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Jainism
(religion, spiritualism, and occult)Both Buddhism (see Buddhism, Development of) and Jainism developed in the sixth century BCE as a form of protest against Hinduism. They offered alternatives to the caste system (see Hinduism, Development of) and raised objections to the movement of the time that had begun to view the Vedas as holy scripture.
"Jain" means "conqueror." Its founder, Mahavira ("Great Hero"), was a contemporary of the Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and the Hebrew prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. With the possible exception of Lao Tzu and Confucius, none of these men met or were influenced by each other, but the times certainly must have been ripe for spiritual movements.
Much like the Buddha, Mahavira's principal concept was that of dualism. The universe consists of the two opposing forces of good and evil. But where the Buddha discovered the Middle Way between the two, Mahavira proposed another philosophy. He understood the "good" in terms of soul, or life. Evil was lifeless, or matter. Soul or feelings exist in everything, even the dust of the ground or rocks of the landscape. But soul is entrapped in matter, "coated," so to speak, forming a material covering imposed by karma (see Hinduism). The human predicament is that the body (material, evil) is thus a form of prison for the soul (spiritual, good). So since karma placed you into this shell, the only way to break out is by extreme asceticism (see Ascetic).
This is to be carried out through five principal activities:
Non-injury to life Truthfulness Taking nothing unless it is offered Celibacy Renouncement of all attachments Pertaining to the first activity, Jains are vegetarians. Some even place screens over lamps to keep moths from hurting themselves in the flames. Others wear masks to keep from breathing in insects or sweep the path before them to avoid stepping on and crushing ants or bugs. This extreme form of attention is meant to avoid bad karmic repercussions in the next life.
Certainly the most well known of those influenced by Jainism was Mahatma Gandhi (see Gandhi, Mahatma). Mahavira's principles, especially those concerning non-injury, greatly shaped Gandhi's practice of nonviolent political opposition. Such practices proved to be a great influence on a young student named Martin Luther King Jr. So it can be argued that Jainism had a great deal to do with shaping the America we have known since the decade of the 1960s.
Today Jainism is considered a minority sect within Hinduism, but Mahavira has taken his place among the great religious founders of all time. There have only been nine of them in the history of the great world religions: Buddha (Buddhism), Confucius (Confucianism), Jesus (Christianity), Lao Tzu (Daoism), Mahavira (Jainism), Moses (Judaism), Muhammad (Islam), Nanak (Sikhism), and Zoroaster (Zoroastrianism).
Jainism
one of the primary religious and philosophical systems of India, which arose in the sixth century B.C.
The wandering preacher Vardhamana is considered the founder of the faith. He was later given the names Mahavira (“great hero”) and Jina (“conqueror”), giving rise to the name of the religion. In the process of development, Jainism broke up into a number of sects, the most important of which are the Digambaras (the naked or, more precisely, “sky-clad”) and the Svetambaras (“white-clad”). The central religious and philosophical literature of Jainism is the Jain canon, the most important works of which are the Jain sutras. Among the noncanonical works of Jainism, the most interesting are the works of Umasvati (first century B.C.) and Siddhasena (sixth century A.D.). Jainism, whose development paralleled that of Buddhism, was a reaction against the ritualism and the abstract speculative quality of Hinduism. Jainism denounced the authority of the Vedas and opened the Jain community to men and women of all castes.
Basic to Jainism is the teaching concerning jivas living beings, and their two characteristic states of existence, perfect and imperfect. In the state of imperfect being a jiva, whose essence is an eternal conscious soul, finds itself joined to matter—its body. The body entangles the soul in a state of suffering, whose presence is a sign of imperfect existence. According to the relationship of the spiritual and bodily elements, these jivas form a kind of stairway: on the lower steps are jivas, in the form of inanimate objects and plants; on the higher steps, jivas in the form of animals, men, and gods. (A god in Jainism is only one of the forms of imperfect being of a jiva.) A drop of dew, a man, a god—these are all steps in a single system of essentially identical forms of being, distinguished by their being burdened by matter. At the top of this hierarchy are the “liberated” jivas, for which material bonds, or even spiritual determinations of their existence, do not exist—they are completely able to govern their own being. Only jivas of human form can achieve liberation. Such jivas are called Tirthankaras; they appear in the world periodically. Vardhamana is considered the last of the Tirthankaras in the present era (the 24th).
Asceticism is considered the basic path to “liberation.” The ascetic principles of Jainism stipulate the active annihilation of the bodily element (the Jain rules of conduct enjoin refusal to use clothing, strict fasting, and every possible form of torture). Along with the suppression of the bodily element, the rules of Jainism demand observance of ahimsa—the principle that no bodily harm be inflicted on any living creature. The stressing of the primary and, specifically, the moral significance of asceticism and the strict observance of ascetic rules distinguishes Jainism not only from Buddhism but from all the other religious systems of India, which also stress asceticism. In its practice, despite its essential rejection of ritual, Jainism maintains a certain amount of ritualism, which evolved as a necessity of “mass” worship: the worship at the temples of the Tirthankaras, public confession, and the reading of Jain texts.
In contrast to Buddhism, Jainism is strongly ontological, having a philosophy of being: jiva and ajiva (nonsoul, which includes the material) are considered coequal, eternal primal substances. Thus, Jainism, in contrast to Hinduism, is dualistic. Along with the jivas and ajivas,representing two basic essences (tattvas) of Jainism’s ontology, there exist five other tattvas, exhausting all possible types of interrelation between jivas and ajivas. Each of the seven tattvas is classified in a specific manner and arranged hierarchically. In particular, matter is divided into the sensitive (karmic), representing something like power, and the gross, which is perceptible by the senses and which can be divided into atoms (paramanu).
Although it never spread outside India, Jainism has retained its influence there. In the early 1970’s there were several million followers, mostly in Gujarat and Rajasthan, largely of the tradesman and craftsman castes; since plowing involves the killing of living beings, the observance of ahimsa precludes agricultural occupations. The Jains, as tradesmen and pawnbrokers, are a major financial and economic power in contemporary India. The Jains maintain many institutes and colleges and a number of journals.
REFERENCES
Radhakrishnan, S. Indiiskaiafilosofiia, vol. 1. Moscow, 1956. Pages 240-89. (Translated from English.)Glasenapp, H. Der Jainismus: Eine indische Erlosungsreligion. Berlin, 1925.
Champat, Rai Jain. The Practical Dharma. Allahabad, 1929.
Schubring, W. Die Lehre der Jainas. Nach den alien Quellen dargestellt. Berlin, 1935.
Thomas, P. Hindu Religion, Customs and Manners. Bombay [1948].
V. P. LUCHINA