Jain Journal 1980 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 22

134
JAIN JOURNAL
approach to viewing the world frees one from the petty attachment to old, habitual patterns of thinking, from concepts of “right and wrong", "good and bad”, and opens the door to higher knowledge and ultimately omniscience, the state wherein all points of view are seen simultaneously.
Adopting the practice of this way of seeing others and accepting their opinions for what they are naturally leads to an attitude of nonattachment to things and ideas. Attraction and repulsion, those binding forces which limit and restrict us mentally, emotionally and physically naturally drop away. We begin to appreciate life and see its beauty and truth and we long to go farther in this appreciation. The feeling has its own reward—the experience of peace, contentment, wholeness and oneness with life. Our competitive nature binds and separates ; our cooperative side joins and liberates.
When the feeling of appreciation grows, and becomes deeper, reverence for life is born within us. Contemplating the miracle of each moment and each life that surrounds us, in whatever form, fills life with brilliance and lightness. The barriers disappear and the dichotomy, the apparent predicament of living alone versus living in the world, of isolation versus communication, dissolves, washed away on a wave of this light of insight, the experience of awareness and reverence for life. The feeling to help, to simplify living and demand less for oneself, to elevate the need to communicate and sublimate the desire for touch to the level of real spiritual communion destroys the old mental barriers that inhibit our free-flowing natural love of life itself. Life is now seen as one, whether it is pulsing within us, shining in the eyes of another we meet, or emanating from the purified masters. This is the key which Mahavira brought in his teaching of ahimsā, this is the starting point and the ultimate resolution in the path of the Jaina.