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and almost incredible possibilities lie within our reach if we would cultivate inner tranquility on the lines of the ahimsă dharma. And let me further add that in Jainism there is no possibility of any one's being persecuted on the ground of his being an enemy of a God. In Jainism there is no place for such a contingency, as it does not acknowlegde the being and existence of any Creator or Ruler divine or manager of the world whose enmity man could possibly incur. The Perfect Souls are the only Gods in Jainism; and none else! Thus Jainism is the true refuge for all afllicted souls and all beings.
I might point out that materially also the probabilities are that no one who practises the ahimsă dharma sincerely and from his heart would be a loser in the long run ; for the law of the correspondence of emotions makes it clear that similar emotions are roused and excited in the hearts of men on almost all occasions. If I gave away my cloak also to a man who is unjustly seeking my coat, he is sure to repent of it in a majority of cases and become my friend. There are some really bad-natured men also, but their number happily is not very great, so that in the great majority of cases the rule will hold good and the evil-doer chastened and reformed by the superior kind of the emotions of love of his victim. Those of the evil-doer's friends also who come to know of the incident will generally put him to shame and reclaim him.
To sum up ; if you want to estabiish lasting peace on earth you must make men love one another. But you cannot change men's hearts by a mere stroke of your pen, or by preaching to them a sermon on sympathy and good-will; you must engender the emotion of love by showing the paramount importance of its need and value in the first instance. What is needed is the broadcasting of the kind of education that will excite the sentiment in the hearts of men on natural and rational grounds, and will fill it with love and keep it filled for all times. Nothing else will ever succeed, as is manifest from a perusal of the pages of the World's History and the records of the religious persecutions in the past. Jainism to-day invites the world, through this great assemblage of its leaders, to study the Science of Love, that is the Doctrine of Ahimsā, to be able to put an end to all forms of hatred and prejudice and to fill the hearts of men with love for one another.
Victory to the Ahimsa Dharma !
from Jainism and World Problems
Jain Education International
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