Jain Center Minnesota MN 2007 07 Pratishtha

Author(s): Jain Center Minnesota USA
Publisher: USA Jain Center Minnesota

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East Meets East Coast TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, GURUDEV CHITRABHANU GAVE UP HIS MONK'S LIFE TO SPREAD THE PRINCIPLES OF JAINISM IN THE UNITED STATES.
By Clark Morphew Published in St. Paul Pioneer Press on 07/21/1996
As a Jain monk, Gurudev Chitrabhanu walked 30,000 miles barefoot, begging all his food and sleeping on the ground. For 29 years he walked from village to village in India offering an ancient and sacred message. Then in 1971 he renounced his monkhood, came to the United States and began teaching Jainism on the East Coast. Now he has an international ministry and his only purpose is to tell people of the four principles of Jainism: reverence for life, the relativity of thinking and speaking, rebirth and nonviolence
Jainism is an ancient religion that was systematized in 550 B.C. by Lord Vardhaman Mahavir, an Indian scholar who took the works of three philosophers: Rsabha, Ajilanatha and Aristanemi and brought their thoughts into one dharma or religion. There are 3 million Jains in India, 80,000 in the United States and about 20 million in the world. About 40 Jains live in the Twin Cities.
Diana Thompson, orfe of Chitrabhanu's followers, said she met the famous teacher 21 years ago when she was living in New York City, where Chitrabhanu now lives with his wife, Pramoda. "I went into the Jain Meditation Center in New York and that was it," Thompson said. "It just felt like home." Thompson said she meditates alone and often worships with other Jains at the Jain and Hindu temple in Northeast Minneapolis. Dressed in a flowing beige robe, Chitrabhanu relaxed in his host's apartment in St. Paul and talked about his days as a monk.
*We walked barefoot because if we had shoes, we would not look at the ground and we might step on an insect," Chitrabhanu said. "We walked in silence, and we carried only a blanket for the ground and another to cover us at night. We also had a small bowl, and we would go house to house begging food: a piece of bread, some rice, a bowl of soup. Then in the evening the people would gather, and we would talk to them about the Jain principles."
Chitrabhanu, 74, said the principle of nonviolence or non-injury is a vow that monks take very seriously. Some monks carry a small broom so they can sweep insects out of harm's way. Many well-known people followed the Jainist reverence for life, such as Albert Schweitzer, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. The principle of rebirth, Chitrabhanu said, is a belief in reincarnation, the idea that good people will be born to a higher order and bad people to a lower order.
"If a person like Hitler or Mussolini dies," Chitrabhanu said, "they have acquired karma, and they have to be reborn to suffer and to experience that which they did to others." It is a cause-and-effect situation, Chitrabhanu said, and evil people collect karma, almost like debris on their person. "In rebirth you evolve to the highest state where you find liberation from all the passion that pollutes your life. If I plant the seed of the cactus, I am not going to get the tree of the apple."
The relativity of thinking and speaking is a related matter. **The secret is to understand another point of view and not argue with that person," Chitrabhanu said. "We don't need to convert anyone - that is violence to impose your point of view."
With kind permission to reprint from the St. Paul Pioneer Press
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