Jinamanjari 2002 04 No 25

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 62

is the minimum amount of injury that will serve the need?" This much care and caution would save them from a lot of wanton destruction.
It is not the infliction of physical injury alone that constitutes himsa, but violence in words and violence in thought are also himsa. Would these be called by any reasonable men principles calculated to weaken communities and nations? In this age of armament and bitter struggle, one feels inclined to answer in the affirmative to this question, but if religion has to fulfill its mission of bringing peace on earth and goodwill amongst humankind, it must always emphasize the ultimate good, and declare evil as evil howsoever unavoidable it may appear at any particular time.
Consistent with this view, Jainism wants abstention from injury to life to be established as a rule of good conduct; it wants to make people gentlepeople that does not have a tendency to do violence to anybody. With its outlook of anekanta, Jainism recognizes that it is not always easy or good to abstain from inflicting injury; in such cases it recommends to rule of minimum of injury.
This practice of ahimsa is not possible without the cultivation of certain other allied virtues calculated to remove, or at least reduce, the cause of strife and consequent destruction. Malevolent speech, greed for property and undesirable sex relations are the most outstanding and patent causes of enmity amongst men. Hence the spirit of ahimsa has to be reinforced by sincerity, clarity and truthfulness in speech (satya), non-stealing (achaurya), chastity (brahmacharya) and limitation of one's worldly belongings strictly in accordance with one's own essential requirements (aparigraha). These four along with ahimsa constitute the five vows of a Jaina layman as well as the Jaina monk - for the monk in their strictest form, and for the layman in their relaxed or modified form so as to make them consistent with his other duties.
Cultivation of these virtues, I am sure, will safeguard a man against the application of the penal code of any civilized country. The last of these five vows, namely, aparigraha or limitation of worldly belongings deserves a little more consideration here. In other words, it appears that most ailments of the world today belong to the sphere of property. In the moral scheme of life propounded in the five virtues it is not only enough that one should abjure theft of another's belongings, but he should also set a limit upon what he would possess and hold as his own. The ethical consideration behind this is that every man's desire or greed is limitless, while the world and its physical
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