Purusharthsiddhyupay English

SR No.: 001105
Original Sutra Author: Amrutchandracharya
Author: Ajit Prasad
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1933
Total Pages: 160
Language: English, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_English, Ethics, & Principle
File Size: 11 MB

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One would remove the maggots as carefully as he can, wash the wound and dress it up.
While going on an urgent business, one finds a swarm of ants, or earth-worms on the ground in front. He would try to avoid crushing them by deviating from the path, and if that be impracticable, he would tread gently and carefully, and avoid hurting the living beings as far as is possible.
A fly is caught in a spider's web, and he runs to sting it to death. A Jain householder would do what he can to extricate the fly by breaking the web. This act is Ahimsa, protection of life, though some little injury has been caused to the spider in the damage to its web, and in the loss of its food.
A person is suffering from a disease caused by bacilli. A Jain Doctor would not mind giving such medicine as he knows would kill the germs. His act would certainly be Himsa, but Himsa of two-sensed beings and thus of a triling degree when compared to the Ahimsa, the good, resulting from protecting a five sensed person. Again his motive in giving the medicine is not to kill the germs but to save the patient, and that determines the resultant Karmic effect.
Innumerable germs exist in the human body and they die in consequence of a fast, for want of nourishment. Observance of a fast would thus be Himsã in a way, but the avoidance of Himsa in ways innumerable, while fasting, more than outweights the technical Himsá.
What is indefensible from any point of view is a host of bad habits which very many people copy quite thought. lessly, such as crushing a fly or a mosquito to death, the use of fly-paper, or flit, throwing out a rat to a dog or a cat, stoning frogs, shooting birds with a catapult, or other. wise, stealing eggs, abusing, slapping or kicking one in an inferior or dependant position. Such are the commonest acts of Himsa which are committed every moment, through sheer bad habit ; and these should be stopped early at home and in school.
Jain Ahimsa while a basic principle of religion is the foundation for all ethics, morality, good social, municipal,