Mahavir Prince Of Peace

Author(s): Ranchor Prime
Publisher: Mandala Publishing

Page 11

www.kabatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsur Gyanmandir
PREFACE
When we speak of ethics in the twenty-first century, we are speaking a language of urgency that lains have known for thousands of years.
The legacy of spiritual asceticism in both Western and Eastern traditions of
young men and women giving up their possessions and material cares to embark upon a life of mendicancy, self-denial and the embrace of God, has poignantly lived on in such recent examples of selfless service as Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Schweitzer. The slums of Calcutta, the African outback and the early adversity inherent in slavery and the fight for civil rights are remote from the daily turmoil with which most people today must cope. And yet in the broader context of worldly concerns, the countless individual and community struggles for freedom, environmental justice, gender equity and economic fairness are more with us than ever. The raw material out of which we configure the many allegories and legends of goodness and virtue, of religious pilgrimage and homage to the great sages of all traditions stems from an idealism arising nonetheless from our universal human challenges.
Carl Jung speaks of the "heroism of daily life" as that steadfastness of heart and soul in the midst of life's challenges. What must have incited Buddha, Christ, Lao-tzu and Saint Francis to follow their hearts surely must also hold promise for us today. Despite this age of cynicism in which
most people find themselves witnesses, if not outright collaborators, in trends and political decisions we might otherwise denounce-wars, runaway consumption, animal cruelty, human rights abuses, environmental degradation-and notwithstanding so many glaring disparities sundering the human family, there burgeons everywhere the craving for deep spirituality, A renaissance of moral priorities tugs at the common sense, shaking up old realities and crying out for a new jurisprudence that holds the entire living world as a priority. We need an ethical stance whose underlying proposition declares unequivocally that life is precious, the earth is our home and that we as human beings can leave a footprint that could be softer, if only we willed it so, and worked at it.
Any moral compass reading for our times must grapple with raw inequities and a demographic winter that has consigned a large majority of human beings to poverty, marginalizing the source of their food, polluting the air they breathe and the water they drink. Such times demand noble behavior from sure-footed shepherds and international alliances built upon trust and chivalry. They require an altruism that puts the bigger picture before the self and calls for clarity of common purpose, higher callings and