________________
“Let me tell you”, R replied “Jainism has a few different sects. Like in Christianity you have protestant, catholic and orthodox, or whatever. Jainism has too. I belong to a sect that does not believe in temples."
"As an outer building you mean"
"As a temple, where the worshipping of God takes place. You know, in a temple they do Pujaa, with flowers and all kinds of things. We are more like Jain Protestants, more spiritually oriented, whereas temple people are more like Christians, more action-oriented if you wish. We do not need to have the body of Christ, but only to visualize it, and if we do pay reverence to a statue of God, it is just to focus ourselves, but without any belief that this is really God. You cannot have a God that just sits there, because in our view God is already in the liberation place. There are two main sects in Jainism, one that does not wear clothes, at least men. They say that is how God lived 2500 years ago. Women wear clothes. These are the people that became acetic. There are still about 800 of them, the hardcore. They strongly rely on soul and nothing else. Then there is a parallel sect that wears white clothes, and this has two divisions, one of which I follow. When we sit in the hall, we do Pujaa, and we are very careful about killing, we do not worship statues, no lights, no candle burning, nothing, because that resorts to killing beings. And then there is still another group, which is the temple group you talk about, and I agree that in their mind temple building is like a display of having more money, because they think that building a temple is a very good thing to do. I'm not saying that building a temple is bad, but there are thousands of better things you can do with money in helping society. We do not express our different views so openly, because otherwise one has a religious war. We cannot tell that somebody's faith is wrong. I know and preach that one should only try to see what the consciousness of the soul says before doing anything. If the Jain principle says to not kill anything, then do everything to minimize the killing, or do not kill at all. The religious activities of clever people, then, should at least include the activities of not killing. Don't mind for other things. But some people understand, some don't. Sometimes the Jains outside of India are more Jain than those inside. For example, there are 45.000 Jains in London, who left India two or three generations ago. So they have not seen the new values, and what they carry with them is from three generations ago, and the just do the old things. Now, concerning temples, I think you should not build a temple in a city where every street has one already. That would not be justified”.
“But a temple is not just for worship, it may also be a symbol of community?"
“But you don't need three temples in one street, and that is what is happening".
"But imagine they would not have a community place, they would get disconnected from Jainism, would lose their language, their culture. So a temple is not just a 'religious' place".
"I agree”, R replied, “but what is happening, if I may correct, is that people use the temple
372
