ABSTRACT
Satish Kumar was four when his father died and it filled him with the terror of death. He used to listen to the travelling Jain monks speak of the cycle of life and death, and of conquering death, and he dreamt of joining their order. When he was nine, his mother relented. Yet, by the age of 17, Satish had come to realize that in his attempt to overcome death he was in fact avoiding life; he ran away from the order and threw himself into the world. He continued to devote himself to his spirituality and his ideals of non-violence, but discovered life, and its limitations, in all its richness (Kumar 2006).
