Jainism in a Global Perspective - Collection of Jain papers of 1993 Parliament of World Religions, Chicago

SR No.: 014010
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Sagarmal Jain, Shreeprakash Pandey
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith
Publication Year: 1998
Total Pages: 402
Language: English
Classification: Seminar & Articles
File Size: 23 MB

Page 84

Western Perceptions of Jainism: Misconceptions, Achievements and Current Expectations 55
will open it up to others. They are not the kind of people who will come and push things at us. They have not yet fully emerged from 3000 years of vulnerable minority status, surviving by their integrity but also by striving to be inconspicuous. They are facing life in a new situation and their greatest concern must be to see their own children in a strange and perilous environment get a proper chance to choose on their own behalf to be Jainas with full knowledge and singleness of purpose. The modern world is a great wiper out of genius and tradition. But if the Jaina community in the west can survive and in an appropriate and understandable way open their religious and intellectual treasures to the people around them, it would make all the difference in the world to outsiders whose only recourse is trying to learn about it from books. As the books give it, it is to many of us apparently stern, cold, and frighteningly demanding of intellect and years of sustained self-discipline. Learning of it from living and practicing people would convey some of the love, delight, and comprehensibility, warmth and fellowship which are its keynotes. Jainas very sincerely will say: "But we do not want to proselytize and make converts." Outside their intellectual obsession with vast numbers in metaphysics and mathematics Jainas do not give a hoot for numbers. They have suffered so much by attacks from other religions they would eschew any kind of sheep-stealing. But there are many among us of no adherence who would like to join them. Besides this, learning from them could do much to produce better Christians, better Muslims, better Jews, better non-believers, better humans, better science, better ecology, a better cosmos. The Parliament of 2093 will tell those who come after what success or failure is achieved.
As a conclusion let us add an invocation.
Year after year at the degree-giving we call "Commencement" it is usual to deliver an invocation. Until recently it was fairly usual, despite the wall of partition and the separation of Church and State, to mention God. Supreme Court rulings now make this dubious. The great Jaina Namaskāra Mantra more than meets the legalities and is full of dignity, antiquity and power.
Without trespassing on anyone's beliefs we may thus conclude: