Tenets of Truth
Jainism is an ancient religion from India that teaches that the way to liberation and
bliss is to live a life of harmlessness and renunciation.
Like Hinduism, there is no belief in a single Creative Spirit or God, and like both Hinduism and Buddhism, Jains believe in reincarnation. There is a focus on karma, which is impacted by thoughts as well as physical behaviour.
There are three tenets to Jainism - right faith, right knowledge and right conduct, with the first two tenets being closely related. Basically, these tenets say that followers should seek true knowledge in the universe, being able to differentiate between truths and untruths and using that knowledge towards the betterment of their conduct.
Right conduct is emphasised in Jainism as not only a physical endeavour, but also one's thoughts towards others. Someone may be doing charity work, yet unless they actually approach that with a pure heart (not with ulterior motives, or as a CV booster, for instance) it will be meaningless.
To understand the universe and to have right conduct is said to bring peace of mind.
Most of the students at a recent lecture at New College, Who Cares? Business & Professional Ethics in the 21st Century from a Jain Perspective, appeared bewildered by the time the talk was finished.
Not only did the 'don't hurt a living soul' rhetoric of the Jain religion seem to completely blow over their postmodernist, carnivorous heads, but also important, valid questions posed by the small audience remained unanswered.
Not all in the audience were non-Jains, though many of them were.
"Is modernity inherently contradictory to the Jain lifestyle?" began one young man.
"I don't see why you can't have a genuine concern for others, while still having sound awareness and concern for your own interests" he continued, increasingly agitated by what appeared to him to be an impractical lecture on relinquishing all sense of self in place for consumption in charity.
Atul Shah, executive editor of Jain Spirit, a magazine dedicated to discussing issues of the Jain religion, began the lecture by telling a brief story about a small shop manager he'd encountered during a recent sojourn in India.
According to Shah, the man ran a very modest shop, yet seemed completely content with his life. Behind him, Shah noticed a large mantel dedicated to God. Intrigued, he asked the shop manager why he dedicated so much space to his spirituality.
In response, the shop manager talked for nearly half an hour about the indissoluble link between his faith and business enterprise. Shah thinks that it is this sort of spiritual grounding - a sense of your spiritually being who you are, not what you practice - that is remiss in Western culture.
According to Shah, Western culture is suffering from serious moral erosion.
He says there is an illusion of independence in Western culture, though it only comes at the cost of neglecting "the reality of interdependence", a more fulfilling realism that allows one to see that all of humanity is bonded together. He calls Oxford University an "island" and says that it doesn't represent the real world.
Shah claimed that the point of his talking to Oxford students was to address what will probably be the future commercial and intellectual elite. He went on to say that he entitled his speech "Who Cares?" because "often the brightest and smartest in the world care the least" and have the least sense of responsibility and duty.
Shah himself holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and was well on his way to being a multi-millionaire, if not billionaire, in his own finance career. He gave it all up, however, for Jainism.
The questions churn up again: "Does wealth accumulation imply that you're a bad person?" asks one girl. "What about using devious means to pursue positions of power, and then changing around and doing good things once you've achieved that power?" asked a third student, nervously attempting to understand this philosophy, yet still visibly baffled. Shah answers this question directly, stating that devious behaviour employed for any reason at all will always be wrong.
Virtually all of the room's questions aimed towards the same curiosity: is Jainism practical for the postmodernist, capitalist-minded individual? Is Modernity inherently a morbid concept? Is there anything wrong with wanting money, status, or eye candy? Should normative, prima facie standards of success - a university degree, a well-paying career, a solid position of power - be relinquished in place for a nomadic life filled with no sex, but virtue and selflessness? This last query is admittedly the most extreme of them all - because chastity is only the ideal, not necessarily a requirement for everyday Jains - though it's a fair question, nonetheless.
Shah generally gave vague answers to these. Jainism seemed to be something you somehow organically understood or you don't: "Jainism has never been into converting people - sharing, certainly, but not converting. That's never been an interest." This is a factor that may contribute somewhat to the nebulous nature of answers to questions regarding the practicality of the faith.
Shah provided examples of popular Jains who still managed to be very successful by conventional standards, yet many students still seemed unsatisfied. "He contradicted himself so much," says one of the lecture's attendees. "First he said that commercialism is a bad thing in Jainism, then he encouraged us to become successful Jains in the public, commercial eye."
It is also still a relatively unknown religion among white British students: all of the students, void of myself, at the meeting were seemingly of Asian descent.
Jainism - in its nebulous way of relinquishing Western ideology for simple, introspective growth - may be a relief to Westerners who are tired of self-centred pursuits, but not young Asians still wrestling with the conflicts of being both Indian and Modernist.
6th May 2004