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CHAPTER II
to live on cereals and fruits, products of the vegetable kingdom. Since the product of the vegetable kingdom is indispensable for his life, the ordinary man may' unwillingly adopt a similar attitude to the animal kingdom and hence he may not care to appreciate the importance of Ahiṁsā Dharma. If you can eat with impurity the products of the vegetable kingdom, you may also eat meat, the product of the animal kingdom. This undesirable result in the conduct of the ordinary man is the result of not emphasising the vyavahāra point of view and the intrinsic difference between the vegetable and the animal kingdoms, though the ultimate nature of jiva in both is the same. Similarly if the ultimate and real nature of the Self is emphasised without describing the nature of the empirical ego, the Self as a saṁsāri jiva, it will create an undesirable attitude in the ordinary man's life. If the ultimate nature of the Self is pure and unsullied, if it is identical with the liberated Self or Mukta jīva, then the ordinary man may argue, why should I unnecessarily worry myself about mokşa-mārga, or the path to Salvation, when my soul is already pure and liberated in nature. Both ethics and religion would appear to him superfluous and unnecessary. Presenting an ultimate ideal and prescribing a course of conduct for realising the same would all be vain and useless, because the ideal is already there. This pervers moral attitude is also to be avoided and this could be achieved only by emphasising the vyavahāra point. The ordinary man must be made to realise that though he has the element of divinity in him, still it is found in association with impurity while he is in the concrete world of experience. It is not enough to realise that his ultimate nature is pure. He must also realise that this pure nature is clouded and contaminated by Karmas. This latter knowledge is possible only when his attention is directed to the vyavahāra point of view. Only when he realises that he has fallen from a high stage, he will make a genuine effort to regain his lost glory and eminence. Hence is the need for and the importance of the vyavahāra point of view. Therefore it would be unwise to come to the hasty conclusion that vyavahāra naya and niscaya naya, the practical point of view and the real point of view, are mutually contradictory and hence incompatible with each other.
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