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life and matter existing in different forms. Another meaning which is ascribed to the word in India is that athiests are those who do not believe in the Vedas. There are many religions which do not believe in the Vedas since they have their own sacred literature.
only because it wanted to cry halt to sacrifices of living beings in the name of religion but also to inculcate the virtue of humanism which exudes the milk of human kindness all around. Man is supreme among all the living creatures not only on account of his intelligence, knowledge and intiution but also on account of the all pervasive and protective quality of compassion. Bhagavan Mahavira has said :
So the religion preached by Mahavira is not a theistic religion bu lit is a religion which gives full freedom to every soul or living creature to work out its own salvation. He preached : The universe is peopled by manifold creatures, they are born in different states, climes and conditions. It is our thoughts, deeds and actions that constantly entangle us with karmas which are either auspicious or inauspicious according as our activities are pure, wicked or mixed ones. As Shakespeare has said in his Hamlet :
Sarve praninah priyausah. sukhaswadah dukkhaprat kulah Apriyavadhah priyajivinah, jivilukamah.
Acaranga. 2.37.
"All heings love to live long; they experience happiness; they hate misery. Since life is dear to them, they are against every kind of injury. All beings long to live."
There is nothing either good or bad, But our thinking makes it so.
It is the mind that can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell." It is by elimination of Karmas that living beings can reach in due course a pure state and be born as human beings The living beings are not at the mercy of any god or evil spirit but they are their own masters, working out a hell or heaven for themselves.
In such a world, Himsa, or injury of any type, whether to the mind or to any of the faculties becomes in human, as such action is a degradation of human qualities. That is why Himsa which is born of passions like attachment, anger, greed, pride or delusion has been regarded first as injury to one's own self and next as injury to some other being. All transgressions of the vows of truthfulness, honesty, celibacy and aparigraha are the direct progeny of one or the other of passions. That is why Bhagavan Mahavira advised; "Do no injury to living beings of the six orders, abstaining from lying and from taking what is not freely given, renouncing property, women, pride, and deceit, men
How do you work out your salvation ? The foundation for spiritual edifice has to be built on the practice of sound ethics. Ahimsa (non-violence) is the very lifebreath of all Jain ethics. It proclaimed that Ahimsa was the supreme religion not
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