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Activities are of two types – 1. Inauspicious activities and 2. Auspicious activities. Violence, telling lies, stealing, sensory enjoyment, etc., are inauspicious activities and they have been termed as sins, which is as it should be. Such activities result in all-round misery and worldly transmigration and, therefore, they are worth abandoning. Auspicious activities like mercy, kindness, compassion, affection, service, etc., remove spiritual flaws, purify the soul and destroy the karmic bondages and are, therefore, called dharma.
Auspicious activities like mercy, kindness, compassion, affection, service, etc., are virtues and inauspicious activities like violence, telling lies, stealing, sensory enjoyment, etc., are vices. Virtues and vices are opposite to each other. The virtues are natural and the vices are unnatural. The nature can never be a cause of karmic bondage; it is only the unnatural vices that result in karmic bondages. Therefore, nature of things has been said to be their dharma and the unnatural vices have been said to be sins. Auspicious activities like mercy, kindness, compassion, affection, service, etc., result in reduction and destruction of karmic bondages. This helps in spiritual emancipation and liberation. Because they are causes of attaining liberation, the auspicious activities are dharma. To consider them as causes of karmic bondage and that of worldly transmigration is to consider them as adharma. To consider dharma as adharma is falsehood.
In the Jaina canonical literature auspicious activities of mercy, kindness, compassion, affection, service, joy, mildness, simplicity, humility, etc., have been termed as auspicious combination of mind, body and speech (yoga), which is also said to be a means of karmic stoppage (saṁvara). The reason behind calling them as means of karmic stoppage is that they do not result in karmic bondages. However, in reality they are not only the means of karmic stoppage but also of karmic reduction and destruction (nirjarā). Thus, these activities are in the form of both - karmic stoppage and destruction of karmic. For example - 1. Take the case of Namaskāra mantra that is a symbol of humility. In this mantra it has been clearly said that the auspicious activity of
Positive Non-Violence
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