The Soul of Jainism

By Dr. Michael Tobias California, U.S.A.

"He who looketh on creatures, big and small, of the earth, as his own self, comprehendeth this immense universe." (*1)

I encountered my first hint of Jainism in a white marble, spotlessly clean temple many years ago, whilst travelling through western India. It was late in the day. Birds were flocking overhead, where a large sculptured spire rose from the center of the temple towards a magenta twilight. Upon approaching the entrance, a white-robed gentleman quietly surveyed my person, then requested that I be so kind as to leave my watch outside the temple. He explained that leather - the watchband - was not permitted inside the sacred space of Jainism. He used the "ism" rather than referring to the temple itself, and this complicated contraction of the language set me to wondering.

Not long after that, I realized I was a Jain at heart.

There are some twenty million Jains today, mostly in India, perhaps fifty thousands in the United States. And they are to be found in many other countries, from Ethiopia to Canada. Until the last century their religion was frequently confused by western scholars with both Hinduism and Buddhism. But in fact it is arguably the oldest living faith in the world, distinct from any other, dating back tens-of-thousands of years. There are incontrovertible Jain documents as early as the 10th century B.C., six hundred years prior to the emergence of Buddhism. Unlike the later Brahmanic spiritualist traditions in Central Asia, with their bouquets and contagia of deities, the Jains worship no god. Worship, according to them, is a form of interference, and interference is counter to nature. They revere nature. That is their essential characteristic. The semantics are obtuse. What is the difference between "revere" and "worship" one asks? Perhaps the important distinction rests upon the idea of God, which the Jains dismiss as anthropomorpic, whereas Nature - the word, the concept, the surreality - necessarily transcends any focal point of conceptualization. By analogy, Immanuel Kant's struggle with pure reason bears striking similarity to the position of the concept of nature in Jainism. Kant writes. "Our reason (Vernunft) has this peculiar fate that, with regerence to one class of its knowledge, it is always troubled with questions which cannot be ignored, because they spring from the very nature of reason, and which cannot be answered, because they transcend the powers of human reason... reason becomes involved in darkness and contradictions, from which, no doubt, it may conclude that errors must be lurking somewhere, but without being able to discover them, because the principles which it follows transcend all the limits of experience and therefore withdraw themselves from all experimental tests. It is the battle-field of these endless controversies which is called Metaphysic." (*2)

Like pure reason, nature inheres in everything, just as Judeo - Christianity insists that God is everywhere. Again, one is prompted to consider whether there is any essential difference between the reverence -the Jain understatement- and worship -the West's most tantalizing if contentious transitive verb; and this prompting would continue to semantically divide, rather than unite, as history has painfully recorded. So it is best to recognize that the Jains argue against the opiate of worship for much the reason Karl Marx did : semantics sunders the heart, the reasoning faculty, and our ability as conscious, loving beings, to consciously love in perpetuity.

Conscious live - the striving towards an harmonious co-existence with all Beings - is the purposeful, soul-supportive, evolutionary instinct of Nature. That, say the Jains, IS nature. And no semantic penchant, no logical argument, no linguistic or conceptual conquest can do better than that, however, it is phrased. Humanity must recognize its place in the natural process. It is not something to be worshipped, not some Other; it is ourselves, in need of nurturance and recognition. Short of that, we are not ourselves. We perish as individuals. And as individuals perish, the entire biological community fragments, endures pain say the Jains, is unnecessary.

This is a revolutionary notion. IT goes on to insist that human beings are like an island of conscience in a sea of turmiol. We have the capability, the responsibility, to protect one another. For the Jains. "one another" means every living organism in the galaxy.

Yet to become a Jain requires far more than mere "reverence" for nature, which is the temptation when describing this common-sense orthodoxy. The Jains recognize in their way that reverence is easy because it is so identifiable with heaven. Anybody can go to heaven. But it takes courage to remain here on Earth. To be affirmative, optimistic. Neither to ignore, nor forget; but to embrace, and to conquer jainism derives from the word jina, which means peaceful conquerer of the self; conquerer of one's inner distractions and temptations.

Every religion assists adepts in an addiction to heaven; every psychotherapy calculates its gain by the notches of paradise, the mental, the ideological utopia it can invent. Paradise is easy. Politicians are forever promising it. Great artists in their passion are invoking it. The Garden of Eden, in other words, is an idea everywhere about us. Yet the actions that should be concomitant with paradise are rare. Indeed, what should they be? For the Jains, this Earth, with its multitudes of life forms and atoms, is the only true sphere of meaning, the place of dreams, of action, of moral and aesthetic culmination. They call it jivan-mukhta, the divine on Earth. But all these phrases connote an outer admonition, vague and meandering, that fails to reach the inner soul of Jainism.

There the dimension of thought and behavior can be simply identifies by a word, namely, ahimsa which is Hindi for non-violence, or non-interference.

Serving the Jain commonality of purpose, twenty-four exemplary adherents of ahimsa are acknowledged to have achieved the bliss of perfect understanding and action. The Jains call them Jinas or Tirthankaras. They are not gods, but human beings; they did not go to heaven, per se, but to immortal Earth, their souls richly enshrined somewhere in the planet's eternal biochemistry. To call it the Nirvana, id to cultivate the hieratic inexactitude of yearning beyond all enapsulation, of language that can not hope to fix between its letters the appropriate physical or emotional coordinates. For the Jains topography becomes relevant when it has entered the Soul.

The most recent of these Jinas, Mahavira, lived in Bihar (eastern India) from 599 to 527 B.C. He was an older contemporary of Gautama Buddha. Both men shared certain qualities - great renunciations, extreme psychological embattlement, unfriendly opponents, legendary hardships. In the case of Mahavira, his abdication of the normal material existence occurred only after his parents had died. The story goes that he did not want to break their hearts. After they had passed away. Mahavira took off his clothes and spent some forty years wandering across India, preaching the message of peace. He was a total vegetarian and Jainism itself is adamantly so.

Mahavira's nudity (acelakka) is well worth commenting upon, for it suggests a state of purity and inner that -it must be acknowledged- is rather rare in these times. 

The Jain saints in India spend but a few days at any one time in any particular town, except the chaturmas period- which is during rainy season. The devouts feed them pure vegetarian food-specific fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts. Digambara (nude) Jain saints take one meal a day, when they are not fasting, eaten out of the palms of their hands. The white-robed (Shvetambara) and naked (Digambara) monks, have much reduced their consumption even of food.

Such gradations of behaviour are consistent with the Jain philosophy of non-absolutism (anekantavada), the relativity of thinking. What is not suited to relativity, however, is the killing or harming of any organism with more than one sense, expect in instances of total self-defense, where once again the minimizing of violence as a general principle is employed.

What this means, practically speaking, is that the Jains have renounced all professions involving harm to animals. Not surprisingly, their ecological avocations have proved to be financially successful and the Jain communities throughout India find themselves economically advantaged. They have used their money philanthropically to perpetuate the practice of ahimsa. They have established animal welfare centers known as panjorapols, compassionate oases in a harsh country where cattle are beloved to death, in essence; left to wander, in other words, until they typically starve to death in old age, Jains once again interfere with nature, rescuing the old or infirm animals and caring for them lovingly until they die natural deaths inside the welfare centers.

The Jains always granted equal status to women. There was never a caste system among the Jains. How could there be? Abortion and contraception are allowed, though abortion itself is not religiously sanctioned. Here again, where the mother's own physical or mental well-being is jeopardized, her adulthood is granted priority status. Pragmatic minimizing of violence is once again at work.

Agricultural professions, timber, even mineral exploitation, most pharmaceutical or any earth-moving enterprises - these are all outside the Jain level of acceptance. Hotels which serve non-vegetarian food to their guests are also against every Jain canon. Jain doctors can not prescribe any drugs that one derived from animal by-product, or were ever tested on animals. Jains even forego silk saris, so fundamental to pan-Indian fashion, knowing as they do that approximately ten thousand silk worms are boiled alive to make a single garment. As for Jain monks, they are celibate, but not for the reasons asexuality has been ordained in other religious quarters. For the Jain mendicants, ejaculation is perceived in stark terms: it kills on average, 75 million spermatazoa, which reeking havoc with the bacterial balance of a woman's genitalia.

Once again, however, lay Jains propagate themselves inspite of these uncomfortable recognitions, always oriented in their hearts towards that day when they too can renounce sex, renounce automobiles (cars kill bugs), and simply walk naked, barefoot, throughout their homeland , practicing the primary rules of ahimsa.

Rules are basic to Jain ecology. They translate into daily practices that are meant to inhabit the unrestrained inflow of daily sensation, passion, karma. Karma covers the soul, say the Jains the way a cataract clouds and inhibits the vision. The goal of the Jain is to restrict, and eventually banish the accumulation of Karma 0material goods, passions, ill-will towards others, complexity, haste, narcissism ego in all its phases- so that the soul can be eventually free of inconsequential attachments and harmful deeds. They call this condition kshayika-samyak-darshana, translated as true insight through the destruction of karma. When that day comes, a Jain will have achieved his moksha, or liberation.

Jains have their way through this labyrinth of injuctions, the lay Jains strive towards monkhood. Few actually achieve that state of complete itinerant renunciation, best articulated, perhaps by a naked Digambara who once sat with me at a temple above the city of Indore and spoke the following words:

"Twenty-two years ago I took the vow of nudity. Extraordinary as it may appear to you, nudity has become natural to us... We do not possess anything whatsoever and we do not have to tell people to likewise give up their worldly possessions. Our example itself conveys the fact that here is a man who can be happy without having wanting anything. It is important to see that what hurts himself also must hurt others and what gives happiness to others alone can give happiness to himself. It is ahimsa that makes for friendship between father and son, and love between husband and wife. With these words I bless you. May the whole world remain in peace." (*3)

There is in Jainism a practice of "temporary asceticism," much like fasting or meditation retreat, which makes a monk out of a businessman for a day, or a weekend, or as long as he or she wihses to emulate the foregoing convictions.

I have spent considerable time in India in this mode of impermanent austerity, or tapas. But it is a mistake to assume that Asia is where ascetics case best manage. India is not the essential ingredient of such behavior. Jain awareness is what matters. And it is as appropriate in the U.N. General Assembly, or the World Court at the Hague, as it is on Wall Street, or in Hollywood or Washington. The space of this meditation never ceases, never ceases, never need change. A cafe in downtown Toykyo, the sculptured caverns of ancient Ellora. In a marble enclave atop a high Maharashtran tropic, or on a drowsy train headed to nowhere, across Siberia. Whatever the personal circumstances of time or place, the same cacophany of senses is rushing in to proclaim the earth herself as the basis for humble and reverential thought and deed. Jainism can work in the industrial sections of Manchester, England, or in a place like Ahmedabad, along a sleepy Gujarati river, where Gandhi spent many years spinning his own fabric, meditating, building a case against the British occupation of India, and practicing the Jainism which his earliest mentor a Jain teacher, and his closet friend -Jain ascetic- had inculcated in the Mahatma.

"If ahimsa be not the law of our being, then my whole argument falls to pieces," wrote Gandhi.

Jainism can work, and must work, anywhere, everywhere. It is ecological nurturance taken to its logical conclusion. Ironically, the Jains within India have become remarkably adept capitalists. Though they collectively account for but one and half percent of India's nearly one billion residents, they pay a proportionate lion's share of the country's taxes, as well as providing the overwhelming majority of philanthropic donations. Their ecological professions have proven to be among the most lucrative enterprises; businesses like law, computer software, publishing, education, diamond cutting, the judiciary, administration. None of these activities would be considered pure by the Jain clerics. Diamond cutting, for example, disturbs the inorganic balance of the planet, not so much on the finger of one's bride, but in the deep and unrestrained shafts where the diamonds are rudely hewn. Publishing is even more injurious, for the obvious reasons. A single edition of a Sunday newspaper in Bombay, regardless of the amount of recycled pulp, has taken its devastating toll on the surrounding ecosystem.

Nevertheless, the Jains have gone a remarkable distance in minimizing their impact, by comparison with most of their contemporary humans.

And what I was to discover in my various encounters with new Jain friends - Jurists, businessmen and women, professors, monks, children, industrialists, doctors, engineers, nuns, photographers etc. - is the stunning extent to which they are constantly talking about, and attuned to a meditation on nature, simplification, the largesse which is, in their firm estimation, appropriate to human conscience.

According to the Jain approach, the grandiose has fused with the humble; an entire living planet has been incorporated into the germ of a human ideal. Concerned with understanding the roots of human aggression, and the possibilities for reversing those tendencies inside a person, the Jains have qualified their ecological thinking by reference to the unconscious and to rudimentary psychology; this motif is everywhere to be found in their approximately 46 remaining ancient texts, or Agama, all written in an ancient Magadhan language known as Ardhamagadhi. Those philosophic and poetic writings include 12Anga and 34 Angabahya.

By psychoanalyzing violence, breaking down daily himsa, or harm, into its minute pare, the Jains have discovered the wellsrpring of compassion. At every juncture of human behavior they have divined right and wrong, signalling hope, allowing for gentleness, finding a path towards love that is viable, humble, and appropriate to everyone. The dharma-tirtha, or holy path, is the result of daily salutations (namaskara-mantra), compassion, empathy and charity (jiva-daya), care in walking (irya-samiti), forgiveness (kshama), universal friendliness (maitri), affirmation (astikya), the sharing with guests (atithisamvibhaga), critical self-examination (alocana), constant meditation (dhyana), a vast realm of behavioral restraints (gunavratas), and aversion leading to renunciation (vairagya). These many assertions of a daily quest, taken together, are the basis for liberation in this life, the realization that all souls are interdependent (parasparopagraho jivanam).

Mahavira had stated, "One who neglects or disregards the existence of earth, air, fire, water and vegetation disregards his own existence which is entwined with them." But the ideal goes far beyond biology. The fact of fickle evolution is no excuse for bad behavior, say the Jains. Evolution does not condemn us to anything. Our choices condemn us. We are not clouds in trousers, drifting out of control, but forces for empathy, capable of adroit and systematic deliberation. As Thoreau cautioned, we must live our deliberately. Such that the very ecological ground rules that have surfaced in this century are now seen to be the very origins many millennia ago of a cultural and spiritual phenomenon known as Jainism.

When Mahavira gave his first sermon, his audience was called by him Samavasarana, meaning , a congregation of people and all other animals, even snakes and scorpions and insects. (*4) The image of St. Francis speaking to pigeons and wolves, or of the character of Dr. Dolitttle surrounded by his animal friends at Puddleby-on-Marsh, comes to mind. Of a universal sensibility that begins in the heart, around the dinner table, at work, in every facet of private and professional life, and quickly makes of that individual a global citizen.

Consider the insect, any insect. A bumble bee stranded up to its throat in wet sand, on some beach, somewhere; inexplicably urging itself towards oblivion. You have seen it. Or come across other dying remnants of mysterious pattern in nature. Or is it a pattern? The rational mind presumes much about evolution and the everybody. If it is happening, there must be a rule which makes it so; a scientific calculation which holds that this is not the first bumble bee to drown itself, or the first gazekke to be brought down by a cheetah.

And so there is a tempatation to let it be, which Jainism has - for thousands of years- advocated. To let nature take its course, in other words, and not interfere. But there is a second, at times contradictory layer of Jain thinking which states unambiguously, "A wise person should not act sinfully towards earth, not cause others to act, so, not allow others to act so." (*5)

It is this latter exhortation - "nor allow others" - that requires especial consideration. For the Jains then, ecology and meditation -the inner contemplative faculties, and the outer activism of will and body- are one and the same; an Earth in the Self that becomes, again, the Earth. The concept is a concept, but it is also a revolutionary (though self-evident) from of action; a realm given to the identifying and solving of misgivings, imbalance, trauma, and sadness. Ecological activism that is introspectional; contemplational that is extroverted.

Jain ecology is thus a process of bringing the whole world of nature -of all life- into the inner Being. There, the focus of samayika, of restraint in meditation and action blossoms into an embrace of the utter life principle which is the Earth and all of her interrelation beings. In samayika, those relations are fused into an understanding of the self. The complexity of this fusion, ecologically speaking, can be understood in any number of important ways. For example, when one sepcies of tree goes extinct in the tropics, dozens, possibly even hundreds of animal sepcies are likely to go extinct with it. We may chop down a tree and say: In all humility, I have chopped down only one tree to build a simple cabin for myself. Or, we may acknowledge that to chop down that tree is to cause unimaginable harm; to fuel what is understood to be the tragedy of the commons syndrome. This is the contradiction inherent to the human psyche. The opponents are clearly drawn in Jainism. And the soul, the jiva, is its battleground. According to the Jains, every soul in every organism, is an individual, with a dream, a want, a fervent hope. All organisms feel pain. No one wants to suffer, neither the bacteria in one's armpit, the 36000 cubic feet of life in a redwood tree, the tulip, nor the child. We are all individuals, to repeat; Being with souls; Beings with needs. And we must be allowed to evolve according to our own inner energies. Thus, the Jains sought to protect the wildness in everyone; to reinstate the dignity and original purpose of the wilderness; to reconnect with the nature in everything. But to do so with absolute non-violence.

This imposes a colossal gymnastic on all thought and behavior. Jainism has undertaken to walk that tightrope. What is remarkable is their flawless balance.

To argue, as many have done, that animals and insects kill one another, an implicit challenge to the high hopes of Jainism, is to ignore the great Jain calling which recognize violence in nature but vehemently insists that human beings, and other animals as well, have the ability to reserve what is pernicious in the world; to celebrate and coddle, to love and nurture. And it is thus our responsibility to do so; to make loving the preferred medium of exchange on Earth. We can do it, say the Jains.

In one of their many stories, it is said that Mahavira, in a former life, was a lion who -upon speaking with a Jain monk - resolved to die of hunger rather than harm any other living being. And upon his death, was immediately reborn the 24th Trithankara.

We may well pass on without having learned many answers, but the same questions of a life force with which Jainism is preeminently concerned will always prevail. Such questions concern the universal decency, and the possibilities for joy and empathy which are our responsibility to engender, as compassionate, rational individuals confronted by a sea of tumultuous evolution.

The soul of Jainism is thus about stewardship, requiring human diligence, human conscience, and human love. Jain ecotogy is nothing more than universal love (mettim bhavehi). (*6)

The bumble bee, like the tree, is on a path; it has an individual soul, obviously; a desire; an inclination; a hope. What am I to do ? Leave the bumble bee alone, as I would leave the tree alone? The question requires no belaboring. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Samitis, say the Jains at all times. This is not merely Jainism, but fundamental humanity, what Aristotle likened to the summum bonum of human aspiration.

Some will argue that I have altered time, space, history, dharma, the law. But to ignore my feelings would be to alter my own dharma. And that karma, or destiny, bids me to carefully lift the bee onto a finger and trek along the beach in search of blooming crocus and dripping fresh water. I wash off the sand that has stuck to the bee's eyes, then set her down in shade, where there are no evident predators. Am I making a mistake? Keeping her from some secret ferile act on the seashore? Presenting herself, perhaps, to a dreamed-of afterlife in the Ocean ? Or ending a life of misery, or keeping her population in check? Possibly, though to me she simply appeared stuck in the sand, dying and in pain. At least in the crocus she has the chance to live and resume her life.

To many, such activities are mere sentimentality, or stupidity, or the height of anthropocentrism. May be , may be not. I only know that I feel something for the bee; more than something, I feel I like that bee. I am that bee. I too am stuck in the sand, just to have seen it, to have imaged its predicament. All of us have been that bumble bee, certainly; all of us will be so again.

The continuity of need, of the realization of peril, and of the imperative of love, are the first intuitions of Jainism. Collectively, the word is ahimsa. But beyond the word there is an entire lifetime of love to give, love to feel, a whole world to bring inside the body and meditate upon, where it becomes whole and good and possible.

Jains do not preach. They do not proselytize. They work towards accomplishing their many designs quietly, behind the scenes. Anyone can become a Jain, however. There is no special conversion ritual. No rigorous proof required of one's convictions. Just as there is not god, so too are there no priests, no ecclesiastical bodies or hierarchies. One simply knows when one is a Jain. Once that meditation, that summoning of feeling, has begun, there is no turning back.

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Source : Article From 'Sixth World Jain Conference' ( 1995) Souvenir

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Mail to : Ahimsa Foundation
www.jainsamaj.org
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