Jainism Eternal and Universal Path for Enlightenment

Author(s): Narendra Bhandari
Publisher: Research Institute of Scientific Secrets from Indian Oriental Scriptures Ahmedabad

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Jainism : The Eternal and Universal path for Enlightenment
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if there was a superior being who kills us to eat. The same feeling, the fear of death and torture, is there in lower animals. It is a misconception that meat is essential for good health. On the contrary refraining from eating meat is good for health, which can be tested by practice. Vegetarianism has many layers of practice: To refrain from killing higher animals for food, then to avoid lower animals (fungus and yeasts) and then to refrain from eating eggs which are potential source of life, then to avoid killing plants and trees for vegetables, which are also forms of life, as was discovered by Jains much before the western world and then to eat only fruits and vegetables which fall down from trees and plants on maturity by themselves and so on. It is also a misleading concept prevalent in the society that all bacteria are bad for our health. In fact our body is a storehouse of all kinds of bacteria, good and bad, of all kinds of deseases, and we can not survive without them. It is the balance between thier population which is important for good health and that can be achieved by cleanliness and not by killing them.
Following ahimsa to its logical extreme changes life style in toto, as will be discussed later. This will include avoiding tramping on microforms of life as one walks for example, on grass, avoiding killing water borne bacteria and breathing slowly to avoid killing of airborne jivas etc. From killing one has to transcend to the next level of avoid hurting them and then experiencing oneness with them in pain and pleasure to the ultimate level when one experiences that the self (soul) and any other life is the same.
Violence of thought and action (Himsa) binds one to several serious types of karmas but more importantly to the jn in varniya and darlan varniya karma.
Satya:
Truth is the prime requirement for salvation. It should not just be interpreted as speaking the truth. Speaking truth is essential but trivial. The real meaning of this vow is continuous search for truth, which everyone has to search and find for himself. What is one's true nature? What is the ultimate truth (and goal)? Is this the true path? etc. Truth is actually woven in the universe and therefore one should examine everything around to search for truth. Jainism does not, like Shankara, assert that the world is an illusion; rather it urges one to consider it as a reality and observe it to find the ultimate truth. This provides a common ground between science and Jainism. Jainism has proposed a mode of logic based on various standpoints' (nayas) such as practical mode (vyavah?r naya) and definitive mode (nishchaya naya). Some allotropes (pary łys) may be different from practical point of view but they all ultimately are manifestation of one basic thing. This kind of logic for the physical universe is mostly