Book Title: Jain Journal 1981 10
Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

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Page 49
________________ 86 If we look at a couple of the sayings of Mahavira we find thoughts that might very well have been born during Thoreau's retreat on the banks of Walden Pond. In Walden we find : "Happy are we, happy live we, who call nothing our own. The more you get, the more you want; your desires increase with your means."2 JAIN JOURNAL "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand." The awareness of the transitory nature of life and of the importance of making use of the here-and-now is expressed thus by Mahavira : Thoreau is not careless: • Ibid., p. 68. "You cannot prolong your life, therefore be not careless; you are past help when old age approaches."4 "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life... and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."'5 Time is of the essence to all men; Thoreau and Mahavira are no exceptions. Again from Walden : "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is."'6 2 Mahavira, The Sayings of Lord Mahavira (Aliganj, U.P. India: World Jain Mission) P. 7. Henry David Thoreau, Walden-Civil Disobedience, ed. Sherman Paul, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1960) p. 63. 'Mahavira, p. 6. Thoreau, p. 62. Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org


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