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"Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah" meaning "Non Violence is the supreme religion".
Jains actively reflect on these values and incorporate them in not using of leather, silk and animal products like honey, eggs and to minimize harm to even insects and other small living beings.
In the universe, there are different forms of life, such as, human beings, animals, insects, trees, plants, bacteria, and even still smaller lives which cannot be seen even through the most powerful microscope. According to Jain philosophy, all life is divided into five categories: one sense, two sense, three sense, four sense, and five-sense beings having the sense of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing.
Vegetables are one-sense beings having only the sense of touch and animals are five-sense beings having all the five senses. The more the number of senses the more evolved the life is and more the feeling of pain. Life has to go through a laborious and strenuous process to evolve from one sense being to five-sense being.
By slaughtering an animal which is five sense being one destroys completely the evolutionary progress of that life, which it has attained through suffering and pain. The vegetable kingdom has not yet reached the blood "consciousness" which the animals and humans have. So the degree of pain is less. Where there is blood, there are more senses and when there are more senses there are more feelings, more emotions and greater possibility of feeling deep pain.
Therefore meat and dairy products that are the outcome of torture to animals and the excruciating pain caused by the separation of baby calves from their mothers whose ultimate fate is slaughter house are prohibited to use as food.
on the earth, for a premature death breaks the cycle of natural expression of that life.
It is this philosophy that believes in plurality of soul i.e. every living being has a soul. The soul is independent, eternal, immortal and invisible. At the end of life the body dies but not the soul. The soul transmigrates to another life. The soul thus keeps on transmigrating from life to life, unless and until it liberates itself from the passion of desires and violence.
When it attains liberation or salvation, i.e. Moksha, it has never to enter again into the cycle of birth and death. In order to achieve this highest goal of Moksha, Jain Dharma explains the Law of Karma i.e. Law of Cause and Effect - what you sow, that you reap and shows the Path of Moksha.
Millions of people are practicing Jain Dharma all over the world; it is a way of life! It is a philosophy.
Let us join with one of the daily prayers of the Jains:
Let all living beings be happy.
Let everyone be engaged in one another's wellbeing.
Let all the faults and weaknesses be evaporated and vanished.
Let everyone everywhere be happy, healthy and peaceful.
One never stops to think that eating meat or taking dairy products for taste involves much pain and torture to a life! A life that cannot be created in the laboratory! A very precious life with a strong will to live! A life that needs time to unfold its own destiny Jainism: The Global Impact
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