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JAINISM AND WORLD PROBLEMS
Jaina Saint is really the one man who practises Universal Love. He will not hurt even an insect, let alone man. He has left the world behind, and will not, on any account, look back. His heart is saturated with ahimsa; he even controls his bodily automatism, and will never, even in thought, wish harm to another living being, be he man or animal. Really, it is only when a man has become so far filled with universal love that we can confidently rely upon him under all circumstances. He whose ideals are no longer in or of the world will certainly not degrade himself by doing base worldly things, like setting up invidious and hateful distinctions, amongst men.
Apart from the Saints, the only other class of men who are at all likely to stand firm in the belief of the brotherhood of man are those who are fully convinced of the need for practising ahimsa on religious grounds. You cannot expect your diplomats and politicians to fall into this class. These men are all the time actuated by greed and the lust of acquisition, and have even in sleep half an eye open to their own interest. And the pity of the thing is that while with their tongue they are uttering honeyed speech, with their hand they are actually getting ready to strike a deadly blow at those very men to whom their words are directed.
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Religious men, too, will fail and have always failed to come up to the mark, wherever superstition and misunderstood theology have been the predominant influences in the human heart. Many persons have committed inexpressibly horrible atrocities on their fellow men in the belief that they were serving their god or gods by doing so, and, therefore, he or they could not get angry with them. type that will again and again flout both the moral conscience and public opinion, whenever he is able to have the upper hand. Their working formula simply is: might is right!
This is the
What is wanted is a firmly rooted belief in the doctrine that makes the soul responsible for its actions in subjection
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