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62: Śramana, Vol 64, No. III, July-Sept. 2013
and fear while as it is put in Acarängasūtra- "all beings love life. They wish to relish pleasures. They loathe pain. They abhor being killed - they are attached to this mortal coil. They want to hang on to life." (Ayaro 1981: 105)
It would be false, however, to suppose that ahimsa is practiced because other living beings deserve not to be disturbed. This reason comes second: for Jainas, himsă (violence)" "refers primarily to injuring oneself, to behavior which inhibits the soul's ability to attain mokṣa. Thus the killing of animals, for example, is reprehensible not only for the suffering produced in the victims, but even more so, because it involves intense passions on the part of the killer, passions which bind him more firmly in the grip of sarhsära." (Jaini 1998: 167) Attachments are the roots of these passions: "The attachment and detestation gradually grow into passions and cause the conscious violence." (Bothara 2009: 28) Causing violence is, according to Mahāvīra himself, "the knot of bondage, it, in fact, is the delusion, it, in fact, is the death, it, in fact, is the hell." (Ayāro 1981: 66-67) Non-violence is therefore not the goal but the means in the purification process that should finally lead to liberation of jiva (Bothara 2009: 29). Or, saying the same from the opposite point of view, ahimsa "is the reflex of an already-achieved state of internal purity which is, by definition, non-binding." (Johnson 1995: 179)
Although the primary motive of a non-violent person is "eliminating or avoiding attachment and aversion" (Jain, Shugan 2012 d: 200), the motive of compassion is very strong as well. We can thus agree that "ahimsŎ is a combination of empathy and abstention." (Mehta 2012: 35) But yet, "ahimsa achieved as the result of a feeling of compassion is, by definition, not fully ahimsa and cannot be fully liberating, although, in samsăric terms, it is relatively virtous." (Johnson 1995: 177)" This kind of ahimsa is practiced by householders, whose prospect is in not final liberation of jiva from sarhsära but better future birth."2 Compassion is then "essentially lay virtue". (Ibid.: 178)
In comparison to the Jains, the motives of Quaker's commitment to non-violent attitudes appear quite simple. Similarly to a few other Christian denominations," the Quakers believe that Jesus was a pacifist. In this belief, they refer to the New Testament, especially to the passage of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and his alleged commandment "Love your enemies"." This conviction of the Quakers is backed up by the perception of God as a loving Father of all humans and a caring Creator of everybody and everything, which is common to all Christians. As other Christians, the Quakers take Jesus as the example of moral conduct and follow what Jesus would praise. And non-violence, in their opinion, belongs to the ethics of Jesus.
The relative simplicity of doctrinal grounds of the non-violent attitude of the Quakers in comparison with those of the Jains is probably caused mainly by limiting the objects of nonviolent behavior to human beings. Therefore, in the following explanations we must concentrate on the scope of non-violence in each tradition.
(b) The scope of non-violence
On the contrary to the Quakers, the nature of Jain ahimsa can be called all-inclusive (Sogani
