Jain Journal 1980 07

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

Page 10

On Ahimsa, Non-Violence, or the Way of Reverence for Life
SHREE CHITRABHANU
The first step toward non-violence in the world is to have reverence for your own Self. How can you care for others if you do not first care for yourself? How can you experience love for anyone if you are carrying anger and hatred toward your own Self? Where there is the poison of violence, there is no love. A person who is harboring hatred, greed, jealousy, criticism, all dark and bleak emotions and negative thoughts in his mental closet will not experience the nectar of love. It is not possible.
The violence we see in the world today is nothing but the projection of minds suffering from self-hatred. Animals are not so harmful as I have seen so-called civilized human beings act when they live without love and reverence for themselves and for life. Without self-reverence and awareness of life, the human being is a very dangerous beast. He can accumulate wealth and use that wealth to create, buy, and sell more and more lethal weapons for the purpose of killing human beings. He can even be looked up to as a very big man. He can be a senator, a congressman, a president, or a businessman, but his business is the business of blood.
A person can kiss his child and wife in the morning, climb into the cockpit of a fighter plane, and bomb villages a few hundred miles away, killing or crippling many innocent women and children no different from his own loved ones. Modern man with skill, logic, and intellectual prowess can plan and carry out the destruction of thousands of living beings without the slightest regret or feeling. How is this possible? Because there is a vast gap between his head and his heart. He never asks himself, "What am I doing? Why am I doing this? By doing this, what am I going to gain? What benefit am I bringing to the world at large ?"
Many of us are alarmed and disturbed at the sight of so much violence in the world. What should we do? Do we have to accept it? Do we have to feel helpless and give in to hopelessness? Sadhaka is the Sanskrit word for spiritual aspirant. It carries the meaning-not complacent. We need not feel helpless if we know how not to be complacent. Instead of looking outside of ourselves for the causes of violence in the