Jain Journal 1990 04

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

Page 47

158
motives. Let the Doctrine of Love, as implied in the measage of Ahimsa Parama Dharmah-Non-violence is the Highest Religion, as taught by the Great Tirthankaras-now replace the mad rush for power and personal self-aggrandizement, and self-glorification. Your reward will be sweet yet.
JAIN JOURNAL
Let me add that only he will be found willing and able to practise ahimsa and universal love who has understood the nature of his soul and of the enmity of the flesh and of the friends and allies of the enemy. Only he will have his heart saturated with the ennobling, friend-making, peace-engendering emotion who knows that by loving others he helps his own soul to grow strong, while in hating any one, even a lowly worm, he only helps the enemy, that is the flesh, and weakens and enervates his real self!
In practical life, ahimsa will be found to be the one sure means of taming savage natures. It will civilize the uncivilized barbarian, and make him a good and desirable citizen. The householder, who is involved in the world and still very far away from sainthood, practises it with a little qualification. He cannot emulate the saint in this regard. For while the saint will hurt no one, on any account, the good layman will yield to the need for defending himself in the practice of ahimsă. But he will never be the aggressor himself; and when compelled to defend himself he will use only just sufficient force to overpower the enemy. The king who knows how to temper justice with mercy is therefore protected by ahimsā. The layman also longs to enter sainthood one day, to be able to practise ahimsă properly.
The saint, who has renounced the world, and who wishes to make the conquest of his lower nature as speedily as he can, tries to observe the vow of ahimsa with absolute rigidity, in all respects so far as it is physically possible to do so. The highest saints who have attained the Ideal of Life, namely, the Supreme Status, are able to practise Universal Love without any kind to qualification. Their nature is changed in the end; they attain to deification, and the Perfection of Divinity. All this is due to ahimsa, the principle of Love, the attribute of God.
From the stand-point of human psychology, also, there are two kinds of men in the world who are, or at least should be, above racial and religious distinction. These are the really saintly men who practise Universal Love as a part of their religious discipline and the enlightened laymen who are fully impressed with the brotherhood of man, and the fact that in wishing evil to any one else one actually injures one's own soul. Observation and the study of human psychology fully support the view that a true saint will ever regrd all humanity as his brethren,