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separation of karma matter also takes place in respect of those karmas that separate after coming to fruition. Like this, every activity of the attached living being (Chadmastha jīva) results in sinful and meritorious karmic bondage and involuntary separation. Merit is an indication of weak passions and spiritual purity. The spiritual purity in the form of weak passions is dharma. Thus, dharma is also associated with every activity.
Actually, dharma and adharma are also relative and not opposite of each other, like the heat and coldness. Deficiency of dharma is adharma, which has no independent existence. As every activity of any living being is partially violent and partially non-violent, it is religious to the extent that it is non-violent and it is also irreligious to the extent that it is violent. Therefore the belief that where there is violence, non-violence cannot be there is baseless and meaningless. Similarly, the auspicious yoga and inauspicious yoga are also relative and not opposite. In other words sin and merit are also relative. This is the reason why sinful and meritorious karmic bondage and separation can take place, at the same time, due to a single action. Not only this, the karmic ascendance and descendance also take place in all living beings all the time.
What is meant is that merit and sin, dharma and adharma, virtues and vices are all relative. Any reduction in one results in increase in the other and they are present in all living beings to a greater or a lesser extent.
12. Objection – All living beings are equal, so, to kill any living being is equally sinful. Therefore, to kill one creature to help another is a gross sin.
Answer - If we accept this argument we will have to accept that the sin or crime of killing a pupa or an ant or a water-bodied creature is of same gravity. In that case leave aside helping any creature in any other way, we will not be able to give it a drink of water, because in drinking a tumbler full of water means killing innumerable water-bodied creatures and that would be like killing innumerable human beings. As
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Positive Non-Violence
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