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- Newsgroups: misc.writing
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- From: ds@tejas.watson.ibm.com (Dinkar Sitaram)
- Subject: Ahimsa - a digression
- Sender: @watson.ibm.com
- Message-ID: <1992Nov10.174818.27937@watson.ibm.com>
- Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 17:48:18 GMT
- Reply-To: ds@tejas.watson.ibm.com (Dinkar Sitaram)
- References: <92314.140929KVJLC@ASUACAD.BITNET> <BxIBD6.45x@unx.sas.com>
- Organization: IBM TJ Watson Research
- Lines: 43
-
- I wanted to correct (if that is not too harsh a term) the explanation
- of ahimsa in Fred Welden's excellent post on "Theme - moral". Since
- this is not really relevant to misc.writing, I think any further
- correspondence should be by e-mail.
-
- In article <BxIBD6.45x@unx.sas.com>, sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com (Fred
- Welden) writes:
- |>
- |> [Ahimsa is an Indian philosophy that holds all life sacred and dictates
- |> that its practitioners go to heroic lengths to avoid killing anything.
-
- This is not completely correct. "Ahimsa" can be translated literally
- as "non-violence" ("a" = non; "himsa" = violence) and is a principle, not
- a philosophy. It is possible to have more than one philosophy based on
- ahimsa; the example you have quoted is a particular Jain philosophy (I
- am not familiar enough with Jain philosophies to tell you what the name
- is). Mahatma Gandhi, for example, believed in ahimsa but did not sweep
- the ground while walking, since he accepted the principle but had a
- different philosophy. In fact, the principle is accepted in general by
- Hindus and Buddhists as well, but your example is not.
-
- Your statement of the principle may also be inaccurate. I believe that
- the prohibition is against not harming or not causing pain to any living
- being (there are actually two variants here). In any case, the prohibition
- is more general than "not killing anything". Also, the prohibition does
- not necessarily imply that life is sacred; in fact, in some philosophies,
- division of things into "sacred" and "non-sacred" is meaningless; and other
- philosophies believe that in some sense, everything is alive.
-
- |> They must
- |> either be unaware of, or try not to think of, what goes on all the time
- |> in their own bodies--their immune systems and their colons.]
-
- This is also not quite correct. I am not completely familiar with these
- philosophies, but I believe that they accept that complete non-violence
- is impossible. Towards the end of one's life, one is expected to do
- penance for all the inadvertant violence one has committed.
-
- Dinkar
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