Jainism Abroad

Author(s): Pratap J Tolia
Publisher: Vardhaman Bharati International Foundation

Page 24

23
around, we would still be all Monks in the jungle or at least technologically at a very inferior level. Even a Jain like Prof. Toliya, likes a refrigerator and likes a car. Would you like a car, and refrigerator or don't you?
Prof. Pratapkumar J. Toliya: No, not at all. I'm not bothered about a refrigerator or car, but I'm bothered about my realization.
Dr. John Monelesco: You don't have a car? Prof. Pratapkumar J. Toliya: No, I don't have it nor do I have a refrigerator, neither do I crave for it. I would like to tell you that I walk 10 miles a day.
Dr. John Monelesco: How do you go to other places, rickshaw?
Prof. Pratapkumar J. Toliya: No, I have a small Suvega, Scooter, A moped bike. Dr. John Monelesco: However, what I'm trying to say is that we have to use conveyance, a certain amount of material greed and tempting to make life bearable with our religious philosophies i.e., aerobatics, from your point of view, by seeing consciously we obviously are expecting the day of reckoning, the good day. People should understand when talking about the day of reckoning both in Hinduism and Jainism, we are not talking about Hell or Heaven, the way we are discussing it now. We are talking about Moksha or Nirvana, complete bliss. Let me explain it technically - the joining date for you is not being but non-being. If it is "non-being", the people of course will not understand what it is, but it is this - Our sufferings are all over - now we have joined something neither good nor bad - it is bliss from the point of view of having no torture. This is the whole difference between the gloomy, pessimistic philosophy of the orient, a perfect one too, and our "happy-go-lucky-philosophy" of when you do good, you go to heaven. In Islam too - you got to do good - you have 40 "Holies" to entertain you and give you honey and milk. To them bliss means something else, not being tortured anymore, not having to go through a life full of exertion, struggles. It is a different type of philosophy. But explain to the guys your TM.
Prof. Pratapkumar J. Toliya: Meditation, according to Jainism is somewhat different, because in it "Who am I?" is to be realized in this course, when the problem of accumulation comes, one has to give up more of outward things and go inward. Not forcibly, but naturally, go on leaving one by one, just as a tree gives up the leaves in the Fall. In the same way, one has to go on and then come to inner self giving up the attachment to the body, to the food, even thinking, and then go to the inner self, where one realizes one's self - the reply to "Who am I?".Here comes Jain meditation, which takes you unto the real stage - the balanced stage, neither good nor bad, to the tranquility within the bliss within.
******************************
*
*
*
*
**
*
*
*
*
**
tttttttttttttttt*