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Towards World Peace on the Wheels of 'Anekāntavāda...
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An informed analysis of these and the like calamities of our era reveals that it is the perception of one's own individual, caste, religious, social, economic, political and cultural ways, thinking and values alone as correct or superior that leads to the related (i.e. consequential) decay, degeneration and disasters. The inability to understand and give respect to the 'total picture' is the root cause of these contemporary dangers to world peace. In this regard, I would like to quote a passage (that aims at explaining this very need of looking at the 'whole') from The Complete Works of Swāmi Vivekananda:
"A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog. Of course the evolutionists were not there then to tell us whether the frog lost its eyes or not, but, for our story's sake, we must take it for granted that it had its eyes, and that it every day cleansed the water of all the worms and bacilli that lived in it with an energy that would do credit to our modern bacteriologists. In this way it went on and became a little sleek and fat. Well, one day another frog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.
"Where are you from?"
"I am from the sea."
"The sea! How big is that? Is it as big as my well?" and he took a leap from one side of the well to the other.
"My friend," said the frog of the sea, "how do you compare the sea with your little well?"
Then the frog took another leap and asked, "Is your sea so
big?"
"What nonsense you speak, to compare the sea with your well!"
"Well, then," said the frog of the well, "nothing can be bigger than my well; there can be nothing bigger than this; this fellow is a liar, so turn him out."
