Jain Journal 1983 01

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 8

Holy Image, Holy Truth
LEONA SMITH KREMSER
It was 1962. Already I was a self-converted vegetarian in a community of flesh-eaters. Thus were friends lost, marriage shaken and kinsfolk shamed.
May I say, my family were generations of hunters/fishermen/ meat-eaters. Ethnically, they were mostly the English, small landholders in America from the 1700's, moving ever west with their beef cattle.
Bloodletting always had sickened me.
“Our dear child, our strange child ! Blood makes her sob and the slaughterhouse makes her scream."
Now I was a thinking adult. At long last I'd shaken the meateating hand of the past off my shoulder. I did not know the word 'vegetarian'; I did not know that certain peoples did not eat the creatures. It was the voice within that spoke: take no flesh-food.
Soon I began to want a spiritual presence in my life. Again I was at odds with my heredity environment that were neither hostile nor friendly towards religion, just indifferent.
At the moment I was living in San Francisco, California. Methodically I pursued various Christian sects; they talked God and coveted animal-flesh. Was there no religion for me ? Sorrily, were my dreams to float without foundations ?
On blind hope, I sought the public library for information on nonChristian religions. Thus was I reading a chapter on India.
A single sentence noted Jainism wherein the way of life was noninjury to all living creatures. To all living creatures ? I was dumbstruck! What was this faraway religion ?
"No information,” the reference librarian said. Finally, a clerk in an import store told of the one Jain about whom he knew, a Bombay