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hearted person. Such persons can earn the confidence of his fellowmen. All the people who come in his contact feel as if they are one with each other. Faith begets faith, suspicion begets suspicion. Purity of heart makes one an open book. He hides nothing.
Ahimsă is equanimity with all. Without this virtue one's Ahińsă becomes incomplete. One who practises Ahimsa with partiality, his Ahimsa is not complete. Acharya Sudharma said that equanimity is the essence of Dharma. Lord Mahavira's definition of non-violence lies in equanimity of life. This is always observed in its fullness. Equanimity means to consider all the sentient beings, whether mobile or immobile equal, as far as the main feature of the soul is concerned. Some living beings are developed and some are not. Some are one-sensed and some are five-sensed. But a nonviolent person will consider all as equal and will never be detrimental to them. 'Treat others as your own self' will be his dictum.
All the conscious beings have the same intensity of feeling when they are hurt or troubled. Lord Mahavira said that when a mute person is pierced with a sharp weapon and hurt extensively he experiences terrible pain, but he is not able to express it in words. Likewise, the conscious beings which are not gifted with vocal cord, they cannot express their pain but do experience the pain terribly when they are hurt or killed. The similarity of experience or inner feeling is the basis of equanimity.
This is in short the definition of Ahimsa. Now, let us consider that in the light of these norms whether the life-style of non-violence is possible or not?
Ahimsa is an ideal, which is attainable by any one who treads the path of self-restraint. Slowly a practitioner can reach the pinnacle of Ahimsa. Ideal which is not in the reach of a practitioner is never an ideal but a hypocrisy. Ahimsa is the way of happy living and can be practised in day to day life.
For the life-style of non-violence there are some important norms which are to be adhered to:(1) Compassion:
Compassion means the stoppage of cruelty. 'All are one' this norm of identification of self with all beings leads one to engender compassion. This experience of oneness vehement the virtue of compassion. This is the core of non-violence. When anybody inflicted pain to Mahavira he used to think, it is really a pity, that a man inflicting pain to me is doing his own
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