Non-Violence (Ahiṃsā)

Ahiṃsā is non-violence — the refusal to harm any living being, not only in deed but in word and thought. Patañjali lists it first among the restraints, and the tradition treats it as the root from which the other virtues grow: where non-harming is firmly established, the yoga texts say, hostility itself ceases in one's presence. Shared across Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist ethics, it became, in the modern era, the moral core of Gandhi's politics — though that is a later development built on an ancient principle.