When knowledge or wisdom is absent, facts can be misused. If there is balance, such a situation does not arise. A balanced view takes into account as many aspects as possible. This is the anekanta principle.
The one who has perspective of anekanta does not take a single-dimensional view of things that could twist logic. In the explanation of universal laws anekanta has lent balance. Even in the world of conduct and thoughts, anekanta plays an important role. Restraint and equanimity are also results of ane-kanta. Without the anekanta view there would be no reason for restraint.
Through anekanta we accept the coexistence of opposites as a fact. Everything has its limits. There is need for equanimity. Both loss and gain are to be accepted. It is the norm that if there is gain there will also be loss and if there is loss, there will be gain, too.
The two are mutually connected. The two are, in fact, one. The difference is only in time or space. There is no distance between happiness and sorrow or life and death, they both go together. Sometimes one feels happy and life seems bright and sometimes one feels sad and life seems miserable. Where is the distance between water pulleys?
It is one single chain. The wheels bring in water, empty it and return. Wheels full of water and empty of water keep coming and going. They work together. Similarly, joy and sorrow work together. Life and death work together. There is no second that belongs entirely to life or entirely to death. The first second of life is also the first second of death. Death is not an event that is to take place only after 70-80 years. It can take place even in the first second. With the first second of birth the event of death also takes place. Creation and destruction go hand in hand. One cannot find even one man who has been only praised, never condemned, or always condemned and never praised. Both go together.
The balance is maintained. Loss and gain, praise and insults, life and death, all of them go together. We have a problem when we do not go along with them. If we learn to go along with them then we will be truly spiritual, followers of anekanta.
This way our problems come under our control. But we are very strange, we don't usually adopt a balanced view. We do not like to move along with the principle of anekanta; we want to move independently. An individual wants gain but not loss, joy but not sorrow, life but not death, and he wants praise, never condemnation.
He then forgets the universal rule. In this dualistic world, nothing comes alone. Everything is in pairs. Man is ignorant. He wants to break the order of anekanta and wants only a single dimension. When the world and nature have a rule, how can it be broken? Yet man makes his own single-dimensional perspective. Under pressure of not wanting loss but wanting gain, not wanting insults but wanting praise, man falls victim to unidimensional perception. As told to Lalit Garg. By Acharya Mahaprajna