Chapter 15 – Application of Nonviolence (Ahinsä)

Introduction

Vegetarianism has been known for thousands of years as a principle of health and environmental ethics throughout India. It remains to this day a cardinal ethic of Jain thought and practices. Each form of life, even water and trees possesses consciousness and energy. Nonviolence, (Ahinsä), the primary basis of vegetarianism, has long been central to the religious traditions of India, especially Jainism. Religion in India has consistently upheld the sanctity of life, whether human, animal, or the most elemental.

More than twenty-five hundred years ago, Lord Mahävir made a simple yet profound statement based on the inclusion of Non-violence into the very fabric of his consciousness. “All of life is just like me.  I want to live.  So do all souls, all living beings.  The instinct of self-preservation is universal.   Every living being clings to life and fears death.   Each one of us wants to be free from pain.   So let me carry out all my activities with great care so that I am not harmful to any living being.”

The philosophy of Non-violence is a living practice. More than refraining from violence, it is a deep reverence for all life. When anger, jealousy, or unfulfilled ambitions provoke us, the one  whom we damage first is our own self.   This is equally true of harsh, slanderous, or critical speech.   It works like a matchstick; before it ignites something else, it burns its own self.

Before putting anybody down, judging them, or treating anyone as an inferior, we must examine ourselves.   Before buying or using any product, we must ask, “By my action, am I causing any living being to pay a price in pain? Directly or indirectly, am I destroying any  life?”

From  the  moment  this  awareness  becomes  a  part  of  our  daily  life,  we  find  that  traits  and habits, which used to limit us, disappear naturally. We are no longer able to invite pain and disease to our bodies through uninformed eating habits.   The vegetarian way of life becomes a natural outcome of inner understanding.   By doing everything we can to minimize violence and pain to life, we enjoy living with a pure consciousness and a clean conscience.

Jain philosophy emphasizes taking care to minimize the harm one does to other living beings and to direct one’s actions with the intention to revere life.  This requires vigilance, awareness of motives, and fearlessness to live in tune with nature’s laws.   The underlying feeling is not to  inspire  fear  in  any  living  being;  it  is  opening  one’s  heart  to  life.  It  is  true  that  just  by breathing, using water, walking, and taking plants as wood, we are causing lives to be lost. The emphasis lies in reducing to a minimum the harm we do in order to survive.

The more developed its sensory apparatus is, the more a life form is sensitive to pain.   Since fish, birds, and animals have a well-developed sense of pain, we must refuse to be a cause to their agony and pain.   Also, when we observe how dearly animals cling to life and struggle to  survive,  how  much  they  are  dominated  by  fear,  we  must  drop  any  notion  of  using  or exploiting  them.    We  feel  for  their  helplessness  in  the  face  of  man’s  gluttony,  greed,  and callousness;  we  want  to  see  them  live  unmolested.   Even  for  vegetables,  we  must  realize that every fruit, leaf, grain that ends up on our plate had to lose its life in order to give us life.   But the sad fact is that without plants we would not survive.

What Do Vegetarians Eat?

The staples of a vegetarian diet are grain, legumes, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and seeds.  Protein can be obtained easily through a variety of grains and legumes.  Fiber and essential vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrates can be obtained from many raw vegetables; iron especially is in rich green leafy vegetables.

Do Vegetarians Eat Dairy and Eggs?

Vegetarians who use dairy products are called lacto vegetarians.   Those who do not even use  dairy  products  are  vegans.    In  particular,  vegans  believe  that  cow’s  milk  is  meant  for calves, not humans.   Nowadays, dairy (milk, butter, ghee, ice-cream, cheese) foods are produced with cruelties, which vegetarians and vegans should refuse to support.   Also the dairy industry is inherently linked to the meat industry.   When female cows stop giving milk or reduces its quantity at a certain age, they are sent to the meat industry for slaughtering. If they give birth to a male calf, it is raised on an iron deficient diet, to make tender meat. Hence one should not consume any dairy products in order to avoid cruelty to animals.

In poultry farms, chickens are considered no better than egg-producing machines.    They are housed in small-congested cages known as chicken-havens.   Due to shortage of space, they naturally become violent, offensive, obsessed and quarrelsome.  They attack one another in a barbarous manner.   To prevent them from fighting and wounding  one another, they are de-beaked.   Due to de-beakin g, they are unable even to drink water

A fertilized egg is a pre-birth stage of a chicken.   To eat fertilized egg is in fact to consume a chicken before its birth.   Unfertilized eggs are the result of the sexual cycle of a chicken and  very  unnatural.    The  egg  produced  without  any  contact  with  the  male  bird  (and  thus producing an infertile egg) is also animate because it is born out of the chicken’s body with its blood and cells.   No egg – fertile or infertile – is without life (inanimate).   Both are non- vegetarian food.

Animal Cruelty and Ecological Impact

Planet earth is suffering.  In large measure, the escalating loss of species, destruction of ancient rain forests to create pasturelands for livestock, loss of topsoil and the consequent increase of water impurities and air pollution have all been traced to the single fact of non-vegetarian food (meat, chicken, and dairy products) in the human diet.   No single decision that we can make as individuals or as a race can have such a dramatic effect on the improvement of our planetary ecology as the decision to not eat non-vegetarian food.   Many seeking to save the planet for future generations have made this decision for this reason and this reason alone.

The choice of a vegetarian (absolutely no animal products) diet is an expression of a sincere consideration for the ecology of the planet as well.   In addition, there are billions of starving people who can be fed if only the raising of livestock was stopped.   Consider these facts:

Slaughtering of Animals in USA

• Cattle – 130,000 slaughtered per day
• Calves – 7,000 slaughtered per day
• Hogs – 360,000 slaughtered per day
• Chickens – 24,000,000 slaughtered per day

Cruelty to Cows by Dairy Industries

• Cows are kept pregnant continually
• Slaughtering their 70% to 80% of baby calves within six months by Veal industry or within five years by beef industry
• Slaughtering the mother cows after five years of their fertile life (life expectancy is 15 years)
• Everyday hormones or drugs are injected to increase milk yield.

Greenhouse Effect

• World’s 1.3  billion  cows  annually  produce  100  million  tons  of  methane  a  powerful greenhouse gas which traps 25 times as much solar heat as CO2

Water Consumption

• Slaughtering animals requires hundreds of millions of gallons of water every day.  The waste in these places, estimated at about two billion tons a year, mostly ends up in waterways, polluting and killing thousands of fish, and creating a human health problem.
• Livestock (Cattle, Calves, Hogs, Pigs) production accounts for more than half of all the water consumed in USA.

Land Usage

• A third of the surface  of North America is devoted to grazing
• Half of American croplands grow livestock feed for meat and dairy products
• 2% of US cropland produces fruits and vegetables, while 64% of US cropland is for producing livestock feed
• One acre of prime land can make 5,000 lb.  Cherries, 10,000 lb.   Green beans, 30,000 lb.  Carrots, 40,000 lb.   Potatoes, 50,000 lb.   Tomatoes, or 250 lb.   Beef
• 220 million acres of land in the USA have been deforested for livestock production
• 85% of annual US topsoil loss is directly associated with raising livestock
• 25 million acres in Brazil, and half the forests in Central America

Cost Comparison

• The cost of raw materials consumed to produce food from livestock is greater than the value of all oil, gas and coal consumed in America.
• Growing grains, vegetables and fruits uses less than 5% as much raw materials as does meat and dairy production
• 2 calories of fossil fuel used for 1 calorie of protein of soybeans, while 78 calories of fossil fuel used for 1 calorie of beef
• 6.9 kg of grain and soy to make 1 kg of boneless trimmed pork

Solution to World Hunger Problem

According to DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA:

If Americans reduced their meat/dairy intake by just 10%, the savings in grains and soybeans could feed 60 million people per year (same as the number of people   starve to death worldwide)

Rejection of Drinking Liquor

For the observance of the Nonviolence Vow (Ahinsä –Vrata), it has been specifically laid down that a person should renounce drinking alcohol.   According to the sacred text of Purushärtha Siddhi-Upäya, “alcohol stupefies the mind; one whose mind is stupefied forgets piety; and the person who forgets piety commits violence without hesitation.” Again, it is important to understand  that  drinking  liquor  leads  to  the  commitment  of  violence  because  liquor  is  the reservoir of many lives which are born in it.   Similarly, it is significant that many dishonorable passions like anger, pride, deceit, greed, fear, disgust, ridicule, grief, boredom, and lust, arise due to the inhibition of senses while drinking liquor and these passions are nothing but different aspects of violence.

Abandonment of Honey

Along  with  the  renunciation  of  liquor  drinking  and  meat  eating,  giving  up  of  honey  is  also included in the observance of the non-violence vow.   The use of honey invariably entails the destruction of life as even the smallest drop of honey in the world represents the death of bees.   It is also clear that even if a person uses honey, which has been obtained by some, trick  from  a  honeycomb  or has  dropped  down  from  it,  there  is                violence  because  there  is destruction to the lives spontaneously born therein.   Also, it is important to note that it takes nearly a million bees to create 1 pound of honey.

Dress and Decoration

Jains are required to pursue the path of nonviolence in the way they dress also.  They should not wear furs and the plumes that are obtained by torturing, and then killing animals and birds. For the same reason, the use of silk and woolen garments is prohibited for all Jains.   We should also avoid all leather articles.

Conclusion :

Jainism prohibits all kinds of intoxicants and stimulants.   Regarding the question of food and drink, one thing must be remembered; mundane souls have to commit violence for their maintenance, as life thrives only on life.   Though violence is unavoidable in the sustenance of life, Jainism, by rules of conduct tries to limit it for essential purposes only.   The rules of conduct  never  sanction  injury,  but  they  try  to  restrict  it  to  the  lowest  possible  minimum  by taking into account the level of development of injured living beings.   The higher the stage of development of the injured being is, (the closer it has approached the state of perfection), the more  sin  is  committed.   Thus,  from  a  practical  point  of  view,  the  sin  of  hurting  a  plant  is smaller than that of hurting an animal; the sin of hurting an animal is smaller than that on hurting a human being, etc.   From this standpoint, it can be understood why Jainism forbids flesh eating and, on the other hand objects little to the eating of vegetables.