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Appendix-7
Five sins
Basically, any act or thought of harming oneself or any other living being is a sin. This is a very broad definition of sin. With this definition, even a thought of any attachment or hatred towards any living being or anything would become a sin. In fact, Acarya AmṛtaCandra [1] has described the sin of violence as follows:
Apradurbhavaḥ khalu rāgādīnām bhavatyahimseti.
Teṣamevotpattirhimseti jināgamasya samkṣepaḥ.
Meaning: Non-occurrence of dispositions (Bhāva) of liking (Rāga) or disliking (Dveşa) amounts to non-violence; and an occurrence of them is violence; this is to be considered as the essence of Jain scriptures.
At the level of belief, each enlightened person does not become owner of any thought of attachment or hatred. Therefore, at the level of belief an enlightened person is non-violent. However, at the level of mind and body, zero level of non-violence happens to highly advanced enlightened persons who are very close to the attainment of omniscience. In general, the attainment of such advanced state of zero level of sins happens in a gradual manner. In view of this, scriptures have also described sins from the perspective of beginners. Here in this appendix, we shall describe sins in very elementary fashion mainly from the relative point of view. For details and depth one may refer to advanced scriptures. Five kinds of sins have been mentioned in the scriptures. These are as follows:
(1) Violence (Himsa)
Violence means oppression of other creatures, inflicting pain on them, or killing; delusion, attachment, hatred, or any desire to harm or hurt any living being is also violence; to hurt the self is also violence; to harm or hurt the self or others unknowingly by the laziness (Pramāda) is also violence.
There are two types of violence: psychic or internal violence (Bhāva Himsa), and external or physical violence (Dravya Himsa). Four kinds of soulsoiling-passions (Kāṣāya) - anger, greed, ego, and deceit - are internal violence. To torture or kill or hurt others or self is physical violence. Both types of
