WHAT IS JAINISM

WHAT IS JAINISM? HOW IT EVOLVED AND SPREAD? 

JAINA SIGN 

 So for this unit we're going to look at the Jain faith, Jainism. And we might note first of all   the meaning of the name. The Jains are those who follow the Jina, someone who has conquered now really, this world or samsara, the convolution we can call it. The confusing world,well, we call this world.
                    So we may wonder why would we study Jainism with only four to five million members in India? Because it is the oldest continuous religion on the planet. Judaism we can say maybe, well the first reference to Israel is 1100 BCE in an Egyptian manuscript. Of course many instances of stories in the Bible all go back to Babylon and Sumer so it's really a foolish contest though to determine what is the oldest continuous religion frankly, because they all trace their roots back to the same sources eventually in Africa where we all came from. Nevertheless with just a half a percent of India's population, the Jain peoples contribute 24% of the taxes of India. How did that happen? So just like Judaism,the Jain faith is very influential.
                    Going back to the Indus Valley, the source I'm quite convinced of yoga, the ethic of non-harming, and as well meditative practice that live on around the world today. Jainism is going back to the Indus Valley civilization of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa,and the like. We can look for my further arguments on the Aryan invasion theory that controversial topic. I should know it's not only Europeans but my Japanese advisor thought it was quite obvious that there was this event but if we look at then this map of their invasion, we can see as well also the old Indus Valley Civilization projected and the current population of modern Jain lives just about right there mostly in Northwest India. So where do we place Jainism in the history of the evolution of Indian faiths? We can go ahead and assume their legends are right.
                    In fact their founder, the first tirthankara invented civilization. Obviously that's a legend,but does it have a grain of truth in it? Jainism emerges approximately as a distinct faith, if not more ancient traditions behind that. Around the time of the Buddha, again in the axial age in the middle of the first millennium BCE where finally as well, we see Isaiah the prophet, see monotheism, Socrates, Confucius and the Buddha, they all emerge in this period. And the 24th tirthankara,a ford-maker, all this is– I'll explain that concept momentarily, emerges, Mahavira the great hero is what his name really literally means in Sanskrit. He merges as part of what is called the Shramadana movement that takes place again in the axial age of India, middle of the first millennium before the Common Era. And so like the Buddha,the Mahavira is an individual teacher and like the Buddha, he advocates individuals striving for salvation, and like the Buddha he opposes the pre-axial age myths of the vedas. And so neither tradition counts the vedas as authorities that makes them nastika traditions which means literally it doesn't exist except those vedas exist as cartoon fantasies for Buddhists and Jains. And we remember, India and Hinduism having its own axial age period experience through the emergence of the Upanishads and the individual historical teachers of their own individualist philosophies that we see in Hinduism.
                   In fact there were at least six different shramadana movements among not only the Jains and Buddhists, but we might know the materialists, charvaka sect, the lokayata as they're known. Lokayata means the world is extended. It means that there is only this world, there is no rebirth,no reincarnation of gods. And [unintelligible], India's most famous materialist atheist said, "I can go up the Ganges killing and slaying, "down the Ganges killing and slaying "and I will get no bad karma." We can imagine that in its day was as shocking as anything Karl Marx would say millennia later. So there's an implicit economic impact here as these individual thinkers,Mahavira and the Buddha said to be from the warrior caste oppose the authority of the Brahmin priests.
                   In essence some Protestants call it a kind of Protestant Reformation in India, but I don't know if we want to go that far. I'm not sure if I'll like the comments,if I agree with them             
                   Nevertheless, we want to keep in mind that all these Indian religions accept karma theory, rebirth, except for the materialists, right, and the non-harming ethic that extends even to animals. India's been the first nation to recognize dolphins as non-human persons, for example. And finally like all Indian religions, the universe didn't begin some five to 7,000 years ago like those Bible proponents in my country claimed. The universe is in fact far longer than scientists have discovered actually to be. We say around 13-15 billion years ago the Big Bang occurred, but for the Indian cosmology,universes are infinite and cycles of universes might take trillions of years as it might take an individual trillions of lifetimes to become a god or to attain nirvana and the like. We can see just in these images  a clear difference between Vishnu and his many avatars, as we discussed in the last unit. And then Shiva, well,the wild man of the woods meditating here is sort of in between the Vaishnava view and the Stryver [spelling] movements, we might say of the Jainand Buddhist faith and here we can see Mahavira and Sidharta of the Buddha are hardly distinguishable really in these two sculptures and they are individual teachers and they'll never be seen with consorts, wives,or children, and the like. There is a certain sense we could see this whole tumult economically and religiously and politically in the axial age of India as a return of the indigenous people's fuse. So now how does the Jain faith function,we might say to "save" people? Here we can see an example of a five-fold mantra, the namo or reverence mantra where who are the Jains reverencing?

                                   
                                                                   MAHAVIRA  
                 
 There is no God there. There are sadhus, adepts, teachers then of course the arihanta who have cut off passion completely. In other words Jainism, like Buddhism,is a type of humanistic religion though neither is materialistic. Again for the Jains,like all the Indian faiths, the universe is comprised of cycles but is eternal and unchanging although the Buddha himself refused to speculate on this topic. So what is the truth of things for the Jain peoples? First we can note their unique doctrine of Anekantavada. That mouthful means not one view only, but rather there is no view that sums up reality.
                    In the end we're talking about pure practice of non-harming. The Jain unlike the Buddhist refuses to kill root vegetables even for fear of bad karma. So what is it within us all the Jain faith can be said to be a kind of dualism in the sense that this Powell has what is known as a Jiva, a life essence, in fact literally jiva means the liver, not the organ processing your beer, but rather the thing that's alive within every living thing. And so we can say the jiva is Powell shaped here but there is an element of ajiva or nonliving matter particle over my jiva. So the reason I have this Powell shape is because my karma has led karmic particles to glue, if you will, onto my jiva and by getting rid of these karmic obscurations and ignorance the standard way to "save" yourself in the Indian religions is getting rid of ignorance means clearing the jiva of bad karma, bad thoughts,and all of that. And so who has liberated themselves from this karmic ignorance that keeps us in existence again?
                  A curse for those of the Indian religions, being born again and again and again. It is not immortality. It is doom. And so for the Jain the focus of veneration, we can't say worship because attinkara, a ford-builder, not the cars but rather someone who clears the way in the raging stream, the river of life,we call samsara and in our image here we can see some are drowning because they're not focused on the tirthankara. We can see some venerating the ford-maker for guidance through this raging river of life but even, and of course this is where Jains and Buddhists kind of gang up together on the Hindus, we can see even the gods themselves,the Hindu gods in the clouds are venerating the ford-maker. The ford-maker for the Jains has nothing quite literally, nothing even on his back or bottom. So as both the Buddha and Mahavira oppose again the vedas,the caste system, express a more equal view for the role of women in society, we can see those still distinctions between those two traditions. We'll find that the Buddhists express the view of no-self. There is no jiva, no pure living essence inside or trapped inside of material accretions. The self for the Buddhist is purely a projection of fiction, an illusion to be extirpated and we'll talk about that in the next unit. For the Jains however,the goal is after purifying ones jiva, one eventually can enter the siddhashila, the realm of the pure adepts who have likewise cleansed their life essence of obscuring obs-curation and ignorance. So for the Jain there's no need to convert masses of people when one has attained the pure wisdom one will be reborn in the community of the Jains so they have no need to convert anyone because wisdom can itself,they believe, extirpate bad karma and ignorance in an instant. One does not need the mediation of the Brahmin priests or live countless lifetimes as a farmer or a merchant, and the like. And so for the Jain sadhu or saint,if you will, for lack of a better translation, all things are transitory.

                  As Mahavira said, "Everything is in flux and flow except for your life essence "and that's why letting goof everything is the liberation "the Jain person seeks." To become kevala jnana or pure wisdom and thus part of that is doing unto others as others will do unto you. And we can find these as quotes among the sayings of Mahavira along with the idea that killing any living being is tantamount to killing your own self because all jivas are considered to be equally valuable and pure in their core. And so I would argue that Jainism and Buddhism both stressed then non harming ethic however, more than the Hindu tradition because we have in again as we saw last time, the advice of Krishna to Arjuna to kill his relatives because it's his caste duty, we'll see nothing like that in the sayings of the Buddha or Mahavira of the Jain faith.
                 As I say, they differ though on whether plants are sentient and I'm afraid the Buddha did not think so and then Mahavira and ford-makers all did even though now science knows plants do have ways of screaming when you pull them. So as we look at these tirthankaras, we can know they're all born of the House of the Sun, the race of Ikshwaku. Now the thing is of course,everyone who's anybody in India was born of the Ikshwaku clan, originally a legendary family from long ago. So we're told the first of the 24 famous ford-makers, the tirthankara was Rishabh Dev who legend has it invented civilization and agriculture and all the products of civilization, believe it or not. And thus we see some credence again to the Jain belief that they go back to the Indus Valley Civilization. We see further evidence in the legend of Bahubali, the second ford-maker. We're told that at a certain point his brother bought it,wanted his land. And so Bahubali who's name means strong-arms is winning the fight. He's about to smash Bharat to the ground and kill him when he stops and says I will not kill for land, power, or money. And thus he stands stillf or many months while vines grow up his legs as we can see in this image, believe it or not. And we might note that Bharat is the name the Indians give to their own country. They don't call it India,that's in fact from the times of Alexander the Great when he conquered up to the Indus River and said the rest are all Hindu. And so we find Bharatas the great hero in Indian tradition, but for the Jains, well, he's not exactly a nice guy and he wants your stuff. And so Bahubali fought war no more and stood merely in peace meditating.

PARSHVANATH

                 We won't see great miracles from these more humanistic ford-makers. Here we see the 23rd tirthankara ford-maker Parshvanatha merely pacifying a snake. Among the legends we're told that Parshvanatha saves a snake from being killed by hunters. The snake vows to be reincarnated because he was dying and one day to help Parshvanatha, which believe it or not he does, as he grows up to be a young prince and saves Parshvanatha from bullies. So very unlike Krishna or Shiva or the Hindu gods, the Jains don't stress miracles. And in this again, they agree with the Buddha. So here's a Jain analogy to how do we become "saved". Well, liberated in their case. The Jain tradition expresses our material physical bodies, the ajiva factor as analogous to a house. The house then is our body and the people inside the house are our jivas, the living essence. Good deeds are like a pleasant breeze through your house. Bad deeds are like dust in your house. And so if we're covered completely in dust as these individuals are, we can't see reality clearly at all. And so how do we keep the dust out of our house? We shut the windows and doors. The windows and doors are our senses to the outside world where we might be tempted to collect a lot of money, or power, or even romantic love. And so how do we clean the dust from our house? Well, we do that through the strict practice of non-harming and that extends not only to insects again, but root vegetables. And so if we're really cleaning the house, we're eating fruits and nuts, or if we believe some of the legends and even, well, some of the "scientific studies", some live on breath alone,believe it or not. When it comes to what is deemed harming, well, I think many will disagree with the Jains. They will say that even self-defense, intentional violence is of course pretty clear-cut.
                  We see this tiger having killed intentionally its prey and is now eating it. Then there's vocational violence. A police officer or a soldier cannot escape committing violence that would also though go for the Jain faith for the butchers. This dog digging in the ground is committing accidental violence, believe it or not. And even protecting oneself from a killer is still considered a type of violence that will slap karmic particles on your otherwise pure jiva or living essence.
                   As part of the Jain understanding of truth, there is this famous parable and not many know that it has Jain origins. The parable of the blind men and the elephant. The blind men are those followers of all the other religions. They feel part of the elephant for sure. One blind man feels the tusk and he might say, well, that's the truth of Christianity. Another blind man might feel the tale and say well you know ultimate reality is like a rope. We could analogize that let's say to the Hindu faith. Buddhists might say, no no,reality's more like a pillar. And the point being is that each religion or philosophy is only touching on part of the truth. And again for the Jains truth is not expressed in a view but in the pure practice of ultimate detachment and non-harming. So we do have these two more famous sects of Jain faith.

                                                         
                                                           DIGAMBARA SECT

                  The digambara which literally means clad with the directions north, south, east, and west. Sometimes they're called sky-clad because they're clothed well with nothing from our point of view, that emperor has no clothes but from the Jain point of view these holy individuals are connected directly with the rest of the universe with no mediation. And around a couple of hundred years after again the 24th tirthankara Mahavira, we see a woman's movement emerge, the Svetambara allows women to participate and of course in the sexist way, why they're not allowed to practice the Digambara faith, but they can wear this white clothing and we can see the mouth gear like a nurse protecting the accidental breathing in of an insect or the like. And the Digambara Jains will even sweep their path as they walk to make sure they don't accidentally step on a bug. And so with many symbols,we can nevertheless see a few things pretty clearly in this symbol. One, we see the Indian hand of have no fear. For the joints, have no fear the jiva, the life essence is here. For the Hindus, have no fear Shiva or Krishna is here. For the Buddhists, no-self is here. But in the middle of the Jain hand, we can see the chariot wheel representing the circle of life and in the center of that are the Sanskrit letters that spell out the word ahimsa, which means non-harming. The goal of that faith so pacifistic and yet with such a wealth of tradition and well, literal wealth. So all this leads us to speculation.

                   Why is it that Buddhism and not Hinduism or Jainism spreads to Japan, Vietnam, Korea,Thailand, Sri Lanka, the list is too long to bore you out with that. And we can say Hinduism is hard to translate to other cultures because of its emphasis on the caste system and so many uniquely Indian cultural aspects. We can say the digambara or sky-clad monks of Jainism could hardly travel through the desert or over the Himalayas to China to teach and they seem to have felt little need to do so to spread their message. Then we can note the uncanny resemblance in many ways of Taoism to Buddhism, prompting the early Taoistto look at Buddhism as in fact the product of the reincarnation of Lhasa, their founder in India. And Buddhism and Taoism will essentially merge in many ways in China but that's for future units.
                  The Buddha as many of our axial age philosophers did again, Confucius, Socrates, and the like created a philosophy that could travel, could really be participated in by anyone really around the planet since its individual, and it is philosophically,and experimentally-based. It does not rely on sacred scriptures like the vedas. So those are the key things I think about which to be aware when thinking about the Jain faith, small but powerfully influential.


This was the overview of JAINISAM, hope you will love it,,,,,,

THANK YOU