11 Jan, 2014

Longing, Seeking and Knowing -

Abuse and violence are synonymous in texture, varying only in implementation techniques.

Humans butcher an animal, bird or fish by first beheading it and then enjoy the cooked meat on their platter. Some humans cut open the animal’s main blood vessels, bleed it to death, consider it purified and then relish the cooked meat. A tiger also kills its prey by first biting into the neck and bleeding it to death and then relishes eating the fresh uncooked meat. The residual meat is left for consumption by the other lesser animals.

The difference between a human eating an animal and an animal eating another animal is primarily in the style. A human justifies it by saying that the animal is first killed mercifully in a humane way, for whatever those fancy words mean. Some who relish it but feel guilty of eating meat also use fancy phrases to submerge the guilt. A tiger makes no excuses and does not snack at fast food restaurants between major meals.

Amongst humans presumptuous of  superiority over other animals , abuse and violence is carried out in different ways including emotional and physical; including carpet bombing the hell out of the lesser armed presumed-enemies. In carpet bombing, the innocent victims also include the flora and fauna of the land.

Longing for seeking and knowing the broad dimensions and texture of abuse and violence, Mahavir (540 BCE) devoted his life time and enunciated his concepts of non-violence. His remarkable body of thoughts represents a self-enriching philosophy of life for humans. It is like comprehending “matter” at the grossest as well as the minutest sub-atomic levels.