Acharya Mahaprajna
Excerpts from a review by Dr.Thomas Daffern, President, Gobal Green University and Director, International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy, Convenor, School of Nonviolence (April 2009):
“This is a most excellent summary of the ideas of several millennia of spiritual practice concerning the way that the ancient Indian spiritual teachings of the Jains would like us to deal with the vast increase of violence in our world today. Anyone reading this book with a heart and conscience cannot but be moved and wish immediately to help this cause. It is based on the teachings of a living Jain spiritual teacher, Mahapragya, and is written in a very approachable, very readable style. Mahapragya has authored a large number of books and deserves to be known as a major scholar of philosophy and contemporary peace philosophy in his own right.
Divided into 17 chapters, the work is all encompassing, and even though it touches on matters with a light brush stroke, every thing that the planet needs to transform itself from a chaos of violence hatred, sectarian and religious conflict, revenge killings, terrorism and war, is written neatly in this slender volume.
One of the most powerful messages in this Nonviolence Training manual (which ought to have been distributed free to each leader who was present at that meeting) is that development is not simply about economics. Mahapragya, with the brilliant insight of a true philosopher, sees that part of the problem affecting the global economic situation is that we are simply pursuing the wrong economic model, because it is imbalanced. Mahapragya calls instead for a new model of development, which he calls Balanced Development.”
