________________
Letter 3
We do these things because of the customs being followed over the generations and/or because of the constant interaction with people of other religions and without doing any analytical or logical thinking about these things. And those people who truly study and understand the basic principles behind many of our religious practices and then follow them are considered by many others as orthodox.
They do so because they themselves do not know the real meaning behind these practices and think about all those who practice them as orthodox and consider themselves as progressive.
Many of these people consider themselves as having equal belief and respect towards all the religions i.e. Sarva Dharma Samabhava धर्म समभाव. In fact true meaning of Samabhava समभाव is achieving the state of equanimity. That is without any attachment and aversion. But those who bow to God or worship him mostly do so because of some attachment towards God himself.
While studying one scripture, recently I found out the true and exact meaning of Sarva Dharma Samabhava. Usually we take the word Dharma, as religion. But in this case it is not so. Soul has many qualities or attributes to put it correctly, those attributes are called Dharma.
Now when we are learning or considering any one particular attribute we are awed by it or think of it as great. But we have to experience the equanimity towards all the attributes and concentrate on the Soul as a whole i.e. Abhed Atma THG STAT which consists of all these attributes at all the time and in equality. And then we experience the Pure Soul — Shuddha Atma Yastay. This is in true sense 'Sarva Dharma Samabhava 'Hours 4474.
(3) in our Namokar Mantra, Namo Loye Sava Sahunam urat ang Ha Hraui means I bow to all the Sadhus of this universe. Here Sadhu means Jain Monks. We have already seen who are 'Monks'. Acharya आचार्य, Upadhyay उपाध्याय and Sadhu साधु are all called as Sadhu साथु e.g. Sahu Loguttama mis sira, Sahu Mangalam ur etc. Many a times a wrong version is derived from the simple lines of Namokar Mantra. So one can wonder what blunder will take place if we try to interpret the scriptures by ourselves. We will discuss the methods of interpreting the scriptures in my next letter.
Some people say that you go ahead with study and experiencing the scriptures and philosophy of Jainism. We will help you in every possible way but don't expect us to take active part in it. If everybody starts thinking in this way then it will not be possible to pass on any kind of knowledge from one generation to the next.
