Spiritual Awakening and other Essays

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 92

capable of, by conforming ourselves to the sacred injunctions enjoined by the Jaina spiritual teachers.
For the observance of Ahiṁsāņuvrata, (1) One should avoid the use of (i) wine and (ii) meat.12 (2) One should not sacrifice animals for the adoration of gods, being dominated by the perverted notion of receiving benediction in return. " It is inconceivable how the gods seek satisfaction and serenity from such inhuman deeds which cause unbearable pain to the animals. (3) It must not be obligatory to kill animals for the entertainment of guests, a pious design by impious means. 14 (4) To harbour notion that the vegetable food necessitates the killing of innumerable lives abiding in it as compared with the slaughter of one living being may be fascinating at the inception, but it is imprudent in view of the fact that the body of an animal possesses countless microscopic lives which will inevitably be injured in its killing; and that the five-sensed Jīva would entail more, vice owing to the occupation and consequential loss of more Dravya and Bhāva Prāņas than those of one-sensed Jiva belonging to the vegetable Kingdom.15 (5) Snakes, scorpions, lions and the like should not be killed on the ground that by so doing large number of lives will be saved, and that they (snakes, scorpions etc.) will get the opportunity of avoiding the accumulation of more sin by their continued violence. 16 (6) Under the weight of misconception that those who are in distress and calamity on being killed will soon obtain relief from anguish and agony, the living beings should never be killed."7 (7) Moved by the pangs of other being's hunger, one should not provide one with the flesh of one's own body to appease one's appetite. 18
Nature of Asatya: - Asatya is concerned with the expression of intense passion through the outlet of speech which 'expresses itself in language and gestures.
Spiritual Awakening (Samyagdarśana) and Other Essays