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Celebrating Jain Society of Houston Pratishtha Mahotsav 1995
WHAT IS JAINISM?
By Subodh R. Mehta
Jainism is a religion. It originated in India in the sixth century B. C. It is practiced today by about 1/3 of 1% of people in India and by the people of the Jain faith who have migrated to various parts of the world, including the United states. Currently there are about three hundred Jain families practicing Jainism in Houston. The Jain Society of Houston sponsors many Jain activities around the year, including organized education programs, and also offers a place of worship for people to practice Jainism.
While Jainism is practiced by only a few million people in the world, its beliefs are quite unique, and it offers philosophical concepts that are anything but common in the realm of religions.
Jainism holds that the Universe is finite in space and infinite in time. According to Jainism, the entire universe and all life forms in it have always been there and will always be there. Thus, the Jain concept of the universe precludes not only the Creator, but the whole idea of creation as well. Further, Jainism says that all things that happen to all living beings are consequences of previous actions - karma - by each individual soul. The entire Universe runs on this karma principle.
In Jainism, there is no grand scheme of things. Each individual writes his own future. There is no intervention by any divine power for any reason. In Jainism, there is no almighty, and there is no one to forgive you of your sins. It is all up to you. Period.
The starting point for describing what is Jainism would be the Jain concept of Soul. Each life form is made up of two distinct components. The material part is made up of particles or atoms called pudgal in Jain literature and it is the same as the inanimate objects in the Universe. Residing in the body of a living being is another entity called the Soul (atma). The soul is the living part of the living beings. All souls are the same in all respects but each soul is unique. The defining characteristic of a soul is the property of awareness (chetan). It is the soul that is responsible for its actions and it is the soul that will experience the pleasures and pains as results of those actions. The soul is eternal and after death, it is reincarnated as some other life form depending on the past actions (karma).
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Since all souls are essentially the same, Jainism respects all forms of life equally. Jains believe in nonviolence (ahimsa), and seek to exercise it to the ultimate. They are also strict vegetarians. They are taught to do everything possible to avoid causing harm to all creatures, including insects. Jains pay particular attention to protecting micro-organisms in air and water. Incidentally, the Jain scholars have always preached that air and water contain living beings that are too small to be seen or felt by any senses. One should wonder what their source of this knowledge may have been.
Jainism teaches that every soul inherently possesses complete knowledge of all aspects of the entire universe and has perpetual unblemished happiness. The reason these properties are not evident is that they are obscured by Karmas - our past actions. The association of these karmas which obscure the soul's inherent knowledge and happiness, is infinite in the past. However, Jainism holds that it is possible to free the soul of all karmas and uncover the true and everlasting happiness that is the nature of the soul - every soul.
In the Jain concept, souls go round and round in the four life forms of Human, Animal, Heaven, and Hell, and as they do, they experience some pleasures and many many intense pains that are inevitable to body-bearing souls. So, the object of the game for the Jain is to rid his or her soul of all the karmas and achieve the state of moksha - liberation where souls without association with matter exist in complete and everlasting happiness. In the Jain system, a soul once free of all karmas is free forever.
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There are some significant concepts implied in the preceding summation. If you are good, you go to heaven and experience pleasures there. If you are bad, you go to hell and experience intense pains there. But, what is unique to Jainism is the concept that heaven and hell are not for forever. Your time there is very long. but finite. Indeed, Jainism holds that all of us have been to heavens and hells many times in the past and will probably do so again in times to
come.
Every once in a while, an individual is able to completely rid himself or herself of all the knowledge obscuring karmas and is able to know everything
"Religion reveals the meaning of life and science only applies this meaning to the course of circumstances"
(Leo Tolstoy)
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