________________
116
THE JAINA GAZETTE It is not for us to forget the past. By it we learn what to avoid now. But we must look upon it as past, as dead, as showing our 'sins of youth.' Let us look upon it as we should look upon the work of children of promise with interest, with respect, with a mother's compassionate memories, but not, O not for imitation! Much have we learnt since all that; but there is yet so much to learn. Wise was the word of that once new will, risen ' twist East and West :- Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the prize of our high calling...'
Once we are aware of our rich heritage as citizens of the new world, the new will, we shall the better realize our present, let alone our past failures in the things we hold in worth, in the things we word, in the things we spend ourselves over. Notably—and this is my last word—in the way we look at and write about old scriptures. Ever do we need to see these venerable documents of ancient roots and gradual growth against their true background of a dead past in which they rooted and grew up. We are not the men amongst whom that plant took root, with whom it grew up. We are 'we'; we are not they. We need otherwise; we will otherwise, because we know, we see otherwise. If we are still needing, still willing in full accordance with the root and the growth of those scriptures, it is because we are forcing ourselves backward, and pretending we are wholly as were their authors, We are not showing the courage or the wisdom befitting our high calling. Walking on we are,- for somehow we must, but we are looking backward for guidance, when we should be looking forward, around and within. We shall not hereby be earning man's forgiveness in the future.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
