ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 01

Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies

Page 205

SCHOOL
TIONAL
OF
SELF STUDY IS THE SUPREME AUSTERITY,
STUDIES
pay to an employee, giving insufficient food to an animal /hungry person or overfeeding household cattle for more milk or asking someone to lift load more than his/her capacity or tying down someone to restrict one's movement can be considered as violence.
Social Non-violence
How should one behave in society? Or how should one live?
'Parasparopagraho jīvānāma or living beings help each other is derived from the principle of non violence as can be seen from the sermons of Mahāvīra as given in Prasnavyākaraṇa Sūtra where sixty synonyms of non violence are given such as kindness (dayā), security (rakṣā), salutariness (kallāņa), fearlessness (abhaya), service (seva), non-killer (amādhā), equanimity (samatā), forgiveness (kṣamā) and so on by 60 different names. These are the positive aspects of non violence as such acts result in either auspicious or meritorious results or even may lead to liberation (mokṣa) eventually10.
All the sixty such sub species of non violence as given in the text are derived from the basic definition of non violence or the benefits which result from the practice of non violence towards others. For example equanimity brings us the feeling of fellow being and one does not wish to harm /hurt any living being as the fraternity feeling towards all arises and gives rise to peaceful co-existence. The practice of making others fearless or providing them security from insecurities to their existence also is a derivative of non violence. This also gives rise to feeling of love/affection /brotherhood etc. In Spirituality terms, such feeling of equanimity/forgiveness/fearlessness towards others reduces attachment to others and hence reduces karmic bondage or results in auspicious karmas being bonded to the soul.
Violence does not mean just killing but it means even torturing or causing pain to even life vitality. Such actions are like the species of the generic violence and form an important means to understand how to be non-violent. Like in mathematics one teaches summation of individual numbers to give the whole number, similar in metaphysics such examples of violence add up to come to the total concept of violence.
8 Tattvärthasūtra, by Umāsvāmi, sūtra V.21
9 Praśnavyākaraṇa Sūtra, 6.1.3, Pages 683-684, (Jaina Vishva Bharati, Ladnun, under the title "Angasuttāṇl" (3)). 10 Mokṣa Pähuda by Kundakunda, verse 7
Page 192 of 317
STUDY NOTES version 5.0