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25) In this Our Life
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down a precipice as a suicide bala-maraṇa and as such unjustifiable.82
The word suicide as employed includes all cases of selfdestruction, irrespective of the mental conditions of the person committing the act. In its technical and legal sense, it means self-destruction by a sane person or voluntary and intentional destruction of his own life by a person of sound mind, the further qualification being added by some definitions that he must have attained years of discretion 83 In this sense Samlekhana would not be suicide, as it is not self destruction at all. There is gradual mortification of the flesh without causing any appreciable physical and mental disturbance. The self is to be freed from the bonds of the body. From the ultimate point of view (niścaya-naya), the self is pure and indestructible. The practice of Samlekhana is compared to cutting or operating a boil on the body, which cannot be called destruction of the body.". In this sense Samlekhanā is described as the final freedom of the soul from the bonds of life.
Whatever else may be the legal implications of suicide, we have to remember that Samlekhana is to be looked at from the spiritual point of view.
We are in a world where spiritual values have declined. The flesh is too much with us. We cannot look beyond and pine for what is not. Samlekhana is to be looked at as physical mortification, self-culture and spiritual salvation.
II. A Critique of Ahimsa : Ahimsa, non-violence, has been an important principle in the history of human civilization. As a moral injunction it was universally applicable in the religious
82. (i) Uttarādhyayana sūtra XXXVI (266). (ii) Jacobi, Death and the disposal of the Dead-ERE. IV, p. 484. (iii) Deo S. B., History of Jaina Monachism, p. 461.
83. Corpus Juris, Vol. LX. (1932) Edt. Mack. W. p. 595.
84. Abhidhana Rajendra, Vol. VII, p. 220
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