Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 61

JAINISM
53
is not one's own, uprightness, honesty, Brahmachārya, and finally aparigraha, not grasping at anything, absence of greed-in the case of the layman meaning that he is not to be covetons, or full of desire; in the case of the Yați meaning of course that he renounces everything and knows nothing as "mine," "my own”. These five vows, then, rule the life of the Jaina. Very, very marked is his translation of the word ahinsa, harmlessness: “thou shalt not kill”. So far does he carry it in his life, to such an extreme, that it passes sometimes almost beyond the bounds of virtue; passes, a harsh critic might say, into absurdity; but I am not willing so to say, but rather to see in it the protest against the carelessness of animal life and animal suffering, which is but too widely spread among men; a protest, I admit, carried to excess, all sense of proportion being lost, the life of the insect, the gnat, sometimes being treated as though it were higher than the life of a human being. But still, perhaps, that may be pardoned, when we think of the extremes of the cruelty to which so many permit themselves to go; and although a sinile may sometimes come when we hear of breatlıing only throngh a cloth, as the Yati dues, as he breathes continually touching the lips that nothing living may go into the lungs; straining all water and most inscientifically boiling it—which really kills creatures, which if water remained uboiled would remain alive—the smile will be a loving one, for the tenderness is beautiful. Listen for