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rise in such a person. As a rubber balloon is blown up its walls become thinner and thinner and after being stretc.,hed to the limit it explodes and is destroyed. This applies to the auspicious activities of mercy, kindness, compassion, charity, service, affection, feeling of friendship, etc., also. As these activities that represent positive non-violence increase, the passions, attachment, aversion, delusion etc., become thinner and thinner. Mercy, kindness, compassion, charity, service, affection, feeling of friendship are various manifestations of selfless feelings of spiritual affection. Pride is a delusion. Greater the pride of a person, narrower will be the limits of his selfishness. In him the feeling of selfless affection will be almost negligible.
Affection and delusion are different. In delusion there is a craving for sensory and mental pleasures and there is always a desire for return or counter favours. There is an attachment or the feeling of possessiveness towards things and beings. One gets shackled in the relationships with them. This relationship itself is the bondage and results in karmic bondage, which is at the root of pain and misery. In the feeling of affection there is always a feeling of giving away whatever means of pleasure that we have so that they can give pleasure to others. There is no feeling of getting anything in return. Mercy, kindness, compassion, charity, service, feeling of friendship, etc., are also auspicious activities that signify such selfless feeling of affection in which there is always a feeling of reducing our own attachment and pleasures and to mitigate others' troubles. This helps in reduction of attachment. That is why the activities of serving have been included amongst internal forms of penance and have been said to be the means of karmic destruction, reduction and separation.
How to walk, how to talk, how to eat, how to use the available means, how to dispose of the excretions, etc., are the five comportments, which are in the forms of activities. All these are activities are related to the body. According to the canonical dictates, properly done, these activities have been said to be the means of karmic stoppage and restraint. The reason being that in seeking liberation also one has to
Positive Non-Violence
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