Book Title: Jain Philosophy
Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Agamoday Samiti

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Page 223
________________ 194 simply for the body and not for the soul? Eating meat simply to support the body is not a sound basis, and our people would say that the people who live in countries where there are no vegetables and where they are obliged to eat flesh, have no business to live in those countries. Another thing, even in the coldest climates of Ameries it is possible to import food from California or any other country, and when people simply say that it is impossible for those people to live on any other diet it means simply that they do not wish to live on any other diet. What ground is there for supposing that & human being has the soul of an animal ? It is not a question of soul at all in the selection of food. When a human being is killed, the soul is not killed; the soul is an entity which is immortal, and it is not dead, but only living in some other body. We have only destroyed the relation which has existed between soul and the body. It is higher in the human being than in the animal, but on a lower in the vegetable than in the animal. It is better, since we must destroy some life in order to live, that the life should be dostroyed on the lower plane, than on the higher. The same arguments just mentioned might be applied to killing human beings, but we do not all become cannibals on account of the fact that the soul is not destroyed by the death of the body. The question of existence or notexistence of the soul has no bearing, at all, on this Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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