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Śramana, Vol 59, No. 3/July-September 2008
fifth, after passing his hand over its back, declared it to be a mountain, the sixth, who had touched one of the legs, said the elephant was a pillar; and the seventh described it as a piece of rope, because he had just caught hold of the tail. Each of then grasped only part of the nature of the actual thing. And just so, each of the various religions on earth appears to make us see a different aspect of Truth Divine. How then are we entitle to speak of merit in one or another of them?
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As a matter of fact, the individual, whenever acting, endeavours to act so as to establish or to maintain an optimum of physical wellbeing, in response to its innate egotistic instincts. In this activity, it feels itself often and again checked to another kind of inner voices, which (no matter whether they be called conscience, or categorical imperative, or social instincts, or whatever else) regularly warn it, whenever egotism tempts it to transgress one or another of the universal commandments of ethics, and to endanger, thereby, directly or indirectly the well being of the social body to which it belongs. Life seems to be nothing but an attempt of the individual to keep itself balancing, as it were, on the delicate line of demarcation between the postulates of egotism and those of ethics, avoiding to hurt its own interests on one, and those of society on the other side. This state of equilibrium is experienced, by the refined mind, as the optimum of inner happiness attainable under the given circumstances. It is that bliss, that "peace of God", which religion promises to its followers.
For religion has always considered to be its task to indicate that line of demarcation winding along between those two postulates. Every religion has approached this task with boldness and determination, and in its own peculiar way, following its own particular character and tradition. If a religion has succeeded in fulfilling its task well, its doctrines must guarantee a state of perfect and permanent harmony between the well being of the individual and that of society, under whatever conditions imaginable. It is obvious that reversely, the degree and constancy of perfection characterizing the harmony of
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