________________
Western Perceptions of Jainism: Misconceptions, Achievements and Current Expectations 53
women's spirituality comes into its own." 13 This work is being met and reciprocated by highly educated Jaina women in both western and eastern traditions who are inside the Jaina women's orders. Another example is work by a former Dartmouth Professor of Ecology and Humanities which sums up most strikingly the significance of Jainism for the west especially in ecology. It is important to note the contemporaneity in the issue of a Declaration on Nature which was produced by an Indian and diaspora group and presented to H.R.H. Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh as President of the World Wide Fund for Nature International in 1990.15
14
In our survey of western perspectives on Jainism we have considered some of the factors involved in the meeting and understanding of western and eastern thought. There remains time to mention but two more major items. In the homeland of Jainism the mainspring of the teaching is with the renunciants, the homeless women and men who go around possessionless, begging their livelihood and teaching and ministering. They cannot cause harm to life by using a cart, a car, a ship or aircraft. It would be a failure not to uphold the principles embodied here. In former times Jainas dealt with such difficulties as best they could, sometimes by splitting the community. This is not a way they wish to take today. Gurudev Chitrabhanu came to America in 1971 and has established an International Meditation Center. Acharya Sushil Muni came in 1975 and has established Siddhachalam, a community of renunciants and householders. For some years Ganadhipati Acarya Tulasi of Ladnun in Rajastan has been working to authorize orders of monks and nuns who are dispensed from the vow of traveling only by foot. These samaṇas and samanis have been visiting and teaching in Europe and America. In addition much has been and will be done by the use of the printed work, by cassettes, videos and films and by short visits to and fro. But the most important new factor of all has been the silent manifestation of the Jaina diaspora, "the seed scattered abroad," the people who have settled outside India. Between the 1960s and the 1990s a Jaina diaspora appeared in Britain and English-speaking North America with a 'presence" in Kenya, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and outliers in such places as Australia and New Zealand.16 Some of these had come from Uganda as a result of Amin's madness, others had come as Ethiopia and Tanzania indigenized, nationalized and socialized their economies.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org