Gyaneshwari -Sant Gyaneshwar
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Chapter-13
The field and the knower of the field
Now non-violence has been defined in different ways by different schools of thought. Just as one constructs a hedge at the foot of a tree by cutting its branches or satisfies one’s hunger by cutting and cooking one’s hands or builds an enclosure to the sanctuary with the materials obtained by pulling down the temple (216-220), so the Mimamsakas (ritualists) hold, that when animals are killed in sacrificial rites, this slaughter is tantamount to non-injury. When the people are tormented by famine, they perform sacrifices to get rain; but animals are slaughtered at the very start of these sacrifices. In these circumstances by committing violence how can one see the distant shore of non-violence? How can non-violence grow where only the seeds of violence are sown? But this desire of the ritualists to achieve non-violence through violence, is truly remarkable. O Arjuna, the Ayurveda also lays down that it is permissible to sacrifice a life to save another life (221-225). This science saw many beings knocked down by various diseases and devised treatment to alleviate their suffering. In this treatment, they dig out roots of trees and in some cases uproot the tree along with their roots and branches. They cut some trees in the middle, strip the others of their barks and bake the pith of some trees in a pot. The innocent trees which bear no enmity to others are cracked all over and thus reduced to a lifeless and dry state. They cut the bellies of live creatures in order to take out the bile and save human beings suffering from diseases (226-230). This is like pulling down homes in order to build temples and shrines, opening free kitchens by robbing people in trade, covering the head by keeping the posterior bare, erecting a pavilion by pulling down a house, or making a fire to warm oneself by burning the blanket or like giving a bath to the elephant or building a cowpen by selling a bull or buying a cage after driving away the parrot. How can one describe it? Is it useful work or mockery? Should one laugh it away or jeer at it? In one (Jain) tradition it is the custom to drink water after straining it through a piece of cloth, killing in that process many vermins (231-235). |
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