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2015 JAINA Convention
Best Wishes from Surendra & Sumitra Kankariya
and apply them to promote global peace? How do we influence the political leadership so that they would make more compassionate and peaceful decisions? How do we change their mindset? How do we train our youngsters so that when they grow up and lead the world, they would use more humane and compassionate means to solve the problems of their generation? Let us look at a few possibilities.
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forgiveness and compassion at a very young age, we will influence their thinking in a major way. Remember to affect a social reform, we must start at the individual level. That is where the personal transformation takes place, not when a person is in his sixties or seventies Once kids grow up to become leaders, they will think twice before they make decisions based upon anger, revenge and hatred or greed Perceptions and attitudes form at a very young age. That is the time to guide the kids in the right direction. That is the time to teach them human values.
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Perhaps we need to tackle the problem of global peace in two different ways: short term and long term. Ona short-term basis, we need to convince the leadership about Anekant vad and Ahimsa to start with. As responsible citizens, we need to make it very difficult for any political leader to start a war. Perhaps we should require the elected leaders to get 90% majority on issues related to starting up a war. Religious and spiritual leaders all over the world need to exercise pressure on them to explore non-violent and peaceful resolutions to our conflicts. The silent majority world over must demonstrate that war is not an acceptable solution and dialogue is the only way no matter how long it takes to find a solution.
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The Persian prophet, Zoroaster once said, "Greed begets hatred and hatred begets violence and violence begets death." It is a vicious cycle and we need to get out of it. The destructive emotions are running wild in the world and that is where we need to focus and replace them with the emotions of love, forgiveness, compassion and caring for the fellow human beings. And that is the real key to achieving global peace and developing peace loving and sane leadership. We are at the crossroads. We all need to spread the message of love and peace, active listening and tolerance, forgiveness and humility among our families, relatives, friends and adversaries. We can change the world with the core principles of Jainism, with a heart of nonviolence, reverence for life and compassion for all. We will all have to develop a strong will power and learn to live for the sake of others and do the right thing in a non-violent way. If we all follow through and apply these ideas in our daily lives, global peace can indeed be a reality during our life time.
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On a longer-term basis, there is a lot more hope if the interfaith groups became more proactive. Many people have observed that once we strip off rituals and mythologies, most of the religions of the world show remarkable similarity. They seem to have more in common than what divides them. Perhaps the spiritual leaders need to agree on the core teachings, or core human values that are common among all religions and then work with the nations all over to put the programs in place for the benefit of the children. This is obviously a lengthy process but the pay off could be very huge. We need to start building a solid foundation for better tomorrow
May the entire universe attain bliss May all beings be oriented to the interest of others.
Let all faults be eliminated, and May people be happy everywhere.
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Once we train the new generation to control the destructive emotions and help them with the core teachings of open-mindedness, non-violence,
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