Jain Spirit 1999 10 No 02

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 52

Meditation in a troubled world
lead to purposeful actions in the community. After all, he spent most of his life wandering the back roads of India discussing the fundamentals of peace and of ecology with anyone who cared to listen. He actively prevented harm, liberated animals, found practical solutions to the problems he encountered in village after village.
universal language of the Self, the one inexhaustible source of kinetic energy and transformation; indeed, the only reliable mirror of history and of the human heart. Hence we need to understand it as a tool for change. That implies a serious role for contemplation in the international courts of justice; for geopolitics and ecological economics; for saving endangered species and habitat; for ameliorating widespread conditions of abuse and suffering amongst human beings. Mahavira's own life is a fitting example of how the internal dialogue might
Today, the tragedy of a world in a state of war is more with us than ever before, largely on account of the fact that we number 6 billion ungainly consumers, mostly carnivorous, and indifferent. In Mahavira's time the human population was not more than 225 million. At 6 billion, we are witnessing total collapse. Consider that just in the state of California, approximately 600,000 dogs and cats are euthanized (killed) each year, with scarcely a murmur of concern by the public. A similar number of Rwandans were massacred, and, again, the world stood by. And, to reiterate, we are now staring face-on at an extinction spasm that could take out 60% of all life on Earth, while humans, flaunting their seeming immunity to natural laws,
attain the staggering population size of 12 billion in coming decades.
We'd better go back to the roots of our contemplative life and find effective ways to bridge what is, apparently, an impasse, and hopefully a temporary one. Call it paralysis by analysis, call it moral indecisiveness, the inability to discriminate priorities from so many imperatives. Call it the ego, or the general problem of existence. Maybe it is simply the unique trauma of our times. Evolution provided us with the contemplative faculty: the need to sustain internal discussion; to bring forth that most private and persuasive and impassioned of voices, from the depths of each soul.
Now it is time to practice what, in the depths of ourselves, we would preach.
Author of nearly 30 books, writer, director, producer of over 100 films, Michael Tobias is President and Director of the Dancing Star Foundation, one of the largest animal sanctuaries in North America. His books include: Life Force: The world of Jainism' ain Publishing Co, California) and Environmental Meditation'(The Crossing Press, 1993, available from www.amazon.com). Tobias has also made an award-winning PBS documentary: "Ahimsa - Non-violence which is a beautiful account of the relevance of Jainism to the modern day.
A simple shrine inside a Jain home
Photo: Punit M. Shah, Atlanta
October - December 1999 • Jain Spirit 51