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Views on Ahimsā, Compassion, and
Samyaktva in Jainism
KRISTI L. WILEY University of California at Berkeley
Ahimsā appears to be the central theme of Mahāvīra's teachings. As Padmanabh S. Jaini has observed, there is a "preoccupation with ahimsa” within Jainism, for no other religious tradition “has carried it [ahiņsā] to the extreme of the Jainas. For them it is not simply the first among virtues but the virtue..." Although in most other religious traditions violence is usually associated with causing harm to other living beings, Jaini has noted that “for Jainas, however, it [hiņsā] refers primarily to injuring oneselfto behavior which inhibits the soul's ability to attain mokṣa."2
This focus on one's own spiritual progress as an important motivating factor for observing ahimsă has been mentioned by other authors as well. For example, Ronald Huntington, the late professor of religion and and the co-director of Albert Schweitzer Institute at Chapman University, has written that Jainism "expands Albert Schweitzer's famous concept of reverence for
Padmanabh S. Jaini, The Jaina Path of Purification (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 167.
2 The reasoning is that intentional harm to other living beings is motivated by passions (kasāyas), which cause the binding of unwholesome varieties (pāpa prakrtis) of karmic matter to one's own soul. These karmas cause rebirth in undesirable states of existence that are characterized by a preponderance of suffering and prolong the soul's journey in samsāra. Jaini, op. cit., p. 167.
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