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PRATIMAS
PART IV : 27
5. Sa-chitta-tyaga (abstinence from consumption of sentient things ) : He refrains from taking fresh vegetables, because they are living; and to hurt any living thing is in Jainism a deadly sin.
6. Ratri-bhukta-tyaga ( abstinence from eating at night ): He must not take food at night. There are minute living beings which no amount of artificial light can reveal or disperse, and which are consumed with meals, if taken after sunset.
7. Brahma-charya : Celibacy.
8. Arambha-tyaga : Abandonment of merely worldly engagements and occupations.
9-11. The remaining three stages are preparatory to the monk's life. Their names are parigraha-tyaga, anumati-tyaga and uddistha-tyaga and they enjoin a gradual giving up of the world and retiring into some very quiet place to acquire the knowledge of truth and ultimately to become fit to be a teacher of the path to salvation.
However underlying every rule of conduct in Jainism is the one important principle of ahimsa (non-killing, non-hurting). It will be useful here to consider the effect of this principle of non-injury on (1) food, (2) drink, (3) trades and industries, ( 4 ) social behaviour (5) civil and criminal wrongs.
It may be noted that injury by thought or deed to other living beings is the chief, if not the sole, cause of misery, ignorance, weakness, pain, and disease to oneself. It is something like the necessity of “Purging the defendant's conscience " in Courts of Equity in England. By doing wrong to the plaintiff, e. g. by not doing something promised to be done, the defendant is soiling his conscience, and equity forces him to clean it. Constituted as human nature is, Jainism facilitates our right living by showing that the luxury of injuring our neighbour is really an injury to ourselves, and an injury, too, from the evil effects of which the neighbour may possibly escape, but we cannot ! Altruism may have its basis upon a deeper and more refined kind of self-saving and self-serving
As to the effect of the principle of non-injury on :Food :
Food which involves the slaughter of living beings, animals, fish, birds, or anything that has five or less sense-organs, must not be taken.
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