Acarya Vidyasagar On How To Become Greater Than Ourselves
We are living in times where what was once a process of becoming greater is now being used as a weapon for ruthless expansion of one's faith : to exterminate pluralism, diversity and people with different beliefs.
In such times, in an anthology of his speeches published as the September-1997 third edition of "Pavan-Pravachan", the great worshipper of humanitarian values Acarya Vidyasagar asserts in his mediation on The Sanctity Of Jainism And Its Purpose In Our Lives, that the expansion of one's self is the most cardinal action for a successful life and one should give up the compulsive need of forceful expansion of their faith.
As a religious figure advocating for communal harmony and peaceful existence, he calls upon the strategy to become better than ourselves by celebrating the priceless values of self-mastery taught by Mahavira, a contemporary of the light of Asia. He emphasises on giving up the same mistakes we have been committing mutilating humanity all along.
"From Rishabhdev to Mahavira, all the twenty-four masters of Jain spirituality, had abstained from making certain mistakes on their path to greatness and their journeys and experiences have inspired a solution on how to avoid falling prey to the same mistakes."
'Give up the sin, not the sinner', that's what they taught us and that's the way to become a better person which is the need of the hour."
"It's a blunder if you despise the sinner, it'll kill the slightest possiblity of them becoming better and your hate will veritably transform you into a sinner yourself.
Our motive should be to identify our own mistakes and hit them right up in the roots. Without the roots there won't be a tree and that is achievable by doing what is right."
During the ongoing ideology paradox in the world about what to identify with? Which philosophy is right? Which religion is right? Are religions merely absurd means of gaining power and influence?
The Acarya concludes in his introspective meditation on The Purpose Of Religion In Our Lives why one should ever need a religion at all. But one tragic question remains, which he emphasizes that you have the ability to find your answer to.
"Now the question remains how to identify the mistakes and who decides what is right?
You do. By training yourself with the three gems: right perception, right-knowledge, and right-conduct."
Right-perception, as explained in Acarya Umaswati's Tattvartha-Adhigam-Sutra (also known as the Moksha-Shastra: a roadmap to Moksha), is the ability to identify everything in its true form, that what it is.
Right-knowledge is the knowledge obtained through the right perception and acting in accordance with the right-knowledge is the right-conduct.
Shedding light on what to do until you have these three gems in you vault, he exemplifies soil and its mother Earth in a conversation as animate beings —
"The soil asks the Earth 'I have been downtrodden, crushed, walked upon all my life, will I ever get beyond this?' "
"The Earth gives the soil another path to greatness, a three fold path of 'tolerance, trust and patience'. So when one day a potter digs the soil up with a shovel, crushes it again and shoves it into a fire pit, it tolerates the pain, patiently because it trusts its mother's words. And as the outcome of all that suffering and pain it becomes a pitcher that soothes everyone with its refreshing and cold water which everyone is grateful for."
"No matter how hard a time the world gives you, you do the right things with patience, and a belief that in the end you'll become better than before. Keep doing this because that's how you become great."
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