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Whitehead's Constructive Metaphysics.... 29 addition helping the other jīvas move along the path. In one sense, this promotes a self-ethic which has ramifications outside of oneself; yet the path of liberation is the void of any social ethic, precisely because the goal of liberation is to remove oneself from social structures, "[orthodox] Jain ideology is... nonethical, in that the practices it requires of the adept are meant to remove him from structures that render social ethics of any sort possible" Nevertheless, the central focus is to attain liberation, which in achieving it finds omniscience and thus full compassion, full bliss and in the end, removal of matter and reincarnation, the removal from the universe itself. This is the liberation-centric model of Orthodox Jainism.
Socio-centric Diaspora Jainism
The story as depicted by diaspora Jains has a different focus. First, prince Nemi, upon hearing the animals crying, not only felt compassion, which as defined is a concern for the sufferings of the other, but the prince actually felt their pain. He hears, as if through a form of telepathy, the animals thoughts of fearing death, calling out humanity's hypocrisy through food and children. Although it could be translated as the prince through his imagination the voices and words of the animals, a more deeper response maybe one of the relationship between all living beings or in another tone, of actual occasions, what Whitehead would call the things that make up the universe. In "Surrogate Suffering: Paradigms of Sin, Salvation and Sacrifice Within the Vivisection Movement", Antonia Gorman writes, "Yet if relationality (or, in Whiteheadian terms, 'interrelationality') is fundamental.... [then] the suffering of the 'one' necessarily becomes the suffering of the many, just as the suffering of the many inevitably effects the well-being of the one."14 The animal's suffering connotes not the individual awareness that the animal is a jiva, although I would include this: rather, it is the fact that prince Nemir is feeling the feelings of the animal as his own suffering that is unique. It is not equating the animals pain that he feels, albeit that is a part, but more so it is the feeling of the animals pain, that its life as part of the web of the universe is in jeopardy and its pain is reverberating across all who are able to hear it.
The second significant difference in the diaspora story is that action performed was by prince Nemi himself. In the orthodox version it is said that prince Nemi ordered the elephant driver to arrange the freeing of the animals. In the diaspora story it is Prince Nemi who, in response to what he had heard, imagined and witnessed, reacts; he first goes to the animals in their cages, which in effect causes a passivizing response in the animals. Finally he opens the cages and the animals are set free. This speaks in two ways: first, Nemi is performing the action of freeing the caged animals. The call to respond cannot be answered by another; each person is involved in the act of responding to the cares of the needy, to non-violence. Second, the fact that he does not call on the charioteer to perform the act, as well as coming close to the animals, suggests that their is no hierarchy in two forms: in the form of action in the world, as stated prior and among animals. We cannot rely on the other to perform the action, we must all be involved in the process. We must all share in active participation of non-violence. In the question of non-violence, violence is done when one forces another to act on behalf of them, as well as violence is performed when we have a hierarchical ethics when we compare humans to non-humans.
