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JAINISM AND VEGETARIANISM
stand graded. Living beings falls into two broad classes, Trasa or mobile and Sthavara or immobile. Trasa beings are those which possess two, three, four and five senseorgans. Sthavara beings are those which have only one sense-organ, namely, that of touch, and they are of five kinds earth-bodied, water-bodied, fire-bodied, airbodied, and vegetables. Jaina Teachers had realized long back that plants had life, and they had treated them as one-sensed beings.
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When the Jaina Teachers studied the animate world in such detail, complete abstinence from injury to beings, in a strict sense, was practically impossible. Naturally every individual could not avoid injury to living beings in an absolute sense. The religious devotees, according to Jainism, are broadly divided into two groups, namely, monks and householders, again with various stages in themselves. A monk observes the vow of Ahimsa in a very strict sense : in fact, he is not liable to any injury to living beings, even in their potentiality, in his diet. To put it plainly, he does not use in his good seeds which are capable of growing to plants. Thus a monk avoids all kinds of harm to livings being, both Trasa and Sthavara.
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The case of a house-holder is slightly different. He has social obligations and practical duties. Naturally according to his religious stage, he does his best and avoids injury to Trasa beings. It is not always possible for his to avoid injury to Sthavara beings. But even there he is ever struggling to see that he minimizes harm unto Sathavara beings. Naturally in his diet he does not use such fruits roots, and green vegetables as contain living organisms.
The above details make it abundantly clear that Jainism not only insists on strict vegetarian food, but even there those items of vegetarian stuff which involve
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