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JAINISM AND ITS POWER
143 another occasion the language employed was equally significant: • If ye knew what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice." The significance of this forcible language is that the people were not qualified to grasp the full explanation,and therefore the doctrine was given in the form of a commandment which they were to follow. Now, I ask you, if the talking of life for the purpose of a sacrifice in the name of one's god, once a year or so, is cruel and calls for the exercise of mercy, does it cease to be cruel when done for one's own selfish purpose, and in the name of one's own palate or tongue? Such briefly is the explanation of the effect of an action on oneself. Hence, Jainism teaches quite plainly that those who practise ahimsa, that is to say those who carry out the principle of mercy and love in their lives not only experience the joy of letting others live but they also actually and truly benefit themselves while those who are greedy and selfish, and barbarous and, those who are actuated by the principle of hatred in their dealings with other forms of life, and all those who are vicious and who delight in acts of bloodshed and the raking up and fomenting of quarrels and disputes in reality are neither friends of themselves nor of anybody else. They are, in fact, the greatest enemies of mankind, including themselves and those whom they hold dear and near.
Such, my friends, is the doctrine of love ; it will enable us to realise our real inherent Divinity if we put it into practice : but if we disregard it and act contrary to its dictates there can be no doubt but that the curse pronounced on the typical symbolized sinner in the Bible-cursed is the ground for thy sake becomes really descriptive of our own spirits. It is in our hands to make of this inner spirit-substance a veritable Garden of Eden or reduce it to a state of desolation when it will be capable of yielding only thistles and thorns in place of the ambrosia of the Life-giving Tree. It may interest you to know that this course becomes effective through the material influx that has been referred to already by me to-day. In the Bible also the fact of this evil influx is distinctly recognized, though like most Biblical tenets
he doctrine could not be and is not given in clear terms. In Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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