Jainism

An Introduction

Jeffery D. Long

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780857736567
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Asian Religions

Jainism evokes images of monks wearing face-masks to protect insects and mico-organisms from being inhaled. Or of Jains sweeping the ground in front of them to ensure that living creatures are not inadvertently crushed: a practice of non-violence so radical as to defy easy comprehension. Yet for all its apparent exoticism, Jainism is still little understood in the West. What is this mysterious philosophy which originated in the 6th century BCE, whose absolute requirement is vegetarianism, and which now commands a following of four million adherents both in its native India and diaspora communities across the globe?In his welcome new treatment of the Jain religion, Long makes an ancient tradition fully intelligible to the modern reader. Plunging back more than two and a half millennia, to the plains of northern India and the life of a prince who - much like the Buddha - gave up a life of luxury to pursue enlightenment, Long traces the history of the Jain community from founding sage Mahavira to the present day.
He explores asceticism, worship, the life of the Jain layperson, relations between Jainism and other Indic traditions, the Jain philosophy of relativity, and the implications of Jain ideals for the contemporary world. The book presents Jainism in a way that is authentic and engaging to specialists and non-specialists alike.

Chapter I

What is Jainism?

Introduction

Jainism is an ancient tradition of nonviolence and, according to many of its contemporary adherents, deep ecological wisdom.¹⁵ Originating in India and having many affinities with Hinduism and Buddhism, it is a tradition that is relatively unknown in the West.

Like Hindus and Buddhists, Jains affirm the reality of a universal moral principle of cause and effect called karma. Derived from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘act’, karma governs all action.¹⁶ It can be likened to Newton’s Third Law of Motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. But traditional Indic worldviews do not make the sharp distinction, so typical of modern Western thought, between the realms of fact and value. Karma thus manifests not only in the form of physical laws, such as gravity, but also as a moral law governing action. If one engages in actions that are violent, or motivated by hatred, selfishness, or egotism, the universe will respond in kind, producing suffering in the one who has caused suffering to others. Similarly, if one engages in actions that are benevolent, pure, and kind, the universe will respond benevolently, and one will have pleasant experiences. There are Western expressions that convey a similar sensibility to that of the idea of karma: You reap what you sow. What goes around comes around.

Like Hindus and Buddhists, Jains deduce from the principle of karma the idea of rebirth, or reincarnation.¹⁷ All religions must address the issue of why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Why, if there is universal justice – which is essentially what karma amounts to – does the world in which we live appear to be as unjust as it does? Indic religions explain this phenomenon in terms of past and future lives. Today’s joy or suffering may be the fruit of karma from a previous life. And the actions one takes today will inevitably bear fruit, if not in this life, then in a future one.

Like Hindus and Buddhists, Jains see the ultimate good as escape from the cycle of rebirth – mokṣa, or liberation from karmic bondage, or nirvāṇa, as it is also called in all of these traditions, a state of absorption in unending bliss. But, as for most Hindus and Buddhists, this final goal is widely conceived as remote and difficult to attain, the more immediate goal of religious activity being merit-making: the acquisition of ‘good karma’.

Like Buddhists, and unlike most Hindus, Jains do not affirm the idea of a God, at least as this idea is understood in the Abrahamic religions – a creator and moral arbiter of the universe.¹⁸ Karmic ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’ is a wholly impersonal process, and we are each responsible for our own joy and suffering. There is no divine judge. It is up to us to follow the path that leads to ultimate freedom, or not.

Unlike Hinduism, but like Buddhism and other world religions, Jainism does have a founding figure. But this figure is a ‘founder’ in only a limited sense; for, according to Jainism, he is not so much the ‘founder’ of a tradition as a re-discoverer and re-initiator of eternal truths and an eternal path that have been re-discovered and re-initiated again and again throughout beginningless time. Mahāvīra, the ‘Great Hero’, lived at about the same time and in the same region as the Buddha: approximately 2500 years ago in the northeastern region of India that recent scholarship has designated ‘Greater Magadha’.¹⁹ One could call Mahāvīra the founder of the Jain community as it exists today. But Jain tradition tells us that he is the 24th in a series of Tīrthaṅkaras, or ‘fordmakers’: beings who discover the way across the river of rebirth to the further shore of liberation and build a tīrtha, or ford, that others may use to make their way across as well. This tīrtha is the Jain community.

This metaphorical usage of tīrtha to refer to the Jain community has become so prominent over time that it has gradually eclipsed the original meaning of the word – a ford or crossing over a river – to the point that today it simply means ‘religious community’. Among Jains today, Mahāvīra is said to have established four tīrthas: Jain monks, Jain nuns, Jain laymen, and Jain laywomen.²⁰ These make up the fourfold Jain community, often symbolized by the four limbs of the svāstika.²¹

For those Westerners who have heard of Jainism, it may bring to mind images of ascetics – of monks and nuns – wearing what appear to be surgical face-masks in order to protect insects and microorganisms from being inhaled, and sweeping the ground in front of them with a broom or whisk to protect tiny creatures from being stepped on – a practice of nonviolence so radical as to defy easy comprehension.

But though this picture is not an inaccurate one, it is one-sided. The commitment of the Jains to a radically ascetic practice of nonviolence should not be minimized; but it should also not be exaggerated. A tiny percentage of Jains are actually monks or nuns who practice the kind of nonviolent asceticism most Western representations of Jainism bring to mind – a life of constant mindfulness of what one could call one’s environmental impact. Though such asceticism evokes great admiration and reverence from the typical, lay practitioner of Jainism, it is not uncommon to hear lay Jains admit, quite frankly, that such asceticism is beyond their own, current ability to practice. One also hears the hope expressed that the layperson may someday, perhaps later in life or in a future rebirth, feel the call of renunciation and take up the life of the Jain ascetic. The point is that although, as Jains, laypersons understand and admire what Jain ascetics do, they regard such ascetic practice much as many non-Jains do: as extraordinary and extremely difficult.

In addition to its valorization of asceticism, Jainism is also a vibrant and colorful religion of devotion – no less so than either Hinduism or Buddhism – a point that I hope the cover of this book makes clear, with its dramatic depiction of Jain laypersons celebrating the abhiṣekha, or anointing, of the massive image of Bāhubali at Śravaṇa Beḷgoḷa, an important Jain pilgrimage site in Karnataka, in southern India. Bāhubali was a son of the first Tīrthaṅkara of our cosmic era and, some say, the first human being to attain mokṣa.²²

One can see from the cover photo that, far from practicing a grim religion of unrelenting austerity, as the mixture of water, milk, and brightly colored powders rains down upon them, these celebrating Jains are clearly in a state of spiritual ecstasy – of profound and reverent joy. Many of them are also, undoubtedly, having a great deal of fun.

And why should they not be? The religions of the world are full of festivals that are not only serious spiritual occasions, but are also occasions for joyful celebration. The surprise this image might evoke in some is perhaps due to a preconception that Jainism is purely a religion of austerity. That it might also have an ecstatically festive dimension is thus a bit unexpected. Clearly, an exclusive focus upon Jainism as a relentlessly ascetic tradition is one-sided.

A Jain Event in Central Pennsylvania

Jainism is, in its origins, a South Asian religious tradition, part of the larger milieu that is also home to Hinduism, Sikhism, and, originally, Buddhism – though Buddhism died out in India around the year 1300 CE, and was only reintroduced less than a century ago.

For most of their history, Jain communities have remained largely confined to the Indian subcontinent, which is where most Jains continue to reside today. Though there are no restrictions on the movement of Jain laypersons analogous to those imposed on the Brahmins in some of the law books, or Dharma Śāstras, of Hinduism, Jain ascetics have traditionally observed very strict rules that have kept the community from traveling very far.²³ These restrictions, as we shall see, are connected with the strict observance of nonviolence to which Jain ascetics are required to adhere.

However, along with many other Indian religious communities, Jains have, in the modern period, spread far and wide across the globe. Small, but nonetheless thriving, Jain communities exist in such countries as the UK, the USA, and Canada. Because Jains are no longer confined to India, Westerners may increasingly find them among their neighbors, their co-workers, their teachers, or their fellow students.

Indeed, one can find Jains in the most unlikely places. On the evening of 11 April 2006, my wife and I drove to the Hindu temple in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, just outside the state capital of Harrisburg. We have been members of this particular temple, the Hindu American Religious Institute, since moving to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania in the year 2000, from Chicago.²⁴

To say the transition from the urban jungle of Chicago to the rolling, rural hills of central Pennsylvania was a cultural shock would be, to say the least, an understatement. But through the Hindu American Religious Institute, my wife and I met many of our friends and became connected to a surprisingly large Indian community, hailing not only from Harrisburg but also from other nearby towns, with names like New Cumberland, Camp Hill, York, Lancaster, Mechanicsburg, and, of course, Elizabethtown.

It was my career that brought us to Elizabethtown. Having finished my doctoral degree at the University of Chicago, I went on the job market and had the good fortune to be quickly hired by Elizabethtown College, where I continue to teach in the Department of Religious Studies, and where my wife teaches Japanese.²⁵

What brought us to the Hindu temple on that particular evening in April was my ongoing interest in Jainism, a tradition I had been studying since my time as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. I had written my doctoral dissertation on anekāntavāda, the Jain doctrine of the complexity of reality, and its implications for arguments for religious pluralism.²⁶ More recently, I had just finished writing my first book, in which I argued that anekāntavāda is a very useful tool for arguing for the view – taught in my own religious tradition of Ramakrishna Vedānta – that there is truth in all religions, and that we should view different religions and philosophies not as contradictory and competing, but as expressing complementary views of different aspects of an infinitely complex reality. This view of the Vedānta tradition is difficult to defend logically. It involves claiming that traditions making a variety of mutually incompatible claims can all be, in some way, true – a counterintuitive notion, to say the least. My goal was to give it a logical defense.

My initial interest in Jainism was largely intellectual – a function of having found, in anekāntavāda, a useful and compelling logical tool for expressing my own worldview, which had already been shaped by Ramakrishna Vedānta. But as I studied this idea in its original Jain context, I grew more and more interested in Jainism itself, as a whole. What in the Jain worldview led Jains to develop a concept so similar to Vedāntic pluralism?

I began studying Jainism in graduate school as a convinced practitioner of modern Vedānta, which I remain. But I also discovered that anekāntavāda cannot be completely abstracted from the total Jain vision that gave rise to it, and that Jainism, not only as a philosophy, but also as a way of life, has much insight to offer all human beings.

But why search for Jainism at a Hindu temple in rural Pennsylvania? The answer is one that sheds a light on the relationship between Jainism and Hinduism; for, at least in the Indian community in the United States, there does not seem to be anything like a hard and fast division between Jains and Hindus.

As a dramatic illustration of the closeness of these two communities, I noticed, the first time I went into the Hindu American Religious Institute, that in a niche in the wall, in a place of honor no less than that bestowed on the mainstream Hindu deities – such as Śiva, Sri Krishna, and Mā Durgā – there sat a mūrti, or image, of Mahāvīra. This was in the year 2000, just a couple of months after our arrival in the area. It was not something I had expected, to see a Jain Tīrthaṅkara in a Hindu temple!

The particular event that we were attending on that April evening in 2006 was the first in a week long series of lectures held at the Hindu American Religious Institute in celebration of Mahāvīra Jayantī, one of the holiest days in the Jain calendar – the day that commemorates Mahāvīra’s birth.

Jains follow the same lunar calendar traditionally followed by Hindus. Months are divided into a ‘bright half’ (śukla pakṣa) and a ‘dark half’ (kṛṣṇa pakṣa). The bright half is the period when the moon is waxing – moving from its new to its full phase – and the dark half is the period when the moon is waning – moving from full to new. The bright half is generally regarded as more auspicious than the dark half, a better time in which to undertake new or important activities. Mahāvīra Jayantī is held on the 13th day of the bright half of a month called Caitra, which overlaps with the second half of March and the first half of April on the dominant Gregorian calendar.

Two short rituals preceded the lecture, which was the evening’s main event. First, at 7 p.m., the āratī was held. At the Hindu American Religious Institute, the āratī is conducted daily at noon and again at 7 p.m. Āratī is a ritual performed by both Hindus and Jains before th...