Session 5 – Minor Eastern (India) Religions
In this session we will change our focus
from Hinduism and Buddhism to two other
popular religions in the India area of Asia
We will look at the world religions of Sikhism
and Jainism in this session, and next session
we will look at Chinese and Japanese
religions of Shinto, Taoism, and
Confusciousism
Sikhism
The word "Sikhism" derives from "Sikh,"
which means a strong and able disciple.
There are around 23 million Sikhs
worldwide, making Sikhism the 5th largest
religion in the world.
Around 19 million Sikhs today live in India,
primarily in the area of Punjab.
Sikhs can also be found in United Kingdom,
Canada, and the United States.
(among other countries)
Sikhism was created by Guru Nanak (1469–
1538), a religious leader and a social
reformer during the fifteenth century in
the Punjab region.
Nanak was born to a Hindu family (which
comes out in many teachings)
He was born in the village of Talwandi, now
called Nankana Sahib, near Lahore in
present-day Pakistan.
Nanak got married to a woman named
Sulkhni; together, they had two sons
One morning, when he was 28 years old,
Nanak went (as usual) down to the river to
bathe and meditate.
Tradition says that he was gone for three
days before he returned home
When he got home, it is said that he had
the spirit of god within him, and he said
"There is no Hindu and no Muslim."
It was at this point that he began his
missionary work and the religion of Skihism
was born into the world.
After he took a journey to Tibet (North), Sri
Lanka (South), Bengal (East), Mecca, and
Baghdad (West), he began teaching to
groups of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains
and by doing so he created a group of
followers, or disciples, called Sikhs
He taught that religion was a way that
people could be united, but when practices,
it seemed to set men against each other
Guru Nanak's most famous
saying is, "There is no Hindu,
there is no Muslim, so whose
path shall I follow? I shall
follow the path of God."
After his great journey, Nanak settled in
Punjab (town of Kartapur) on the banks of
the river Ravi where he continued to teach
for the next fifteen years
Many people would move to this area to
hear him teach, at first they didn’t tag
themselves as a religion, they would still
consider themselves Muslims, Hindus, etc.
But they would become
known as the Guru’s
disciples, or Sikhs, and
it’s at this time his
followers start referring
to him as teacher/guru
According to Sikhism, the
same spirit that inhabited
Guru Nanak and his nine
successors. Today, this
spirit can be found in the
teachings of the Guru
Granth Sahib, the
foundational scripture of
the Sikh tradition.
Not all Guru’s were people (10 were, one
was scripture/holy text)
Sikhism was founded by those ten Gurus
between the dates of 1469 and 1708
Sikhs do not see these ten
Guru’s as being divine, but
more as enlightened teachers
through whom God has
revealed his will to us, each
Guru appointed his successor
Guru Gobind Singh the final Guru in human
form is considered very important
What do they believe?
1. Who is God?
There is only one God (Waheguru), who
has infinite qualities and names. God is
Creator and Sustainer - all that you see
around you is His creation. He is
everywhere, in everything.
He is without birth or death, and has existed
before Creation and will exist forever.
Sikhism does not acknowledge an
anthropomorphic God (one who has
human like characters)
Sikhs allow for the idea that god is the
universe itself, but do not believe that that
God is personal (like Christianity)
This idea is completely opposite to the
views found in the Bible (but similar as you
can tell to Hinduism and other religions)
Many Bible verses show that God is
personal, not an impersonal force (or being)
Ephesians 2:4-5: “But God, who is rich in
mercy, because of His great love with which
He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in
trespasses, made us alive together with
Christ (by grace you have been saved),”
An impersonal god or universe is not able
to love, care, have mercy, etc.
2. Reincarnation, karma and salvation
The journey of the soul is governed by the
deeds and actions that we perform
during our lives.
Titus 3:5:
“Not by works of righteousness which we
have done, but according to his mercy he
saved us, by the washing of regeneration,
and renewing of the Holy Ghost;”
Reincarnation is rejected by the Bible, the
idea of us coming back over and over again
The Bible says we have one life and then we
go to judgment
We won’t talk much to the topic of Karma
right now, we covered that in detail when
talking about Hinduism. It’s similar to sin,
but different in many ways at the same time
3. Humanity (brotherhood): All human
beings are equal. We are sons and
daughters of Waheguru.
According to the Bible, not all humans are
sons and daughters of God, only those who
have been born again by belief in Jesus
Christ (a personal God) have that status
Galatians 3:26: “For ye are all the children
of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”
4. All paths lead to God
Sikhs are not special; they are not the
chosen people of God. Simply calling
yourself a Sikh does not bring you salvation.
Members of all religions have the same
right to liberty as Sikhs
John 14:6: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the
way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh
unto the Father, but by me.”
There is a lot of other information about
the Sikhs that we could talk about
There is much emphasis on moral values,
personal sacrifice, disciplined life
They have rituals (of a sort) that they
practice on a daily basis
If you want to dig deeper there is a lot of
information out there, don’t let your
study stop here
Jainism
Jainism is not quite as large (by number of
followers) as Sikhism, it has around six
million followers (many in India)
While the Sikh religion
originated in the past 600 or
so years, the Jain religion is
much, much older, dating
back around the time
of Buddha
The origins of Jainism is not entirely clear, it
wasn’t so much one man who started the
religion (seems more gradual)
The religion of Jainism gets its name from
the jinas ("conquerors"), which is a title
given to twenty-four great teachers
(tirthankaras), through whom their
faith was revealed.
The last of the tirthankaras, is considered
the “founder” of Jainism
Rishabha, also known as Adinatha, is the
traditional founder of Jainism. He was the
first of the twenty-four tīrthaṅkaras
According to legends, he belonged to
the Ikshvaku dynasty of ancient Ayodhya.
Understand that of the 24 figures, only the
final two have decent historicity to them.
Rishabha is mentioned in later Hindu
scriptures (Puranas)
Mahavira (599 BCE–527
BCE), also known
as Vardhamana, was the
twenty-fourth and
last tirthankara
Mahavira was born into a
wealthy, royal family in
modern day Bihar, India.
When he was 30 years old he left his home
to peruse “spiritual awakening”
For the next 12 years, he practiced intense
meditation and severe penance, after which
(according to Jains) he achieved Kevala
Jnana (Enlightenment)
He then would travel around (the area
known as India today) for the next thirty
years to teach his philosophy
According to Jains, he achieved the state of
nirvana at the age of 72
While we could spend an entire class talking
about the history associated with Jainism,
we don’t have time! We will instead focus
on their core beliefs from here out
Jain Beliefs
The universe
Jains believe that the universe and
everything in it is eternal. Nothing that
exists now was ever created, nor will
it be destroyed.
They’ve run into some problems
with science (and the Bible)
For a long time cosmologists believed the
universe was eternal and infinite in size!
They were wrong.
How do we know that the universe has not
always existed?
There are actually a few ways, and this is
not debated very much anymore
Norman Geisler put it well when he said the
following: “When we consider the
consequences of a universe that obeys the
second law (of thermodynamics) there is only
one logical conclusion: The universe will
eventually run out of usable energy. Since
there is no place for the universe to obtain
more fuel; we live in a finite universe”
Background temperature decreases in space
is evidence that there was a beginning
The Bible stood opposed to “science” for
quite some time on this topic, claiming the
universe had a beginning. Now we know that
the Bible was correct in that matter
Genesis 1:1
“In the Beginning God Created the heaven
and the earth”
The Bible says the universe (Time, Space,
and Matter) had a beginning
Jainism on God
Jains do not believe in an ultimate creator
(omniscience, omnipotent, omnipresent)
creator like we have in the Bible
Jains believe the universe is uncreated (as
we talked about) and that there is some sort
of universal oneness
They believe souls (and spiritual things) are
governed by the universe (like gravity is)
The universe consists of three realms: the
heavens, the earthly realm and the hells.
There are seven levels of heaven in Jain
cosmology. The top level, "the Realm of the
Jinas" is reserved for liberated souls. The
next level down is the realm of the gods.
Sometimes Jinas are looked at as gods, and
devotion is given to them. But in the end
they are just enlightened (liberated) humans
The earthly realm is divided into seven
regions by six mountain ranges. Deliverance
and religious merit is possible in three of
these regions (India being one of them)
The eight hells become progressively colder
as they go down
So while Jains don’t believe in an ultimate
God (creator/sustainer figure) they did
believe in smaller gods who occupy the
heavens (governed by the universe still)
The creator sustainer God of the Bible
Colossians 1:16-17: “For by Him all things
were created that are in heaven and that
are on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or principalities or
powers. All things were created through
Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all
things, and in Him all things consist.”
Not only does the Bible present a creator
God, but one who is personal
Truth and Reality
Each person perceives truth and reality
differently and no single view is complete
The idea that is commonly given to explain
this doctrine is the blind men and the
elephant, when each of them touch a
different part of the elephant, they will think
it’s different than the others (depending on
if they’re touching the belly, tail, ears, trunk)
Jains also categorize all living beings (jivas)
that are here on the earthly realm
This is important because the idea of
nonviolence in Jainism (Ahimsa) extends to
all Jivas (living things)
In Jainism, a Jiva is a soul that’s attached to
a body. Because the soul is flexible and not
one size, the same soul that fits in a humans
body can fit in an ants
According to the Jain scriptures, there are
8.4 million species of jivas. They fall into two
broad categories: immobile single-sensed
and mobile and multi-sensed.
A. Immobile and single-sensed
1. Earth-bodied (clay, sand, metal)
2. Water-bodied (dew, fog, ice, rain, ocean)
3. Fire-bodied (flames, hot ash, lightening)
4. Air-bodied (wind and cyclones)
5. Plant-bodied (trees, seeds, roots)
a. One-souled (trees, branches, seeds)
Mobile and multi-sensed
1. Two-sensed: touch and taste (shells, worms,
microbes)
2. Three-sensed: touch, taste and smell (lice,
ants, moths)
3. Four-sensed: touch, taste, smell, sight
(scorpions, crickets, spiders, flies)
4. Five-sensed: touch, taste, small, sight and
hearing (humans and animals)
a. Infernal (in one of the hells)
b. Non-human
c. Celestial (in one of the heavens)
In Jainism, the soul has infinite power and
knowledge, but it is trapped inside the body
(whatever that looks like) and locked in the
cycle of reincarnation
By ridding oneself of karma, you can rid
yourself of these “restrictions”
While all these things have the same soul,
only the humans can achieve liberation
(this is your purpose in life)
The main teachings of Jainism include the
Five Great Vows
Each is focused on some form of self-denial,
including renouncing
1) The killing of living things
2) lying
3) greed
4) sexual pleasures
5) earthly attachments.
In order to achieve liberation, you must go
through many steps (which we don’t have
time to discuss)
But, like always, it boils down to works, and
if you can save yourself
Their view of Karma is a bit different than
Hindus and Buddhist, they see some karma
as affecting the body, and some affecting
the soul (destructive and non-destructive)
Memory Verse
Galatians 3:26: “For ye are all the children
of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”