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becomes necessary. A medical practitioner causes violence as a part of treatment and this has been clearly brought out in the Sūtra 142. There is no denying that use of certain medicines will cause violence to worms etc. Attachment to the body is also a form of acquisitiveness. A sādhaka practising non-acquisitiveness should be non-attached even to his own body. One who has given up attachment to his body and is completely indifferent to it, and who is in complete unison with his own soul, does not desire medical treatment. He leaves bodily affliction to take its own natural course. He endures it considering it as a result of his karma. He looks at life and death with equanimity and as such does not struggle for life nor try to avoid death. That is why, he never thinks about medical treatment. There was a change in this line of thought during the post-Mahāvīran era. At that time, two categories of sadhanā came about. In the first one, a medical treatment, in which no violence was caused by the medical practitioner, was permissible.
JA
UFI UCS — Fgytok, 2004 C
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