Source: Jain Spirit
On May 2, 2005 Jain Spirit ran a story by Karuna and Aparigraha Jain, a Berlin couple, on how they discovered Jainism. They write, "Born two years after the end of World War II as Protestant Christians in West-Germany, we were brought up in a time when our parents were just happy having survived the chaos of war...During our adolescence the rebuilding of the material world was phenomenally successful... As an inherent consequence, this world of rationality and logic neither leaves place nor time for the inner values of a human being. Value is given only to what can be measured and counted. All those values finally are named in terms of money. Who am I? What am I doing here? What am I living for? Around us, people were deeply immersed in this ‘modernity’ and self-gratification. They seemed to have no such questions, no such problems... In short, we became strangers in our own homes! Detecting the lack of knowledge of our inner world, our self and soul, we found ourselves really lonely in the midst of millions. From our youth we were looking for an integral way of living without being separated from the values of the inner world."