Their dream is for a world of nonviolence

[rug]

By Jill Carroll
Published 05:56 p.m., Thursday, January 12, 2012

Many people know that Mohandas Gandhi influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. in his notions of nonviolent, passive resistance. Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence was a topic of discussion at Morehouse College and at Crozer Theological Seminary, where King studied.

Gandhi's nonviolence teaching formed the center of the Montgomery boycott movement in 1956. King journeyed to India in 1959 at the invitation of the Gandhi Memorial Trust to observe firsthand the strategies and impact of Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence.

What many people do not know, however, is that Gandhi himself was influenced in his philosophy of nonviolence by the small, 2,500-year-old religion of Jainism. Though other indigenous religions of India - Hinduism, Buddhism - exhort nonviolent practices of vegetarianism and pacifism, neither of them affirms nonviolence as consistently and rigorously as Jainism.

Jainism is one of the oldest religions of India and has about 6 million members worldwide. About 700 Jain families live in the Houston area. Jainism shares a general worldview with Hinduism and Buddhism. It holds to the ideas of karma and reincarnation (transmigration of the soul), and sees the goal of spiritual life as moksha, or "release," from samsara (the cycle of life, death and rebirths).

http://www.chron.com/life/houston-belief/article/Their-dream-is-for-a-world-of-nonviolence-2494732.php

[MarkCharles]

1. That's the dream of most atheists, too!

Strange how no one ever talks about THAT part of atheism!

[Starboard Tack]

4. So why don't we, instead of bashing people of faith?

Lack of organization perhaps.

[laconicsax]

2. Didn't Gandhi beat his wife?

[cbayer]

3. He also ate meat, smoked a cigarette, and almost visited a prostitute,

all prior to developing his philosophy.