Jain Spirit 2004 06 No 19

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

Page 29

FEATURES 27
statistics or ciphers. Instead of ushering in utopia, it creates a climate of nihilism and oppression. True hope, therefore, is found less in manifestos and campaigns for abstract change and more in acts of individual compassion. I am often reminded of this individual dimension to hope in my district of London, Bloomsbury. There, I frequently encounter homeless young men who live on the streets and in the hostels around Russell Square. Most are neither feckless nor rough by nature, but remarkably kind and gentle. Many are the products of socalled 'care! Some have an almost Zenlike calm, but beneath it there is usually found a depth of loneliness and spiritual despair, as well as the more obvious material need. When I give items of food or cast-off sweaters to these young men, and talk to them as I do so, I begin to feel hope. I know that this will not solve the housing crisis or the complicated social problems that lead to young people sleeping rough. Nor do these small acts of gifts make me feel virtuous. I know that they are only stopgap measures, the moral equivalent of sticking plasters. Yet find hope in them nonetheless, because
they remind me that all of us have the power to make a difference. It is when we find the power within ourselves, rather than trusting in leaders, movements or ideologies, that we might start to address the most profound human problems with clarity and hope. Our great spiritual teachers, from Christ and Krishna to Mahavir and the Buddha, have inspired us with their personal courage and integrity, their feeling for other human beings and their practical wisdom. Their lives, point us towards right action, right knowledge and right conduct, precisely because they are made up of individual acts of compassion and bravery. Such acts are far from isolated and incidental, but part of a pattern of human transformation. They remind us of the value of friendship, love and kindness, and the inner strength that we derive from them. When we access that strength, we move out of the spiritual waste land and towards virtue. Michael Tobias, in his book Life Force: The World of Jainism, quotes the spiritual head of the Digambara Jains in India: "It is ahimsa that makes for friendship between father and son, and love between husband and wife." In
Photo: James Maturin-Baird Jainism, individual acts of compassion and expressions of love count for more than pious rhetoric or theory. I am typing this article in the Yorkshire Dales in winter, during one of our dramatic and beautiful cold snaps. Walking, or more accurately ploughing, through the snow on the hilltops the other day, I looked up at the leaden sky and noticed a patch of clear, crisp blue tinged with red. It is a quality of light that I associate with this region, and which makes walking here special for me. I saw another, smaller strand of light, then another, seemingly more distant and then, before I even realised it, had the blue triumphed over the grey and the wet snow stopped falling. The fragments of clear light met and merged with each other, subtly transforming the sky. We could do worse than reflect on that image when we think about hope, which begins with fragments from our lives and then becomes something greater than ourselves.
Aidan Rankin is News Editor of Jain Spirit. Email: aidanr@dircon.co.uk aidanr@dircon.co.uk