ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 04

Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies

Page 331

5.2.a
Jain Diet Dr. Shugan Chand Jain
1.0 Introduction
The word diet brings to our mind thoughts of austerity, restriction and deprivation to lose weight and look better. However in Jainism, the word diet refers more to the harmonious relationship between food we take, our health (both physical and mental), environment we live in and enhancement of our abilities to perform and make our existence happy and blissful in this and future lives.
Jain term for food is h ra. Recent literature uses the term bhojana also. h ra is the taking in or absorption (and not just eating) of the matter fit for the different kinds of bodies (1. gross or physical body of human, animals and vegetation kingdom; 2. the transformable body of the celestial and infernal beings and so on; and six kinds of completions (called pary pti; these being assimilation of molecules of matter, formation of body, the senses, the respiratory organs, the organ of speech and the mind)'.
Food means taking external inputs (nutrients, energy and body building and functioning elements) by the living beings. It is the most important need of the living beings as without it they may not be able to survive for long time. It therefore becomes important to know Jain views on food. Food and conduct, as per Jains, have strong correlation. Here also ethical postulates, such as being healthy (to be able to perform right conduct for self purification), non violence, self control (sa yama), attitude and our thinking have strong correlation to the type and quantity of food we take.2 Mah vira, during his penance of more than 12.5 years is said to have taken small quantities of food and that too only 265 times.
However all living beings need external energy and nutrients to maintain their physical bodies healthy and use it effectively to utilize their faculties (mind, body and speech) to achieve their objectives'. Thus food is the primary need of all living beings. Like cotton is the basic material of cloth, similarly to practice Mok a M rga with right vision-knowledge and conduct as main constituents, proper diet is very important. The eight basic virtues (mulaguna) or requirements to be a householder (sravaka) have at-least three virtues consisting of abstinence from meat, honey and wine3 while other cryas have all the eight associated with abstinence from eight types of food containing innumerable micro living organism. To conclude the underlying principle of Jain diet can be summarized as 'eat to live to be able to exercise self control and not just maintain the body healthy' so as to able to perform optimally your duties to achieve your objectives and 'not just live to eat'.
1.1 Types of food (h ra) that living beings (empirical souls) take. According to Jain literature, food is classified in the following categories, based on the manner they are absorbed by the living beings.
i. 'Oza'or life span determination at the time of birth is the energy the living being takes at the time of birth and this energy stays until his / her death. We hear stories of some living beings buried under debris for days together alive due to the existence of this energy.
ii. 'Roma' or nutrient & energy absorbed from environment directly. Every pour of body (millions in number) is capable of absorbing nutrients from the air & solar energy (similar to the process called photo synthesis in plants where the leaves absorb all the food from air and sun light and convert them to plant and its branches, leaves, fruits and flowers). Jain texts and modern medical science emphasize and provide several means to enable us use this type of food and minimize the need of the third type i.e. kaval h ra.
iii. 'Kavala' or food taken as morsels by mouth or injected in the body by other means. Generally we mean this type of food to denote all types of food. Few people realize that solar energy and fresh air and water are essential components of food (type ii indicated above).
iv. 'Mano' or mental food. All the necessary nutrients needed are available in the environment around us. However our spiritual capabilities are not so advanced to use this method. Monks do develop such capabilities through their practice of Mok a M rga. Stories abound in Jain texts of such developments (generally Jain texts have four types of stories namely Women (stri), Food (bhatta), Kingship (r ja) and country (de a)). It is also said that celestial beings
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STUDY NOTES version 4.0