Jain Spirit 1999 10 No 02

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 53

INTERFAITH
TRUTH EMBRACES ALL
An interview with Father Valles
rather Valles was a keynote speaker at the JAINA
Convention in Philadelphia in July 1999. A Professor of Mathematics, he was sent to Ahmedabad from Spain in the 1970s where he mastered the Gujarati language and thereafter became a prolific writer in Gujarati. Author of dozens of books about human nature and society, Father Valles is a very popular and respected honorary Indian. His lectures at JAINA attracted huge audiences, as he spoke with great wisdom and good humour too! Here he talks to Jain Spirit editors about the similarities between Jainism and Christianity.
Father Valles, you call yourself both a Christian and a lain. Could you please tell us why you say that and what you think are the similarities between Christianity and Jainism?
Father Valles with dignitaries at JAINA convention
It would be more exact to say that I do not call myself anything. To me labels mean little. To me it is the heart that really feels. Now we have a word for that; nowadays we call this ecumenism. It is a beautiful word, from a Greek root, 'oecumenen', which means the inhabited world - that is, the whole world in practice. So an ecumenical mind means one that embraces the human race as it is, and it is this type of ecumenism that I treasure and I like to represent. I was born and baptised a Christian and somehow this very close relationship, this intimacy with the Jain community was developed when I arrived in India. In Ahmedabad, I was made an 'honorary' Jain, and that is really the best compliment that I could have received, and I do treasure that.
in the sense that satya applies to Jesus as well. Jesus said: "I am coming to give you the truth, I am coming to show you the way, I am the fundamental satya." That is to me a similarity that goes down to the roots and, if we live it, we can be truly brothers in spirit. Together with that there is also the insistence on good behaviour. That is: truth is not just being, it is also making life become true - that is, Photo: Chandu Shah behaving in such a way that our
principles become our way of conduct. That again is a principle that we do not always live up to, but which we try to practise as much as possible. We have to practise before we preach. In one of the speeches this morning I heard a beautiful sentence from a Jain speaker: "What you do to a sick person you do it to me also. If you heal a sick person, you heal me." - a quote from Lord Mahavir's own words. Jesus also says in the gospel, "Whatever you do to the smallest of these little ones you do it unto me," which is the basis of service and of love. So here I found today a similarity which was unknown to me and which, when we go to the root, we learn.
But still do you find things that are similar between the Jains and the Christians?
We have great similarities, which is what made for a closer approach. I think the insistence on truth, is one of the profound gifts of Jainism and in the Bible we find the same of Jesus Christ, who said "I am the truth." I like it even more in Jainism in India, because the root of satya is sata, which is being, which is reality. I sometimes call myself a worshipper of reality, of being, and
How do you feel about the crisis in the world today: the breakdown of families; the breakdown of society: the environmental crises; all these sort of problems that the world is facing? How can Jain and Christian values be relevant here?
Stained glass window inside a church
52 Jain Spirit . October - December 1999
Jain Education Interational 2010_03
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