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OTHER ALLIED QUESTIONS
69
therefore, a difficult matter. to analyse and answer. The difficulty becomes all the more because we are used to certain foods from times immemorial and have a feeling that it is natural, and morally correct to continue to do.so. Let us examine the problem from each aspect separately. .
1. Spiritual : Once it is recognised that the soul is an entity whose welfare is of paramount importance and which is affected by its emotions and beliefs-beneficially by the emotions of love and most harmfully by those of selfishness and hatred-men will certainly refrain from doing what is harmful and adopt the rule of love. According to the Indian philosophy, all living beings possess a similar soul and are subjected to rebirths, pleasures and pains due to their own Karius. To obtain perpetual bliss, the rebirths must be stopped. This can happen only by following the right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. This needs complete Ahimsa. Thus no life should be destroyed or injured in any way for any cause by thought, word or deed.
Even in Jewish religion, Christianity and Islam, it is considered as a sin to kill life. Were it not so, the faithfull will not abstain from eating meat during the sacred days. What is sinful on sacred days is certainly sinful on any other day. However, these faiths perhaps believe that plant and animal life have no soul. That is, these foms of life are intrinsically different from life in human beings. They further seem to believe, that these forms of life are not capable of feeling fear, pleasure or pain.
The Indian faiths do not agree with the above ideas. To them, all life is as sacred and important as their own.
Hence even if the westerners do not mind killing for food or pleasure, the same cannot be logically accepted by Indians having. faith in kinship of all life and in ahimsa as the only path to salvation.
However if food is essential to live, it should cause the least himsa. Thus there is need to search for those items of food where himsa is least. This brings us to the definition of himsa and how it is caused. Naturally it depends upon the intensity of passions, the elaborateness of steps to carry it out and on the evolution stage of the life injured or killed. Also see Art 6.7 on page 76. Thus lower the form of life killed, the less is the himsa. It can be minimised by eating fruits, 'cereals, milk and vegetables and keeping the consumption as
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