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: Śramana, Vol 59, No. 3/July-September 2008
The theoretical and practical valuation of the different kinds and shades of Prayakhyānas depends not only on their duration or on the quantity of the objects concerned, but first of all on their transcendental quality. For though all the souls, i.e., all the living creature, are equal in their original disposition, still they are observed to be in various phases of development towards perfection, in various stages of self-realization. According to the principle of economy, the higher developed ones are higher valued than the lower developed ones. Therefore, the Karma bound by harming higher developed being, is thought to be of graver consequences than that bound by injuring a lower creature. Thus, plucking a handful of vegetables is less harmful than killing a cow, killing a menacing tiger less harmful than the murder of a peaceful antelope, or punishing a dangerous criminal of less consequences than an offence done to a saintly monk. This valuation, by-the-by, seems to have a counterpart in those less refined, universally adopted conceptions, which, with all expressions of disgust, condemn cannibalism, but do not object to the slaughtering of animals for culinary and other purposes, or which strictly forbid the bloodshed of a human being, but allow the murdering of the murderer, all of which persons have ethics against them.
Thus much may be said concerning the Pratyākhyāna of "Himsā," i.e., injury, that precaution against the binding of new latent suffering by deliberate abstention from actions connected with harm for others.
It has its counterpart in the attempts of securing new latent happiness, by furthering the well-being of others. Though there is no hope of gaining genuine, i.e., completely pure and unhampered happiness as long as any particles of Karma of either kind mar the soul, still a certain amount of good Karma is a necessary condition in order to secure that bodily and mental constitution from the basis of which the struggle against the obnoxious Karma particles can be successfully taken up. Good Karma is believed to be secured by charity, hospitality, and selfless service. And here too, a gradations
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