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206: JAINS TODAY IN THE WORLD
1. Reasons to enter a Jain monastic order
Though ascetic life is regarded by the Jains as the most effective mean to attain liberation and though the stages of spiritual progress prepare the laity to monastic life, there are few of them who ask their admission as monk or nun. Now, they are about thirteen thousands, of which about one thousand are Digambara and twelve thousand are Svetāmbara monks.
Some Jains enters in ascetic life at a young age as novices (brahmacārin), a thing that creates a bit of controversy. To be a Jain ascetic requires a great faith and a great deal of courage. Such a decision involves leaving parents, relatives and friends for a life completely out of touch with the modern world, its comforts, its attractions, its ease. To be a Jain ascetic implies to wander, to beg food and drink from house to house, to endure extreme temperatures, to walk barefoot and for the Digambara to observe an extremely hard discipline quite unknown to other religions. For a young boy or girl, who has not yet developed fondness for existence, such a thing seems relatively easy, but it is much harder for a man or a woman who has experienced family life and often a lucrative professional activity. It is the same for young men and women who have obtained a high level occupation, after long studies. Nevertheless, as we will see a little later, some of them have yet recently taken the way of Digambara monks.
The reasons that induce a young boy or girl to enter such a difficult mode of living are generally the result of family contexts. Often, they concern children brought up with Jain ethic and religious principles, whose parents encourage to follow the example of Mahāvīra and his predecessors to attain more quickly their liberation of the "saṁsāra". Sometimes, it may be the case of young orphans who are under pressure, from those who have taken them, to enter an order where they will be educated and they have a second family.
For an adult (man or woman), the entry in a Jain ascetic order is often due to the desire to be detached from the world, to live in
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