 Although
the majority of Indians follow the Hindu
path, India has given birth to several other
religions which are not based on the Vedas
 One of them is Jainism
 Jainism has never condoned war or the killing of
animals for any reason
 Its major teacher is Mahavira (“The Great Hero”)
 Mahavira
was a contemporary of the Buddha who
died approximately 526 B.C.E.
 Like the Buddha, he was the prince of a kshatriya
clan and renounced his position and his wealth at
the age of thirty to wander as a spiritual seeker
 Finally after twelve years of meditation, silence,
and fasting, Mahavira achieved liberation and
perfection
 For thirty years until his death at Pava, he spread
his teachings
 His followers came from all castes, as Jainism does
not officially acknowledge the caste system
 The
Jain teachings are not thought to have
originated with Mahavira, however
 He is considered the last of the twenty-four
Tirthankaras (“Fordmakers”) of the current cosmic
cycle
 In Jain cosmology, the universe is without
beginning or end
 Eternally it passes through long cycles of progress
and decline
 At the beginning of each downward cycle, humans
are happy and virtuous and have no need for
religion
 As
these qualities decline, humans look first to
elders for guidance, but as things get worse
Tirthankaras must create religion in order to steer
people away from the growing evilness of the world
 The
twenty-second Tirthankara is generally
acknowledged by scholars as an historic
figure, Lord Krishna’s cousin, renowned for
his compassion toward animals
 During his wedding procession, it is said that
he heard the groans of animals who were to
be slaughtered and immediately decided not
to marry since so many innocent animals
would be killed to feed the wedding guests
 He became an ascetic who preached religion
for many years and his betrothed princess
became an ascetic nun
 The
extreme antiquity of Jainism as a non-Vedic,
indigenous Indian religion is well documented
 Ancient Hindu and Buddhist scriptures refer to
Jainism as an existing tradition which began long
before Mahavira
 After Mahavira’s death, his teachings were not
written down at first because the monks lived as
ascetics without possessions; they were initially
carried orally by memory
 In
the third century B.C.E., the great Jain
saint Bhadrabahu predicted that there would
be a prolonged famine where Mahavira had
lived, in what is now Bihar in northeast India
 He led some twelve thousand monks to South
India to avoid the famine, which lasted for
twelve years
 When they returned to their original home,
they discovered that two major changes had
been introduced by the monks who had
remained in the area
 One was relaxation of the requirement of
nudity for monks,; the other was the
convening of a council to edit the existing
Jain texts into an established canon of fortyfive books
 Eventually
the two groups split over their
differences into the Digambaras who had left and
did not accept the changes as authentic to
Mahavira, and the Svetambaras who had stayed
near his original location
 Two major differences remain between the ascetic
orders today
 Digambara (“sky clad”) monks wear nothing at all,
symbolizing their innocence of shame and their
non-attachment to material goods
 They do not consider themselves “nude”; rather,
they have taken the environment as their clothing,
thus damaging it as little as possible by stoically
enduring all kinds of weather
 Digambara
monks have only two possessions: a
broom of feathers dropped by peacocks and a
gourd for drinking water
 The Svetambaras (“white-clad”) feel that wearing
a piece of white cloth does not prevent them from
attaining liberation
 The two orders also differ over the subject of
women’s abilities
 Digambaras believe that women do not have the
strong body and willpower needed to attain
liberation; they can only be liberated if they are
reborn in a man’s body
 Svetambaras feel that women are capable of the
same spiritual achievement as men, and that the
nineteenth Tirthankara was a woman
 The
influence of Jainism was overshadowed by the
growing popularity of devotional bhakti ways of
India, but the tradition has never died out
 Jain merchants, monks, and nuns still practice
teachings which have not changed much in two
thousand years
 Jains
are given to great hope
 The jiva – the individual’s higher consciousness, or
soul – can save itself by discovering its own
perfect, unchanging nature and thus transcend the
miseries of earthly life
 This process may require many incarnations
 Jains, like Hindus and Buddhists, believe that
individuals are reborn again and again until they
finally free themselves from samsara, the wheel of
birth and death
 The gradual process by which the soul learns to
extricate itself from the lower self and its
attachments to the material world involves
purifying one’s ethical life until nothing remains
but the purity of the jiva
 In
its true state, the jiva is omniscient, shining,
self-contained, and blissful
 One who has thus brought forth the highest in his
or her being is called a Jinni (a “winner” over the
passions), from which the term Jain is derived
 The Tirthankaras were Jinas who helped others
find their way, regenerating the community by
teaching inspiring spiritual principles
 Like
Hindus and Buddhists, Jain believe that our
actions influence the future course of our current
life, and of our lives to come
 But in Jain belief, karma is actually subtle matter –
minute particles that individuals accumulate as
they act and think
 Mahavira likened karma to coats of clay that weigh
down the soul
 Jains are very careful to avoid accumulating karma
 Three of the chief principles to which they adapt
their lives are ahimsa (non-violence), aparigraha
(non-attachment), and anekantwad (nonabsolutism)
 Ahimsa
is the principle of nonviolence and is very strong in Jain
teachings, and through Jainism it also
influenced Mahatma Gandhi
 Jains believe that every centimeter of
the universe is filled with living
beings, some of them minute
 A single drop of water contains three
thousand living beings
 All of them want to live
 Humans have no special right to
supremacy; all things deserve to live
and evolve as they can
 To kill any living being has negative
karmic effects
 It
is difficult not to do violence to other creatures
 As individuals walk, they can unknowingly squash
insects
 Even in breathing, Jains feel that individuals inhale
tiny organisms and kill them
 Jains avoid eating after sunset, so as not to
inadvertently eat unseen insects who might have
landed on the food, and some Jain ascetics wear a
cloth over their mouth to avoid inhaling any living
organisms
 The higher the life-form, the heavier the karmic
burden of its destruction
 Levels of life are determined by their degree of
sensitivity
 The
highest group of beings are those with many
senses, such as humans, gods, and higher animals
 Lower forms have fewer senses
 The Jain sutras describe the suffering of even these
one-sensed beings; their agony at being wounded is
like that of a blind and mute person who cannot
see who is hurting him or express the pain
 Jains are therefore strict vegetarians, and they
treat everything with great care
 In
Delhi, Jain benefactors have established a
unique hospital for sick and wounded birds
 Great attention is paid to their every need, and
their living quarters are air-conditioned in the
summer
 Jains also go to market where live animals are
usually bound with wire, packed into hot trucks,
and driven long distances without water, to be
killed as meat
 Jains buy the animals at any price and raise them
in comfort
 Even to kick a stone while walking is to injure a
living being
 Ahimsa
also extends to care in speaking and
thinking, for abusive words and negative thoughts
can injure another
 One’s profession must also not injure beings, so
most Jains work at jobs considered harmless, such
as banking, clerical occupations, education, law,
and publishing
 Agriculture is considered harmful, for in digging
into the soil one harms minute organisms in the
earth; in harnessing bullocks to plows or water
buffalos to carts, one would harm not only the
bullock or buffalo but also the tiny life forms on its
body
 Another
central Jain ideal is non-attachment to
things and people
 An individual should cut his living requirements to
a bare minimum
 Possessions possess individuals; their acquisition
and loss drive emotions
 The story is told of a muni (monk) who saw twelve
stray dogs chasing another dog who was racing
away with a bone he had found
 When they caught the dog, they attacked him to
wrest it from his jaws
 Wounded and bleeding, he let go of it
 The others immediately abandoned him to chase
the one who picked it up
 The
monk saw the scene as a moral lesson: So long
as individuals cling to things, individuals have to
bleed for them
 When individuals let them go, individuals will be
left in peace
 The
third central principle is anekantwad, roughly
translated as “relativity”
 Jains try to avoid anger and judgementalism,
remaining open-minded by remembering that any
issue can be seen from many angles, all partially
true
 Jains tell the story of the blind men who are asked
to describe an elephant
 The one who feels the trunk says an elephant is
like a tree branch
 The one grasping a leg argues that an elephant is
like a pillar
 The one feeling the ear asserts that an elephant is
like a fan
 The
one grasping the tail insists that an elephant is
like a rope
 And the one who encounters the side of the
elephant argues that the others are wrong; an
elephant is like a wall
 Each has a partial grasp of the truth
 In the Jain way of thinking, the fullness of truth
has many facets
 There is no point in finding fault with others; our
attention must be directed to cleansing and
opening our own vision
 As the Jain Shree Chitrabhanu states, “See how
easily you meet people when there is no feeling of
greater or lesser, no scar or bitterness, no
faultfinding or criticism.”
 Jainism
is an ascetic path and thus is practiced in
its fullest by monks and nuns
 Monks practice meditation and adopt a life of
celibacy, physical penance and fasting, and
material simplicity
 At initiation, they may pull their hair out by the
roots rather than be shaved
 However, lay people exist
 In New Delhi, a wealthy sixty-year-old Jain
businessman, head of a large construction
company, astounded people in 1992 by moving
from lay austerities such as eating and drinking
only once in twenty-four hours to the utterly
renunciate life of a naked Digambara monk
“Difficult to conquer is oneself; but when that is
conquered, everything is conquered.”
~Uttaradyayana Sutra 9.34-36
 Of
course, most householders cannot carry
renunciation as far as monks and nuns, but they
can nonetheless purify and perfect themselves
 Jain homes and temples are scrupulously clean,
their diets carefully vegetarian, and the medicines
they use are prepared without cruel testing on
animals
 The mind and passions are also to be held under
strict control
 Jains
believe that the universe is without beginning
and that it has no creator or destroyer
 Lives are therefore the results of individual deeds;
only by individual efforts can selves be saved
 Padma Agrawal explains, “In Jainism, unlike
Christianity and many Hindu cults, there is no such
thing as a heavenly father watching over us. To the
contrary, love for a personal God would be an
attachment that could only bind Jains more
securely to the cycle of rebirth. It is a thing that
must be rooted out.”
 According
to Jains, the world operates by the
power of nature, according to natural principles
 Jains do believe in gods and demons, but the
former are subject to the same ignoble passions as
humans
 In fact, one can only achieve liberation if one is in
the human state, because only humans can clear
away karmic accumulations on the soul
 Until it frees itself from karmas, the mundane soul
wanders about through the universe in an endless
cycle of deaths and rebirths, instantly
transmigrating into another kind of being upon
death of its previous body
 Birth
as a human is prized by Jains as the highest
stage of life short of liberation
 One should therefore lose no time in this precious,
brief period in human incarnation, for within it lies
the potential for perfection
 Householders can journey toward the final state by
passing through fourteen stages of ascent of the
soul, or gunasthana
 Throughout the process, the veils of karma are
lifting and the soul experiences more and more of
its natural luminosity
 In the highest state of perfection, known as kevala,
all gross activities have come to an end, and the
being is liberated
 Although
severe vows of renunciation can be taken
by householders, lay spiritual life is more likely to
consist of six duties:
1. The practice of equanimity through meditation
2. Praise of the Tirthankaras
3. Veneration of teachers (who live as mendicants)
4. Making amends for moral transgressions
5. Indifference to the body (often by holding a
particular position for a length of time)
6. Renunciation of foods or activities for specific
periods

Practicing strict ethics and self-control Jains are
often quite successful and trusted in their
professions…Many Jains thus become wealthy
 And
while people pay respects before images of
Tirthankaras with offerings and waved lamps, they
do not expect any reciprocation from them
 Liberation from samsara is a result of personal
effort
 Acharya Tulsi expressed the Jain point of view:
“The primary aim of Dharma is to purify character.
Its ritualistic practices are secondary.”