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Their Ascetics : 227
modern world to find places where one can wander and meditate like this, even in India. It is totally impossible to follow these rules outside, except to abandon some practices like nudity, walking only barefoot, begging food from house to house, etc.
An important change has occurred among Jain ascetics with the travelling of several “Ācārya”, “Bhattāraka” and “Muni” by planes to support communities in Africa, North America and elsewhere, to inaugurate temples, install statues, give conferences and preachings. These trips have been very criticized by some Indian orthodox religious leaders but would it be better to see one of the oldest religion in the world disappear in these countries as a result of total isolation? Should the Jain laity who migrated from India for various reasons, but who does not wish to be cut of their roots, be abandoned by those who are the successors of the Tirthankara? The Jain Meditation International Centre, created in New York by monk Gurudev Chitrabhanu, has provided the aspiration of communities in the to not see their religion disappear. It was the same with the foundation by late Acharya Sushil Kumar, of the International Mahavira Mission and in 1983 the “aśrama” called "Siddhācalam” at Blairstown (New Jersey). It is also the same in United Kingdom with the presence of some nuns who study at University. They have been and they are not only religious supporters for adepts living outside India but also links with their mother land and those who continue to live according to the same tradition. It also shows the Western world that Jainism is not a religion of the past limited to India.
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