The Jain 1992 04 Special Issue

Author(s): Natubhai Shah, Vinod Kapashi
Publisher: UK Jain Samaj Europe

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yet not one of them is forgotten before God". Because all life stems from one source (the Father's creative love), so all life naturally belongs together, and should be treated with respect and responsible care.
The understanding of God as Spirit is perhaps one of the most difficult areas of Christian belief for nonChristians - or even many Christians - to grasp. By definition, God as Spirit cannot be seen, heard, touched, or otherwise apprehended by the senses, yet we believe that he dwells within the heart of the faithful, forgiving their sins, directing and guiding their actions and thoughts, giving them freedom and wisdom.
Jains would agree here on the fundamental unity of all life, and the importance of respecting this. Indeed, in the doctrine of parasparopagrapho jivanam (that all life is bound together by mutual support and interdependence) Jains have elaborated an account of the unity of all from which Christians have much to learn, especially in an age of growing ecological concern. It is interesting to note how close some in the Christian tradition have independently approached to this perception for example, the German theologian, doctor and pastor Albert Schweitzer, who wrote: 'A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives'. Schweitzer here, a Jain might well say, is propounding an ethic of ahimsa, 'non-violence as taught by Mahavira; he was in fact following the ethic of agape, 'selfless love', taught by Jesus - and this brings us to our second area of convergence.
There are here a number of themes which resonate with the Jain tradition. For example, the freedom which the Spirit gives - a freedom from the bondage of sin - may remind us of the longing for moksa, liberation, which informs Jain spirituality, and of the central role played by forgiveness in the Jain life. Or again, when Jesus says that "The Spirit will lead you into all truth", we recall the place of jnana, knowledge, in the Jain's path to the ultimate. In reaching this freedom and knowledge, the soul has to overcome attachment to material things - there is in Christianity, as in Jainism, a vigorous ascetical tradition which finds expression in fasting, prayer, and a daily rule of life. Often the commitment to live out this challenge has been most radically embodied in Christianity by orders of monks and nuns, who have served as examples to the laity in much the same way as their Jain counterparts.
When Christians speak of 'God the Son', they affirm their belief that God revealed himself in Jesus his son: if we want to see the life of God lived in the world, we look to Jesus of Nazareth and the pattern of his life. That pattern is marked above all by the teaching and practice of agape, selfless love - and so agape is for Christians the ultimately valid and meaningful form of life. This agape is not just any sort of love - as we might say casually 'I love this food' - indeed, it is not a love that is at all to do with what we like or enjoy. Rather, agape is concerned only with the welfare of the other person, the loved one - so that Jesus could even say that the greatest love was to lay down one's own life for someone else.
Yet the deepest significance of the idea of the Spirit dwelling in Christians is in the sense of autonomy and dignity it confers on them. God promises concerning the gift of the Spirit: 'I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts ... and no longer shall each man teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord', for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest'.
Surely this is akin to the principle of ahimsa, that determination, carried even to the point of selfsacrifice, to cause no harm to any living being. Like agape, the roots of ahimsa lie deep in the heart of man; it is here, on the battlefield of the soul, that the greatest battle must be won the battle against the self with its evil inclinations, its sins, impurities and grasping. Only through following the higher, more challenging path can the soul find its true identity,
In this stress on personal autonomy there is a clear parallel with the Jain insistence that the soul is of transcendent worth and carries immense responsibilities for fulfilling its own potential, for finding again its true nature. As in Christianity, so in Jainism, the paradox is, that this true self is only to be found by selfless behaviour - by fighting against the grasping and clinging attitudes of the false self: 'All the great miseries suffered by the self are born of "myness", and so it is imperative to abandon completely the notion of external objects as being mine' [Aurapaccakkhanam 26.27]; 'Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it' [Matthew 16.25]
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
So Lord Mahavir and Lord Jesus both point us to a way that leads to salvation. Yet both Jains and Christians know well that to tread that path is not easy; it is a constant struggle, on which we are likely to stumble again and again and in which we need continual renewing of our commitment and strength. It is in this area of endeavour, failure and restoration that Christians speak especially of the I loly Spirit.
We recently published a full review of Professor KV Mardia's study of The Scientific Foundations of Jainism (Motilal Banarsidass 1990). Professor Mardia, of course, has been a close associate of Dr. Natubhai Shah in the development of the Jain Centre in
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