JAINA Convention 2009 07 Los Angeles

Author(s): Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA

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15th Biennial JAINA Convention 2009
Ecology - The Jain Way
JAINISM & ECOLOGY: OLD VOWS FOR NEW WOES Christopher Key Chapple, PhD cchapple@lmu.edu
Dr. Christopher Key Chapple is the Navin and Pratima Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University. His research interests have focused on the renouncer religious traditions of
India: Yoga, Jainism, and Buddhism. He has published several books on Karma, Patanjali Yoga Sutras, Nonviolence, Hinduism and Ecology, and co-edited books on Jainism and Ecology, and Reconciling Yogas.
years ago, and even 250 years ago, the amount of violence brought against nature today would have been unimaginable. The traditional texts of Jainism set forth meticulous rules about the bare necessities of life: how to eat, how to speak, how to move, how to ease one's bowels. Vegetarianism, the guarding of speech, the development of appropriate attitudes toward others, and care in the disposal of one's waste shaped a way of life still observed by Jain monks and nuns throughout India. Having visited with these leaders in the various corners of the subcontinent, and having witnessed the in religious vow-taking, the 'staying power' of core Jain tenets cannot be denied.
Among the world's faiths, Jainism stands uniquely poised to make a significant contribution to the current problems of climate change, species extinctions, and chemical pollution. Most religions ascribe to the belief that God created the world, set the world in motion, bestowed on human beings responsibilities and conscience, but ultimately maintains control over the earth's destiny. Only slowly are the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist and Hindu traditions seeing a connection between human agency and the environment.
Today, the world requires an approach to its environment far more complex than the responding to the simple needs of nutrition, civility, and waste disposal. With the birth of science and the growth of technology, our food has become adulterated, our civility has become compromised by the global reach of media and competing nationalities, and the quantity and toxicity of our waste has become staggering. Though we have overcome, for the most part, the blight of communicable diseases, we have not been able to develop a sustained peaceful polity or a core commitment to the joyful values of sustainability. Gandhi himself would be amazed and perhaps alarmed if he were to experience the contemporary world, with its roadways, automobiles and communication devices. These great comforts have been won at the expense of the health of the earth, requiring a vast exploitation of natural resources and producing huge volumes of refuse released into the earth, the waters and the sky.
Jainism posits a non-created, eternal world suffused with life. This life, in all its multitudinous incarnations, holds the will and power to perform actions that result in predictable consequences. If one commits violence, violence will result. If a person dedicates himself or herself to peace, then calm will prevail. Jain karma theory accounts for our current ecological predicament: due to human violence against living souls, the atmosphere has become polluted, trapping unwanted heat. Animals, insects and plants are disappearing from nature due to human greed and encroachment upon native habitats. Human folly has produced harmful chemicals that have entered our air, waterways, and earth, as well as the human bloodstream, resulting in countless diseases and genetic disorders. For Jainism, all these tragedies arise from human effort. According to Jain philosophy, only human effort can correct these
How might Jain values help correct these imbalances? How might Jainism, a tiny minority faith possibly contribute some solutions? Today in North and South America, tens of millions of individuals are being exposed to the vows of Jainism through the practice of Yoga. Gandhi communicated the values of Ahimsa through his life work. These ideas are being engaged again by a new generation of young people who practice Yoga and hence are becoming familiar with the ethics promulgated by Mahavir. Patanjali borrowed the ethics of Jainism and placed them at the center of his Yoga Sutra.
ills.
In the traditional pathway established by the Tirthankars, knowledge of the soul and its expression through various life forms resulted in the cultivation of harmlessness toward life. 2500
Clayton Horton of GreenPath Yoga has suggested that the vows of Yoga and Jainism can be reinterpreted and applied for the cultivation of a
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