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166 Harmless Souls counts as himsā, in the sense of 'bondage-causing himsā'. For the whole of ascetic discipline is built on the theory that there are ubiquitous jīvas, that harm done to them constitutes himsā, and that himsā binds karman. In this context, the only way of setting practical limits to what counts as himsā (i.e. to 'carelessness') - that is, the only way to alleviate the formidable difficulties of ascetic practice and thereby give hope of liberation (or at least a better rebirth) to those who are not advanced ascetics - is to internalise it. Only after such a process is it possible to 'return', as it were, to the external world with a modified (i.e. ritualised) form of ascetic practice - limited to literal adherence to the monastic code - which can be defended doctrinally.
This combination of mental discipline and adherence to the letter of particular physical vrata (whether monastic or lay) may be considered, at least in one respect, less taxing than the ancient, blanket adherence to physical ahimsā, and also, perhaps, easier to practise from within, or on the fringes of, society. For, when external behaviour becomes formalised, chance is removed from Jaina soteriology. The external world becomes less threatening, and life less contingent for the ascetic, who is now in more or less total control of his progress to liberation. This movement towards absolute personal control was probably inevitable, given that the world portrayed in the earliest canonical texts was a risk-saturated environment, even for the ascetic. The early 'canonical' śramana is under constant threat from other people and from the physical world: they threaten him not just to the extent that he threatens them, but he is also constantly at risk from the fortuitous and the accidental.89 (That is to say, he is under constant threat of being forced into, or finding himself by circumstances beyond his control, in a position where ahimsā is inevitable; and so he is under continual threat of further bondage.)
Such 'accidents' could, of course, be rationalised in
89 See, for instance, the Āyāramga and Das.aveyāliya Suttas.
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