Unwholesome diet and conduct (apathya)

In the petition to Ṛṣabhanātha, the people say that in the land of action they were afflicted by cold, heat and rain and in the course of time took to wrong food and conduct.

Some diseases are said to be treated by one procedure, some by two, some by three and some disorders by all four (poison, alkali, fire and instruments), so it is not right to rely on any one alone; whoever calls fire, poison or alkali wholly wholesome or wholly unwholesome falls into self-contradiction and contradicts the treatment that prescribes them.

Grain is to be rejected if it is badly decayed or shrivelled, very old, burnt, spoiled by insects or blight, grown on poor forest land or out of season, not properly ripened or quite new, unwholesome for the body or unsuited to the constitution, or grown on a cremation ground; such grain is called bad and harmful, and the great sages say it should always be given up.

In the same way, the text argues, alkali, fire, surgical instruments and poison, used by very skilled physicians in the diseases they can cure, visibly relieve the grown disease at once and quickly make the patient very comfortable, so they too cannot be called unwholesome in every respect.

After examples of poison treating poison, fire treating burns, the excision and burning of a bite and the relief brought by sharp instruments in bloodletting, the text says that whoever declares fire, alkali, instruments and poison to be the same in every respect falls into self-contradiction.

By the same logic, the translation says, alkali, fire and poison, which are seen to relieve some diseases at once, would count as very wholesome for all diseases; poison is said to destroy poison and so is not to be given up entirely, since it does not kill one who touches it and causes no harm, that is no death, when used with mantra and medicine.