Jain Spirit 2003 06 No 15

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

Page 51

Working a tease
If I listen carefully, these contradictory injunctions can make themselves known to me in all manners of my different relations with the world at work. For example, how is my presence at work connected to the social conditions in the Nicaraguan, Chinese or Moroccan factory where the clothes that I wear to work are produced, to the treatment of unknown numbers of women workers or the wages that are barely liveable? In what ways can I be responsible for where and how I invest the money I have earned? What meaning can I decipher if my savings bank invests in oil mining, when all I need is a safe place to put my hard-earned money for a more secure future? Or what if the company whose shares I buy also employs child labour?
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This teasing can go further. What about the actual time and energy I invest in my working life? If I busy myself with becoming a good professional researcher and make regular donations to charities, how does the nature of my work matter there? In the last year, as part of my work, I travelled by plane to India, Nigeria and Germany and made countless trips across the UK. How can I understand the relationship between the souls (jiva) that I harmed in making such journeys and the furtherance of my career as an educator? How does the very work of that organisation matter? We assume that owning a slaughterhouse is out of the question, because of the principle of engaging in businesses or professions that minimise harm to other life. But what does it mean when 'dealing in gems', which has been constructed as a suitable profession for Jains, is seemingly separated from
PHOTOS: JAMES MATURIN-BAIRD/DINODIA
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WORKING THE JAIN JIGSAW
the act of digging large holes in the ground or perpetuating conditions for civil war. And what about the accountant who keeps their books or the banker who finances the deal?
Becoming a Jain
The teasing can go on and on for all manner of questions about how we enact Jainism in our daily lives. One theme that runs through these various examples is the evocation of the interrelated issues of business, consumption and work. In a couple of text boxes throughout this article I've placed a spectrum of suggestions for the kind of actions with which you could experiment to deal with the tension of enacting Jainism in your working life.
It seems to me that our foremothers and forefathers in
Indian villages may not have had to deal with the same kind of complexity that seems to crop up in my daily life choices. I am not claiming that there was some previously innocent period when lay Jains felt no contradictions between the religious values and the life choices they had to make. In fact, I think this slightly puzzling nature is inherent in the art of becoming a Jain.
The notion of liberation from the karmic cycle (moksha) suggests an end point in the puzzling. However, getting to this point seems to be about becoming more fully a Jain. This seems to involve developing some understanding of the changing nature of the world around us and a sense that Jainism is not a thing that I can achieve in separate parts of my life or once-and-for-all, but instead something I must work at continuously.
June-August 2003 Jain Spirit
49