________________
are in the stage of spiritual development that is called restraint cum non-restraint or partially restrained virtue stage. Therefore, simultaneously they are partially restrained and partially unrestrained.
Up to the tenth virtue-stage (of spiritual development) even the ordained ascetics also incur sinful karmic bondages of the knowledge obscuring, vision obscuring, etc., and they also kill innumerable living beings of the air bodied, etc., types while breathing, etc.,. According to the principle of single result of single action because they bond sinful karmic bondages up to the tenth virtue stage, they should not be able to earn any meritorious karmic bondages up to that stage. But we know that they are practicing non-violence, restrained conduct and earning merits and also destroying sinful karmic bondages through the practice of their monasticism. Therefore, to believe that there cannot be two results of a single activity is against the canonical teachings and principles of karma theory.
Also, to argue that to give water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, etc., is practicing violence and it cannot be counted as positive nonviolence is against the principles of non-absolutism, relative predication and scientific thought. The reason for this is that as heat and coldness are said to be opposite qualities but they are only relative qualities and so violence and non-violence should also be viewed relatively.
Every living being in this world is violent and non-violent at the same time. In it's breathing, eating, drinking, and moving about, etc., it is involuntarily killing innumerable creatures of various kinds. Therefore, it is being violent all the time. However, it is not killing any creatures deliberately and has the purity of volition, it is non-violent at the same time.
It is the rule that no creature can be fully violent. A deficiency in non-violence is violence. Violence has no independent existence. Therefore, like heat and coldness violence and non-violence are also relative. This is the reason that the bonding of sinful and meritorious karma goes on simultaneously and at the same time involuntary
Positive Non-Violence
165
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
