Ahimsa Crisis You Decide

SR No.: 007754
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Sulekh C Jain
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy
Publication Year: 2016
Total Pages: 328
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, D000, & D005
File Size: 6 MB

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wool, which involves inflicting injury and death on five-sensed beings, then it must mean that we can eat flesh as well. That is, there is no limiting principle that would allow us to distinguish between dairy and wool or leather, and flesh, or indeed, from any form of violence. If we cannot avoid all violence, and, therefore dairy, egg, wool, and leather are morally acceptable, then why just dairy, eggs, wool, and leather? Why not meat? Why not robbery or assault? Or murder? So this justification for nonveganism also fails. The third and most frequently used justification involves the principle of anekantavada, or what has come to be known as the Jain “doctrine of relativity that no position on any issue can be absolutely true because all positions can only reflect a particular perspective. When I have discussed the need to eschew dairy, wool, and leather, I have had Jains say to me that the principle of anekantavada means that I cannot say that it is immoral to consume or use these items; all I can say is that it is immoral from my perspective. Any such argument must fail. The doctrine of anekantavada concerns ontology, or the nature of existence, and has nothing to do with moral issues. The doctrine developed historically as a way of mediating the dispute between Hinduism, which emphasized the permanence of things, and Buddhism, which emphasized the impermanence of things. The Jain doctrine of anekantavada says that dravya or substances, including living and nonliving, material and non-material, are permanent in that these substances possess certain gunas or qualities. However, matter is a constant state of changing; the paryayas modes or states of matter are always in flux. So existence is both permanent and impermanent and no one can have complete knowledge of a substance because that would require knowledge of all modes of the substance, which only the omniscient can know. Non-omniscient beings can only have partial knowledge of the substance depending on standpoint or perspective. But as we can see, this doctrine has nothing to do with morality. The doctrine of anekantavada simply cannot be used to stand for the proposition there is no absolute truth so we cannot say with any certainty that consuming dairy or wearing wool
An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide
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