Freedom of Expression
Arguments on “Ahinsa and non-vegetarian food” Part 2.
As I had said in the last posting that Anish’s point are given to other players of this game of gossiping. Here is one reaction from Arthur James from USA, let us see what he has to say on this topic and more particularly on Anish.
Anish you are again making a mistake of giving wrong comparisons. We are not thinking of globe warming here, we are considering only whether eating vegetarian diet is more violent or not. Please do not indulge is false arguments, for heavens sake. You blathered too much. You have given reference of American arguments and that does not apply to world condition for example, in America animals are fed on grains while in India and rest of the world they are fed on plain grass. We humans can not eat that grass and so your argument is false.
Now the question rose by some scholars, we shall consider first. They ask what is wrong in violence when nature is continuously indulging in that act; to make any change nature takes to violence and if nature can do it then what is wrong if humans imitate nature. This is the argument put forth by many observers and unless we prove to them that violence by nature and that by humans are different types and they do not compare, we will have to submit to their demand and accept violence as a natural way of life. For that we should find out in the first place why our seers like Lord Parshwnath and Lord Mahavir proposed for this principle of non-violence.
One argument suggests that violence is equated with sin. When we do kill a life it is considered as an act of sin. This is only an imagination and some psychologists suggest that, this is a normal mental reaction to the act of killing. In case of some psychic patients it is observed that when they see a living being killed they equate it with the killing of themselves. This reaction is behind the concept of non-violence. If we do not equate killing of a rat or a mosquito with our own death then that killing does not matter!
Many experts have agreed to this explanation of equating violence with sinful act and equating killing of other creature or life with killing of oneself. That means by taking this argument as valid, we can say that violence is sin; but nature does not do any sin and so any act of violence by nature does not become sin. That means, only for those psycho maniacs killing is supposedly an act of sin and for those all other psychologically normal persons the act of killing a life is not sin. This gives the possibility that sin is a relative term. A person killing a life, who does not think that killing is sin, for him violence or killing is no sin and for the other who things it that way the act of killing is sin! This shows that the principle of relativity is applied here.
Now to get to your argument that animals eat a lot of living cells during its living can not be considered as sin since that animal does not think that it is killing that live cell. That means we have a set of points and they suggest that an animal that has eaten tons of live cells has done no violence and so no sin. To come to your argument we can say that when a person has killed that animal for food he has done one sin. Let us take that killing one life is equal to one unit of sin and continue the argument. With these mathematical formulae one sees that killing one animal is one unit of sin and since that animal has never done any sin during its life total sin units on his account are 0 and so the sum total will be 1+ 0 = 1. You have suggested that the animal has done X million sins during it life by eating so much living cell will show the same formula as, 1 + X million units of sin and that is not the case as we have seen in the argument. When a tiger kills it's prey the tiger does not do any sin but those who are psycho maniacs suffering from that fear as mentioned in the previous argument it is all sin. All this shows that whether an act of killing is sin or not depends upon one's mental structure and there is no such thing as absolute sin in this world. We shall further extend this argument to find out if eating vegetarian food can be sin or violence. As we have seen that sin is a relative term and its application depends upon observer's mental structure we can say that a Jain eating vegetarian food is not doing any sin since he or she does not think that way and it is sin if they think that eating vegetarian food is sin; then for them that food becomes sin. Similarly, for those who do not think eating animals, fish and birds as sin and so no violence, then for them that act of killing animals and eating them is not sin. Let us extend this argument further to explain other examples of violence in human life.
Example one says a soldier killing enemy soldier, in this it is shown that the Indian philosophy says (See Gita) that killing enemy soldiers takes the warrior to heaven and so that is not sin but on the contrary good work. This helps soldiers in the war and they kill as many enemy soldiers as possible to make good work! Another example says a butcher is not doing killing even though he is killing many animals. Again it is justified in many a books of Hindu philosophy. Third example says a person kills some body in self defence. In this example also our law says self defence is no violence and so no sin. Many examples can be put forth to see the controversy in the argumentations concerning violence and sin.
Finally we see that sin or violence is human imaginations as much as the other imaginations on which our different philosophies are based. In reality there is no sin and no violence. Before we conclude for the time being we should take a note of element of propaganda. Some psycho maniacs (such as Jains) who were affected by the feeling that killing any life is similar to killing of themselves systematically spread their psycho mania (a mental defect) by preaching a philosophy and endeavoured to spread their psychic disorder to others who were not firm of their own belief.
Animals are sentient creatures, he says but what has that to do with act of violence? Here Anish went astray and after what he has written is all blather. One observer said on that if sensuousness is considered then a leper who has lost sensitivity can be beaten and since he has no sensitivity one can say that no violence was committed! How correct it will be? Again in other case a person who is dumb and can not give expression of his pain and if such a person is beaten will it be non-violence? Killing an unconscious person who gets no pain because his sensitivity is paralysed is no violence according to Anish. How correct all this will be? Of course not and so sensitivity of an animal should not be the measure of violence. Anish in that way asserts the importance of expression of pain during dying and any other death which gives no expression he thinks is not violence and that is again wrong. Pain expressed or otherwise is pain and Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose had shown that vegetable cells give signals of pain when they die. It is believed that he actually invented a device by which one can detect that signal of pain. This clearly rules out the point Anish tried to stress so passionately. Expression or no expression a killing is killing after all and so he made one more mistake or say logical fallacy. Jains often indulge in this type of illogical fraudulent arguments.
All this clearly explains that, a vegetable cell cooked, is as much a violence as an animal as big as cow killed. Sin count will be one only! If we have to go by sin count then further calculations show some thing quite interesting, let us say that one potato cooked is equal to say, N million cells cooked and that amount to N million sin counts and one cow (I take cow because it is a big animal eaten by most of the people in the world) killed is one sin count. It means one potato cooked is equal to N million cows killed. Is it not a very interesting calculation? Shocking but true! Second part of this calculation is more interesting and that is, if one cow is eaten by 500 people (since the animal is big it caters to so many people) then the sin count per person will be 1/500th sin count. Suppose 500 people eat one potato each after cooking that means for the group of 500 people total sin count will be 500*N million sin counts. This clearly proves by simple mathematical method that eating cow is less violent than eating potatoes.
It is difficult to get out of age old prejudices and so no Jain or any propagator of vegetarian food as non-violent food shall accept this logic but nevertheless, it is THE TRUTH.
It may be that ancient Hindus and Buddhists preferred to accept the principle of “Jivojivasy jivanaum, one life lives on other life”; for that reason; and concentrated on other basis of violence and denounced them so that a peaceful way of life shall be possible for all. Food excused!
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