Prāṇa and Hiṃsā
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Prāṇa and Hiṃsā
10/03/2025
Ethical discussions within the major South Asian religious traditions—Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism—often center on the treatment of “sentient beings.” Indeed, the common perception that these religions are inherently more "eco-friendly" than others seems to rest on the idea that their ethics privilege sentience over a narrower human-centered framework. In contemporary Jainism, although appeals to sentience are prominent in pro-vegetarian and pro-vegan rhetoric, it remains unclear whether the traditional basis of Jain ethics is sentience or the possession of “vitality” or “life-force” (prāṇa). In this post, I begin with Donaldson and Bajželj’s remarkable work, Insistent Life: Principles for Bioethics in the Jain Tradition, to explore how the concept of prāṇa complicates the foundations of Jain ethics.
Being Alive
In the beginning of this chapter, we noted that in the Jain tradition, consciousness is the mark by which living stuff is distinguished from nonliving stuff. Jain texts also propose another set of criteria by which to recognize life in matter, that is, through the so-called vitalities or life-forces (prāṇa). (Donaldson and Bajželj 2021, 35-36)
“Living stuff” is “alive” precisely because it is inhabited by a jīva (soul) or “consciousness.” Once a jīva is present in matter, then that entity is immediately animated by an array of distinct vitalities (prāṇas). The vitalities of that entity vary according to the type of entity it is. Thus, Jainism posits (at least) two “set[s] of criteria by which to recognize life in matter”: (1) the presence of a jīva (2) the presence of the prāṇas. This raises a key question, begged by Donaldson and Bajželj: technically speaking, does “being alive” mean that matter contains a jīva, or that it possesses the prāṇas, or both? What is certain, at the very least, is that in Jainism, while all “living stuff” is sentient, the condition of being alive is not, strictly speaking, identical with the condition of being sentient.
Jain Prāṇas
Gommaṭsāra 130 enumerates the ten prāṇas as follows: “(1–5) five sense vitalities (indriya-prāṇa), (6) vitality of respiration (ucchvāsa-prāṇa or ānapāna-prāṇa), (7) vitality of life span (āyu-prāṇa), and (8–10) strength vitalities (bala-prāṇa) of body, speech, and mind” (Donaldson and Bajželj 2021, 36). While rational five-sensed organisms, such as humans, have all ten prāṇas, one-sensed organisms have only one sense vitality (touch) along with the body, respiration, and life-span vitalities (G 131–133; Cf. Donaldson and Bajželj 35–36 and note 96). Critically, in Jainism, having a sense vitality (indriya-prāṇa) means having both phenomenal and affective experience with respect to that vitality (Dickstein 2025, 18–19). “Phenomenal experience” denotes the subjective appearance of a phenomenon to a being, while “affective experience” refers to the feelings—pleasant or unpleasant—elicited by that appearance. Since every organism possesses at least the sense vitality of touch (sparśa), every organism therefore has both phenomenal and affective experience of touch. Put simply, all organisms are sentient—at least with respect to touch.
However, all living organisms also have, at the very least, the body, respiration, and life-span vitalities, and these vitalities are distinct from the sense vitalities. This raises a key question: in Jainism, do these non-sensory vitalities carry foundational ethical significance, or is Jain ethics grounded in the sense vitalities and the affective experiences of sentient beings?
Jain Hiṃsā
Tattvārtha Sūtra 7.8 defines harming (hiṃsā) as “the deprivation of vitality owing to carelessness” (pramattayogāt prāṇavyaparopaṇaṃ). Prāṇavyaparopaṇaṃ or “taking life” literally means the deprivation (vyapaparopaṇa) of the prāṇas of an organism. In this definition, harming is understood not as negatively affecting the sense experience of an organism, but rather as “taking away” one or more of its vitalities. Similarly, commentary on Gommaṭsāra 133 states: “Injury (hiṃsā) is defined as the deprivation through carelessness (pramāda) of any one or more of the vitalities (prāṇa) of a soul. Really speaking, it is the vitalities to which injury is caused, neither the soul nor the latter which encases a mundane soul is susceptible to any injury whatsoever” (J.L. Jaini 1927, 92).
These descriptions suggest that hiṃsā does not primarily mean causing a negative affective experience (i.e., duḥkha/unpleasantness) in a living being, but rather the destruction of any of its prāṇas—including body, respiration, or life-span vitalities. If so, then Jain ethics appears to be fundamentally prāṇa-centric rather than sentiocentric. As I have asked elsewhere, what might this imply for Jain perspectives on animal ethics and environmental ethics? Could Jainism coherently acknowledge the possible insentience of certain one-sensed and two-sensed beings without thereby excluding them from ethical consideration? Or would this place Jainism in a position similar to some strands of environmental ethics that struggle to ground moral considerability in the absence of sentience?
For now, I leave these questions open.
Jonathan Dickstein, Tirthankara Shreyansanath Endowed Assistant Professor of Jain and Vegan Studies at Arihanta Institute, completed his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara. He specializes in South Asian Religions, Animals and Religion, and Comparative Ethics. His current work focuses on Jainism and contemporary ecological issues, extending into Critical Animal Studies, Food Studies, and Diaspora Studies.
Professor Dickstein is the lead organizer of the Vegan Studies Initiative at Arihanta Institute. arihantainstitute.org/vegan-studies
Additional articles by Professor Dickstein: