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MARK TULLY PROBES JAINISM
The BBC broadcaster and writer, Mark Tully interviews eminent Jain scholar Professor Padmanabh Jaini on the fundamentals of Jainism and its
modern-day relevance
Professor Padmanabh Jaini presenting a copy of the
Tattvartha Sutra to Mark Tully
same path to others. To put it simply, instead of a single God the Jains have a series of Teachers. Instead of bondage alone, there is bondage plus a possibility of salvation. The autonomy of the soul is always maintained and this gives it the choice of bondage or salvation. You can say that a Jain is a person who chooses the path of salvation as shown by the Jinas.
I would like to start with the "search". How do you see the ultimate goal, because the Pope himself has described Buddhism and Jainism as atheistic religions and yet you say you do believe in salvation. How do you combine these things together? The object of "search" for a spiritually oriented Jain is his true identity. The body obviously could not be the self because it perishes. If you do not believe - as Christianity and some other religions do - in a single existence of the soul on earth followed by eternal heaven or hell, but you believe in the reincarnation of the soul as all Indian religions do, then you must define yourself by asking such questions as: “Who am I, how do I come to have this body, and what could be my relation with other fellow beings who also are caught up in this cycle of rebirth?” The Jains and the Buddhists deny any role for a “Creator God" either in the creation or in the salvation of souls. They believe that the souls have existed from beginningless times in the state of embodiment and will continue till eternity in that state, unless a way can be found to break this cycle. Instead of relying on a single, eternally free Divinity for this salvation, the Jains have a system in which there is a beginningless and endless line of Teachers called Jinas or Spiritual Victors who are humans like us. They have attained salvation (freedom from embodiment and hence perfection) with the aid of the teachings of the previous Jinas and are now able to show the
You speak of bondage and salvation. What exactly do you mean by bondage? The Jains understand it as the binding of the soul with the non-soul. The non-soul is matter, characterised by a certain touch, taste, smell and colour. In its gross form, it is the body and the physical apparatus of the senses and the mind. These are supported and fashioned by a certain subtle and invisible matter capable of turning into karma and hence called the karmic matter. The Jains are distinguished from other Indian religions by their doctrine that this mass of inanimate karmic matter pervades the whole universe. In a process which has no beginning in time, this subtle matter is automatically attracted to the soul when the latter, ignorant of its true nature, is charged with passions like attachment and aversion. Thus bound, it obstructs the qualities of the soul such as knowledge, purity and bliss, just as fine dust floating around might settle on the wet surface of a mirror and block its capacity to reflect objects.
To get rid of those passions, do you need to follow the teachings of the great teachers of Jain religion? Yes indeed. The entire teaching can be summed up by one
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Jain Spirit . June - August 2001
Education International 2010_03
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