 2002 04 Mahavir Jayanti

Author(s): Int Jain Sangh NJ
Publisher: USA International Jain Sangh IJS

Page 30

POST SEPTEMBER 11 AND JAINISM
- Naresh Jain
-
Outside my office window, the sky on September 11, 2001, was clear blue and beautiful. Shortly before 9 AM, I was checking my e-mail. Don in my office suddenly appeared to inform that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I fast-walked 120 feet to the other side of my floor. I was thinking that I may see a few floors fallen down similar to a couple of top floors of the famous Kutub Minar in New Delhi which I gazed in my teenage years from my dorm room on the fourth floor. In the next two hours, I saw the second tower hit and collapse. I could not believe how the perpetrators could sink below any level of thinkable degeneracy and cause the deaths of thousands of people. Since then Sept. 11 has become a new word with a new meaning.
On September 13, Lincoln Tunnel opened and I drove from New Jersey into Manhattan to attend an Interfaith Service held at St. Bartholomew's Church near Rockefeller Center. I felt comfort in the company of my wife Sarla, HH Amrender Muniji and a friend Mary Van Abs. In the religious procession at the church prior to the service, a priest spotted my coat pin of a raised palm- a symbol of Jainism. He asked, "Are you a Jain?". I replied, "Yes sir". In a humble voice he said, "This is the time for Mahavir". I replied, "It sure is". The service. included prayers for world peace from several religions including Jainism. The UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan spoke of a shared faith binding us to understand each other and to live in peace. What he spoke was Jainism to meParasparopgraho Jivanam (i.e., all life is bound together with mutual support and assistance).
In the 20th century we just concluded, several historical social changes were achieved in several countries through heroic adaptation of nonviolence by leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa. I thought that these heroes had proved that nonviolence is an active. process and more powerful than hatred. But, after Sept. 11 suddenly, I felt ignorant again, back to square one.
In the weeks and months that followed, the thirst for knowledge took a different direction. People wanted to know more about Islam and other religions. Now they question everything around them: America's place in the world, the perception of evil, the assumptions of different religions, and the relevancy of religion itself. Now people want a life where they understand each other and where there is hope for a better future.
12