Jinamanjari 2001 09 No 24

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

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Jain community into a dialogue with each other in this study, I hope it has raised some important issues and questions. Here are several topics I find believe are worth further exploration for a more exhaustive understanding of sallekhana:
Can a non-dual philosophy be properly conveyed in the dualistic framework of rituals?
What sort of distortions of Right Practice and Right Faith occur when Right Knowledge is not provided or chosen?
How can the internal logic regarding issues such as "prediction and prescriptions be harmonized?
How can the Jain community effectively spread the tenets of its belief system to all members of the community?
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How can the claim, by Jains and non-Jains, that sallekhana is suicide be uprooted?
What is the future of a ritual that revolves around death? As pointed out earlier, part of sallekhana concerns the way life is lived, but Jainism also sees sallekhana as one of the ways to perfect the purification of the soul. Unless physical death is no longer a reality that all sentient beings must face, there is little threat to the ritual of sallekhana because no one is going to surrender the notion of transcendence and purification of the soul. Another reason that sallekhana will endure is that there is no compulsion to perform this ritual; the decision is supposed to be left to the individual. Although there are few Jains who observe sallekhana, I do not think this suggests that it is a dying practice. The internal logic argues that sallekhana is "the victory of the soul over Karmas and other infirmities of the mind and the body... and a fitting culmination to a life of piety and religion" (Tukol, 279). And since there is an inseparable relationship between knowledge, faith and practice, it is unlikely this ritual will die. However, because there is such a tightly woven relationship between knowledge, faith and practice in Jainism, weakness of one aspect could possibly dismantle the others. Thus, I would argue that the tensions within the internal logic concerning the clarity and understanding of the Jain philosophy, poses the only real potential threat to sallekhana. If the ritual is going to crumble, it will most likely do so from the inside.
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