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indulgence in them that breeds avarice and greed and therefore contributes to non-truths and violence. A self-imposed limit on possessions helps free the seeker from these passions and imparts on them a rare sense of tranquillity and contentment. Gandhi's life is a model of the practice of aparigraha.
Gandhi was a doer as much as a thinker. To him the code of ethics that he followed were not merely something to he studied for intellectual curiosity, but a code, that must be put into practice. It was a measure of his inner strength and his absolute integrity and honesty that on those occasions that his self-discipline failed him, he was the first to admit it to both himself and the world and then strive to adhere to his code of ethics with a renewed vigour. The panch anuvrata, along with Gandhi's own vows of love for swadeshi, fearlessness and the elimination of untouchability, became a way of life for all those lived in his asrams. The practice of the vows was not viewed as a deprivation or sacrifice, but a source of strength and joy.
Gandhi's message, inspired by the Jaina tenets of anekantavada, truth, and non-violence, were grounded in the philosophy of the oneness of life and timeless universal love, a message that now more than ever before is so important to understand and put into practice. If we pause to reflect, we find ourselves living in a society burdened with dogma and intolerance, violence and strife, where the perversion of religious passions stalk our civilisation and fan the fires of bigotry, intolerance, bloodshed and war. The tragedy of our civilisation is reflected in the words of child psychiatrist Morris Frazer when he spoke of the legacy of the war in Ireland, "a generation of children who from infancy have lived with fear, have (also] been taught to hate and now aspire to kill."
If we pay heed to the essential message of religion, of the oneness of life and universal love, how is it that some in the name of religion have inspired violence and hatred? They have forgotten what Gandhi discovered through Rajachandra and the Jaina tradition, the principle of anekantavada.
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