Jainism is
properly the name of one of the religious traditions that have their origin in
the Indian subcontinent. According to its own traditions, the teachings of
Jainism are eternal, and hence have no founder; however, the Jainism of this
age can be traced back to Mahavira, a teacher of the sixth century BCE, a
contemporary of the Buddha. Like those of the Buddha, Mahavira’s doctrines were
formulated as a reaction to and rejection of the Brahmanism (religion based on
the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas and Upanisads) then taking shape. The brahmans
taught the division of society into rigidly delineated castes, and a doctrine
of reincarnation guided by karma, or merit brought about by the moral qualities
of actions. Their schools of thought, since they respected the authority of the
Vedas and Upanisads, were known as orthodox darsanas (which means
literally, ‘views’). Jainism and Buddhism, along with a school of materialists
called Carvaka, were regarded as the unorthodox darsanas, because
they taught that the Vedas and Upanisads, and hence the brahman caste, had no
authority.
Table of Contents (Clicking on the links below will take you to those parts of this article)
1. Metaphysics
According to
Jain thought, the basic constituents of reality are souls (jiva), matter
(pudgala), motion (dharma), rest (adharma), space (akasa),
and time (kala). Space is understood to be infinite in all directions,
but not all of space is inhabitable. A finite region of space, usually
described as taking the shape of a standing man with arms akimbo, is the only region
of space that can contain anything. This is so because it is the only region of
space that is pervaded with dharma, the principle of motion (adharma
is not simply the absence of dharma, but rather a principle that causes
objects to stop moving). The physical world resides in the narrow part of the
middle of inhabitable space. The rest of the inhabitable universe may contain
gods or other spirits.
While Jainism is
dualistic—that is, matter and souls are thought to be entirely different types
of substance—it is frequently said to be atheistic. What is denied is a creator
god above all. The universe is eternal, matter and souls being equally
uncreated. The universe contains gods who may be worshipped for various
reasons, but there is no being outside it exercising control over it. The gods
and other superhuman beings are all just as subject to karma and rebirth as
human beings are. By their actions, souls accumulate karma, which is understood
to be a kind of matter, and that accumulation draws them back into a body after
death. Hence, all souls have undergone an infinite number of previous lives,
and—with the exception of those who win release from the bondage of karma—will
continue to reincarnate, each new life determined by the kind and amount of
karma accumulated. Release is achieved by purging the soul of all karma, good
and bad.
Every living
thing has a soul, so every living thing can be harmed or helped. For purposes
of assessing the worth of actions (see Ethics, below), living things are
classified in a hierarchy according to the kinds of senses they have; the more
senses a being has, the more ways it can be harmed or helped. Plants, various
one-celled animals, and 'elemental' beings (beings made of one of the four
elements—earth, air, fire, or water) have only one sense, the sense of touch. Worms and many insects have the senses of touch
and taste. Other
insects, like ants and lice, have those two senses plus the sense of smell.
Flies and bees, along with other higher insects, also have sight. Human beings,
along with birds, fish, and most terrestrial animals, have all five senses. This
complete set of senses (plus, according to some Jain thinkers, a separate
faculty of consciousness) makes all kinds of knowledge available to human
beings, including knowledge of the human condition and the need for liberation
from rebirth.
2. Epistemology and Logic
Underlying Jain
epistemology is the idea that reality is multifaceted (anekanta, or
'non-one-sided'), such that no one view can capture it in its entirety; that
is, no single statement or set of statements captures the complete truth about
the objects they describe. This insight, illustrated by the famous story of the
blind men trying to describe an elephant, grounds both a kind of fallibilism in
epistemology and a sevenfold classification of statements in logic.
Every school of Indian thought includes some judgment about the
valid sources of knowledge (pramanas). While their lists of pramanas
differ, they share a concern to capture the common-sense view; no Indian school
is skeptical. The Jain list of pramanas includes sense perception, valid
testimony (including scriptures), extra-sensory perception, telepathy, and kevala,
the state of omniscience of a perfected soul. Notably absent from the list is
inference, which most other Indian schools include, but Jain discussion of the pramanas
seem to indicate that inference is included by implication in the pramana
that provides the premises for inference. That is, inference from things
learned by the senses is itself knowledge gained from the senses; inference
from knowledge gained by testimony is itself knowledge gained by testimony,
etc. Later Jain thinkers would add inference as a separate category, along with
memory and tarka, the faculty by which we recognize logical relations.
Since reality is
multi-faceted, none of the pramanas gives absolute or perfect knowledge
(except kevala, which is enjoyed only by the perfected soul, and cannot
be expressed in language). As a result, any item of knowledge gained is only
tentative and provisional. This is expressed in Jain philosophy in the doctrine
of naya, or partial predication (sometimes called the doctrine of
perspectives or viewpoints). According to this doctrine, any judgment is true
only from the viewpoint or perspective of the judge, and ought to be so
expressed. Given the multifaceted nature of reality, no one should take his or
her own judgments as the final truth about the matter, excluding all other
judgments. This insight generates a sevenfold classification of predications. The
seven categories of claim can be schematized as follows, where 'a' represents
any arbitrarily selected object, and 'F' represents some predicate assertible
of it:
- Perhaps a is F.
- Perhaps a is not-F.
- Perhaps a is both F and not-F.
- Perhaps a is indescribable.
- Perhaps a is indescribable and F.
- Perhaps a is indescribable and not-F.
- Perhaps a is indescribable, and both F and not-F.
Each predication
is preceded by a marker of uncertainty (syat), which I have rendered
here as 'perhaps.' Some render it as ‘from a perspective,’ or ‘somehow.’ However
it is translated, it is intended to mark respect for the multifaceted nature of
reality by showing a lack of conclusive certainty.
Early Jain
philosophical works (especially the Tattvartha Sutra) indicate that for
any object and any predicate, all seven of these predications are true. That is
to say, for every object a and every predicate F, there is some circumstance in
which, or perspective from which, it is correct to make claims of each of these
forms. These seven categories of predication are not to be understood as seven
truth-values, since they are all seven thought to be true. Historically, this
view has been criticized (by Sankara, among others) on the obvious ground of
inconsistency. While both a proposition and its negation may well be assertible,
it seems that the conjunction, being a contradiction, can never be even assertible,
never mind true, and so the third and seventh forms of predication are never
possible. This is precisely the kind of consideration that leads some
commentators to understand the 'syat' operator to mean ‘from a perspective.’ Since
it may well be that from one perspective, a is F, and from another, a is not-F,
then one and the same person can appreciate those facts and assert them both
together. Given the multifaceted nature of the real, every object is in one way
F, and in another way not-F. An appreciation of the complexity of the real also
can lead one to see that objects are, as they are in themselves, indescribable
(as no description can capture their entirety). This yields the fourth form of
predication, which can then be combined with other insights to yield the last
three forms.
Perhaps the
deepest problem with this doctrine is one that troubles all forms of skepticism
and fallibilism to one degree or another; it seems to be self-defeating. After
all, if reality is multifaceted, and that keeps us from making absolute
judgments (since my judgment and its negation will both be equally true), the
doctrines that underlie Jain epistemology are themselves equally tentative. For
example, take the doctrine of anekantevada. According to that doctrine,
reality is so complex that any claim about it will necessarily fall short of
complete accuracy. The doctrine itself must then fall short of complete
accuracy. Therefore, we should say, "Perhaps (or “from a perspective") reality
is multifaceted." At the same time, we have to grant the propriety, in some
circumstances, of saying, "Perhaps reality is not multifaceted." Jain
epistemology gains assertibility for its own doctrine, but at the cost of being
unable to deny contradictory doctrines. What begins as a laudable fallibilism
ends as an untenable relativism.
3. Ethics
Given that the
proper goal for a Jain is release from death and rebirth, and rebirth is caused
by the accumulation of karma, all Jain ethics aims at purging karma that has
been accumulated, and ceasing to accumulate new karma. Like Buddhists and
Hindus, Jains believe that good karma leads to better circumstances in the next
life, and bad karma to worse. However, since they conceive karma to be a
material substance that draws the soul back into the body, all karma, both good
and bad, leads to rebirth in the body. No karma can help a person achieve liberation
from rebirth. Karma comes in different kinds, according to the kind of actions
and intentions that attract it. In particular, it comes from four basic
sources: (1) attachment to worldly things, (2) the passions, such as anger,
greed, fear, pride, etc., (3) sensual enjoyment, and (4) ignorance, or false
belief. Only the first three have a directly ethical or moral upshot, since
ignorance is cured by knowledge, not by moral action.
The moral life,
then, is in part the life devoted to breaking attachments to the world,
including attachments to sensual enjoyment. Hence, the moral ideal in Jainism
is an ascetic ideal. Monks (who, as in Buddhism, live by stricter rules than
laymen) are constrained by five cardinal rules, the "five vows": (1) ahimsa,
frequently translated "non-violence," or “non-harming,” satya, or
truthfulness, asteya, not taking anything that is not given, brahmacharya,
chastity, and aparigraha, detachment. This list differs from the rules
binding on Buddhists only in that Buddhism requires abstention from
intoxicants, and has no separate rule against attachment to the things of the
world. The cardinal rule of interaction with other jivas is the rule of ahimsa.
This is because harming other jivas is caused by either passions like anger,
or ignorance of their nature as living beings. Consequently, Jains are required
to be vegetarians. According to the earliest Jain documents, plants both are
and contain living beings, although one-sensed beings, so even a vegetarian
life does harm. This is why the ideal way to end one's life, for a Jain, is to
sit motionless and starve to death. Mahavira himself, and other great Jain
saints, are said to have died this way. That is the only way to be sure you are
doing no harm to any living being.
While it may seem
that this code of behavior is not really moral, since it is aimed at a specific
reward for the agent—and is therefore entirely self-interested—it should be
noted that the same can be said of any religion-based moral code. Furthermore,
like the Hindus and Buddhists, Jains believe that the only reason that personal
advantage accrues to moral behavior is that the very structure of the universe,
in the form of the law of karma, makes it so.
4. References and Further Reading
Battacharya, Hari Mohan. Jaina Logic and Epistemology. Calcutta:
K. P. Gagchi and Company, 1994. A full explanation and critical examination of
Jain theory of knowledge.
Battacharya, Narendra
Nath. Jain Philosophy: Historical Outline. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1976.
Benesch, Walter.
An Introduction to Comparative Philosophy. London: Macmillan Press, 1997. A systematic comparison of Western
philosophical systems with Asian, including Jain, systems.
Jacobi, Herman,
trans. Jaina Sutras. Sacred Books of the East, vols 22 and 45. London: Oxford University Press, 1884. The only English
translation of the Jain scriptures.
Sharma, Arvind. A
Jaina Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion. Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidas, 2001.
Tatia, Nathmal, trans.
That Which Is: Tattvartha Sutra. San
Francisco: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1994. An early Jain handbook.
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