Jinamanjari 2001 09 No 24

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

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the illusion of continuing and continuing and continuing (Wilber, 60).
The Jains who believe sallekhana is a type of suicide did not suggest that the individual observing sallekhana has an impure mind or wants to violently and secretly escape death. Rather, it appears that these Jains fee that one who observes sallekhana is denying a "natural" bodily death. They are defining an unnatural physical death as one that is triggered by any type of extreme rituals. In other words, these three Jains think that since the body being denied (through fasting), that life is also being denied, which in their eyes is suicide. Furthermore, they are drawing a parallel between an unnatural bodily death and the idea of death denial: if one dies in an unnatural manner, then death is not being embraced, but feared and denied.
However, the Jain philosophy maintains a careful balance between the mind/body dualism and not denying death. Death is not denied, on the theoretical level, because life is perceived as cyclical. Denial of death does not exist because in a cyclical life there is no death except for bodily death. As long as one is comfortable with the idea that the body is inferior to the mind, then bodily death according to Jain philosophy, should not be feared. This is not to dismiss the possibility that death cannot be feared on an actual day-to-day level. However, by understanding that life is cyclical and by practicing the fundamental tenets of Jainism, the fear of death is unlikely to emerge for Jains. If one thinks within the theoretical framework of Jainism, then one can understand that sallekhana is not suicide. The disagreement that crops up between Jains appears to be a result of a misconception of the philosophical justification for sallekhana. If sallekhana is given as a prescription to a dying individual, I would argue that while this is not sallekhana, it is not suicide either.
Toward a Better Understanding of Sallekhana.
Conclusion and Questions
I do not wish to end this analysis of sallekhana with a static conclusion. There can be no fixed conclusions about Jainism, whose beliefs are very dynamic, porous and interconnected. However, by entering various members of the
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