Ahimsa and Jainism

Author(s): Vijayvallabhsuri
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi

Page 62

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fire, and even lightening have life. Strictly speaking, the physical substance of clay, water, stone, etc, is a multitude of bodies of living beings. Dry clay, dry stone, boiled water, are pure matter, and have no life. Vegetables, trees, fruits have life. When dried or cooked there is no life in then. Worms, insects, fish, birds, animals and human beings are all living beings. There are living beings on stars and planets, and even beyond the starry region. “Life” is only an abstraction. It is not something concrete, superadded to the constituent elements of living beings. It is a generalization, derived from our observation of varying modes of behaviour of such living beings. The stage of actual development of one living being being different from that of another, living beings are classified in many ways in the Jain philosophy. The simplest classification is based on the number of organs of sense they have developed.
Besides the category of living being, there is one of inanimate substances. These are matter, two kinds of ether (one, the fulcrum of motion, the other, the fulcrum of rest ), and space, Ether and space are not matter in the Jain view. Matter. has various qualities and relationships which the former do not possess. 'Time is also called a substance in a figurative sense, a generalization of the moving activities of things and beings.