Jainism and World Problems

SR No.: 006708
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1934
Total Pages: 240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

Page 111

JAINA DOCTRINE OF AHIMSA
kinds from another point of view: it may be the doing of the wrongful act oneself, the getting it done by some one else, or the encouragement of some one who has done the deed for one's benefit. We thus have
4x3x3x3=108
Thus himsa is of 108 types.
With reference to the intention being considered sinful, it is to be borne in mind that himsa affects and changes one's disposition, through the agency of a kind of subtle material, termed karma-vargana. If a tender-hearted vegetarian who has never eaten meat and who has a horror of taking life were to start taking flesh, in course of time he might even come to like it, though at first the act of eating meat would be intolerably disgusting to him. This is because his disposition will have been changed from a tender-hearted one to a cruel and callous one. He may even go out hunting and shooting and take delight in the slaughter of animal life. A great change is implied in this. Now, no change whatsoever can take place in an organism without the intervention of a modifying material cause, and Jainism points out that with every action of ours there pours into the soul a subtle material influx which combines with it and changes its disposition in different ways. This material is a kind of sensory stimulus which is constantly impinging against the portals of the senses and without which our knowledge of external nature will be nothing. When this sensory stimulus is merely allowed to evoke knowledge or perception, the disposition remains unaffected thereby ; but when the individual comes to entertain a feeling of like or dislike for an object perceived or an experience had, the material influx is drawn further in and enters the constitution or the disposition of the will, and modifies its character. Now because the acts of himsa are extremely selfish and hard-hearted ones, the disposition which conceives and encourages them becomes characterized with selfishness and hard-heartedness; and thoughtlessness is imposed on the
103