Soul Searching

By Nikhil, aged 7 from John Bramston Primary School

Soul Searching

When I heard the word “Spirited Arts” I started thinking of a soul. That reminded me of a quote my parents had taught me about:

“All souls are alike and potentially divine. None is superior or inferior”. Mahavir Swami (a Jain God)

To me this means that all souls are equal even though their bodies might be all sorts of shapes and sizes. A soul can is not better or worse than another soul. Which means we should treat each other with respect. We shouldn’t harm even the tiniest insects because their soul is just as valuable as ours.

I love taking photos and the quote inspired my photography project for the competition. I would look for souls and take photos of them. We can’t physically see a soul, so I have taken photos of the different bodies that the soul is in. It was fun recognising a soul in all the beings I had photographed.

I went to different places and took a lot of photos for this project, so for my collage I chose a few of them. I tried to include a range of shapes, sizes, and species. I kept all my photos in the collage the same size because they were all equally important. I didn’t want to overlap the photos in my collage as I thought that no soul should overshadow another.

So many questions came up while I was doing my project like, what would a soul look like if we could see it? How big is a soul question what happens to the soul when the body dies? Does a plant have a soul? Doing this project has made me think a lot so I probably have more questions now than I did before. I am a Jain, but I believe that it doesn’t matter what religion a person is, if I can respect all living things it will make them a better and kinder person.

* All photos taken by me at home, school, Hainault Forest, Ranthambore National Park and Woodbourne safari park.