Jainism was the earliest religion  to focus on ahimsa, and has the fullest  application of non-violence to daily life.. Renunciates, for  example, cannot accept food that might still be living, and  contemporary lay Jains are precluded from eating vegetables taken from the earth like potatoes, onion and carrots, that may have vegetation hidden in the folds of flowering tops like broccoli and cauliflower, or that may contain living beings (like honey).. Jains  must refuse foods that contain living seeds,  sprouts, or  mildews.
   Plants are "living" because they grow, because they are involved in  the cosmic cycle of moving water, and because they breathe. Plants are "sentient", having only the one sense of touch the base for all other senses and the sense that does not die with the physical body but continues unbroken with karmic consciousness through rebirth. Plants are "stable", enduring an anchored, rooted life unlike their mobile sentient colleagues. Plants feel "pleasure and pain" just as humans do, and show their experience of pleasure by turning towards the sun and flourishing, and their experience of pain by withering  when cut and eventually dying. 

    
 Tirthankara Rishabhanath
  under a banyan tree

   Plants are "karmic", enmeshed in the process of rebirth and conditi  oned therefore by the three gunas. Being one-sensed and the lowest of living beings, plants are classified as tamasic, indicated by laziness, inertia, inattention, dullness and delusion. Although tamasic at one extreme, plants also appear as "borderline beings" at  the other extreme. As models for ascetic behaviour, plants are guides for the highest realm of sattvic life. Ascetics are admonished to be stable in body and mind; full of equanimity and tranquillity; flexible like trees in the wind; undistracted by annoying pests; and ready with compassionate service for humans, providing shade, lodging and food. 

   In Hinduism, the practice of plant ahimsa extends into public spaces, with instruction on treating plant diseases, directions for planting trees and injunctions for rituals to ensure both the internal and external flourishing of plants. 
  The fullness of plant life puts plants in reciprocal relationship with humans. According to Hindu folklore, humans and plants can converse and marry. These possibilities bestow on humans the unique  responsibility for nurturing and protecting plants; a responsibility that ensures that plant life remains a diverse, healthy and flourishing component of the world's harmonious balance. 
  They also lead us to Buddhist monks who must refrain from walking in the rainy season so as not harm living beings in the soil underfoot. And they lead us, finally, to Hindu requests for forgiveness from trees about to be cut, hoping that the injury may be minimal. 
  In other religions  plants are seen as full participants in the ongoing flux of life, of enlivened energy and matter that includes animals and humans. This world view is  uniform across traditions, and posits five elements for including plants in the living matrix of the cosmos.  

Site copyright ã 2003, Digambarjainonline.com All Rights Reserved.

Best viewed at 800 x 600 screen size