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ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
small insects that may be in danger of being killed or crushed otherwise. He will not even hurt the smallest of these lowly beings; for there is no other path to perfection in universal love! The last stage in the progress of the soul is universal love, as rightly pointed out by Clement of Alexandria, who said :
"The first change is from heathenism to faith .... the second from faith to knowledge. And the latter terminating in love, thereafter gives the loving to the loved " -Ante Nicene Christian Library, vol. xii, p. 448.
'The loved' do not certainly signify only the personal relations, friends, family, tribe or nation, the entirety of the human race, nor even any real or imaginary Godhead, but the whole community of Living Beings, including the lowliest manifestation of Life Divine. This is the proper ideal, however bewildering and confusing it might appear in the householder's stage, in which it can be carried into practice only partially. The saint who has renounced the world aspires higher, and the Master actually encompasses it in his own attainments. The Jaina layman, who is still too far fettered by his evil karmas to be qualified to aspire for the ideal of universal love, begins by practising the virtue in a humbler way; he is taught to give
(i) food to the hungry, (ii) medicine to the sick, (iii) instruction (books, education) to the ignorant, and
. (iv) assistance to the distressed and the persecuted. The six daily duties of a Jaina comprise (1–3) worship of the Deva (God), veneration of the Scripture of Truth and adoration of the guru (Preceptor), (4) study, (5) charity, and (6) tapa (acts of self-denial).
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