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Jaina Philosophy and Religion
free ascetic and inconsistent with the supremely spiritual state of nonattachment to the image of the absolutely attachment-free God, eternally engrossed in the highest meditation on the pure nature of soul and shining with the lustre of the perfected spiritual qualities like non-attachment, non-aversion, non-violence, self-control, austerity and renunciation.
Reflection on the Scale of Violence for the Sustenance of One's Life We have to accept the fact that life is impossible without violence or killing. But at the same time, man should strictly follow the rule that one should maintain or sustain one's life with the minimum violence. Here arises a question in the minds of many as to which violence is to be regarded as the minimum, 'that is, as to how one can decide the scale of violence. Followers of a particular sect maintain that by killing one huge animal, many men can sustain their lives on its flesh for many days, while killing many plant beings even one man cannot sufficiently sustain his life for even one day, therefore killing of one huge animal involves the minimum violence. Their principle of deciding the scale of violence is the number of living beings killed. But they are wrong. The Jaina view decides the scale of violence not on the basis of number of living beings killed, but on the basis of development or evolution of life reached in the being killed. Killing of one being on the higher scale of evolution involves more violence than the killing of many beings on the lower scale of evolution involves. This is what the Jaina religion maintains. This is the reason why it regards plant beings as proper for our food, because they have the lowest number of sense-organs, that is, they possess only one sense-organ. Plant beings are at the lowest scale of evolution. The destruction of the higher forms of life from dvindriya (two-sensed) beings upward is strictly forbidden to all the Jainas. So the Jainas are strict vegetarians. Again, the same is the reason why all the Jainas consider it to be an act of compassion, universal love, virtue and religion to offer water to a thirsty man or an animal to drink, although by doing so they cause killing of so many water-bodied beings. As compared to a man or an animal, the waterbodied beings are at a very low scale of evolution. From this it is clear that to save animal beings at the cost of human beings is not acceptable to the Jaina religion. But so far as it concerns one's own self, there is no objection to developing the virtue of non-violence to the extent of sacrificing one's own life to save the life of a living being at the lower scale of evolution. As for example, Lord Santinātha, in his previous birth was
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