Positive Non Violence

Author(s): Kanhaiyalal Lodha, Dalpatsingh Baya
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 44

EDITOR'S NOTE
Non-violence is essential for the coexistence of the living world, environmental protection, peace and harmony. In the absence of nonviolence we cannot even think of family and society. Where violence generates and increases enmity, non-violence results in and strengthens feelings of mutual co-operation and friendship. In different religious philosophies, the concepts of violence and non-violence have been analysed and thought of for centuries and their meanings have been assuming different dimensions under different circumstances of time and space. Taking the case of Jaina philosophy itself, we notice that the meaning of non-violence has traveled some distance in its quest for a sensible and acceptable meaning.
The Acaranga sūtra advocates the acceptance of non-violence in accordance with the living beings' love of life, desire for pleasure, undesirability of pain and tenuous hold on life-force- vitality.' Therein not only killing of any vitality, living being or living entity has been forbidden, but subjugating them, enslaving them, tormenting them, disturbing them, etc., have also been forbidden.2
Bhagvan Mahāvīra preached non-violence by identifying Himself with the consciousness of all living beings. A stream of affection and mercy for all the living flows eternal in His discourses. He gave the principle of feeling and treating all souls with a sense of equality with the self.3
In Acaranga Curni, it has been said, "As I like pleasure and dislike pain, so do all the living also like pleasure and dislike pain. The Lord preached universal friendship.5