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truthful to it, seeing things as they are without judging them as good or bad. It means "Do not lie" in its deepest sense: do not have illusions about yourself. A person of truth goes beyond mental constructs and realizes existence as it is. According to Jainism, there is no universal truth but a subjective truth which differs from person to person. Knowledge is accessible according to individual's means. Each individual is in possession of his own knowledge which is confined to himself. There is no strict rule that governs knowledge; it is totally individual and subjective. Absolute negation or absolute affirmation is impossible in the knowledge in the sense that the individual could both believe and disbelieve any theory of knowledge. Truth is what is: one accepts what is as it is, speaking of it as it is, and lives it as it is. Any individual or group claiming to know the whole truth is by definition engaged in falsehood. Living in truth means that one avoids manipulating people or nature because there is no one single truth that any mind can grasp or tongue can express.
Mahavira recognized the partial and incomplete nature of ordinary human knowledge and emphasized the need of a comprehensive outlook; mutual understanding, tolerance and understanding the view point of others, discard absolutism of thought, mental reservations, and misunderstanding. Desire, hatred, pride, anger and greed stem from partial one-sided understanding of things dogmatically presumed to be the whole truth. How many times have we embarrassingly realized the inappropriateness of our anger, jealousy, pride, or greed when we came to see the "full picture"? Greed for money vanishes when it is
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