This panel brings together five scholars working on interdisciplinary philological, anthropological, and philosophical approaches to Jain yoga, showcasing original translations of Jain yoga texts, ethnographic field work, and cultural studies of Jainism and yoga. The presentations shed new light on Jain yoga’s textual “dark age” including from Yaśovijaya's Prakriyā commentary on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, sections of Yaśovijaya's Dvātriṃśad-Dvtriṃśikā which also comment directly on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, as well as the Yogapradīpa. Our presenters further consider contemporary cultural intersections of Jainism and yoga, sharing fieldwork from newly developing styles of Jain yoga in India, insights into Jainism and yoga’s entanglements with European culture, and a philosophical current of Jain pragmatism found in Jain yoga texts that urges us to revisit the popular emic notion of intellectual-ahiṃsā encountered in contemporary Jain culture today. Collectively, these five presentations shed new light on Jain yoga and also new research opportunities in Jain Studies and Yoga Studies.
There is limited scholarly awareness of the Jain impact on yoga, particularly during the period Sagarmal Jain has called the “dark age for Jain yoga” from the 11th century onward. To help shed new light on Jain yoga’s “dark age,” this paper presents elements of my research from two Jain yoga texts: the Yogapradīpa, and Yaśovijaya's Prakriyā commentary on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (PYS). I discuss how the Yogapradīpa (second millennium AD) presents an eight-fold path to liberation that is similar to that found in the PYS, highlighting how the Yogapradīpa nevertheless assigns higher importance to dhyāna rather than samādhi. I also show how the Yogapradīpa conveys a Jain-inflected trans-sectarian approach to yoga. Similarly, Yaśovijaya, a prominent seventeenth century Jain philosopher from Gujarat, presents his own conciliatory approach towards other religions on the principle of neutrality in his Prakriyā commentary. I compare and contrast these unique Jain contributions toward Jain yoga’s development.
The relevance of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra (PYS) has varied throughout history. Scholarship on the text has mainly focused on Brahmanical and Buddhist traditions and has left out other voices that might complicate the narrative of the history of the text. This paper presents new translations from a text by the so-called last great philosopher of Jainism, the Tapā Gaccha monk Yaśovijaya (1624 –1688). He not only devotes an entire compendium, Dvātriṃśad-Dvtriṃśikā, to an investigation of various forms of spiritual practice he calls 'yoga', but also devotes an entire chapter with the PYS as his chief interlocutor, rendering his own summary version of the text in śloka form. Despite his influence in Jain thought, Yaśovijaya remains understudied and most of his work has not been translated. With original translations, this paper shows how he affirms a Jain position in the PYS through his hermeneutical choices in the Dvātriṃśad-Dvtriṃśikā.
Alongside the well documented work of Rakesh Jhaveri at Dharampur Meditation Centre in Gujarat, three meditation movements have taken up similar work, attempting to promote a spiritual practice in the Jain idiom for contemporary times: Preksha Dhyan established by Acharya Mahaprajna (1920-2010), Adhyatma Dhyan founded by Acharya Shiv Muni (1942-), and the Arham Meditation movement of Muni Pranamya Sagar (1975-). This presentation will highlight key principles of each of these yoga systems, including reports on field site visits and a consideration of how each system incorporates Jain yoga texts into their practices. It will demonstrate the diversity of contemporary Jain yoga systems even as it demonstrates each system’s commitment to similar foundational Jain principles, practices, and soteriological goals.
This paper contextualizes Dr. Narendra Kumar Jain’s (1937-) Eastside Gallery Painting, “The Seven Stages of Enlightenment,” a popular mural on the Berlin Wall featuring a meditating yogi-Buddha with seven cakras, Mahavira, and several other religious and spiritual figures and symbols. The mural’s peace-making bricolage pushes the boundaries of the study of Jainism and yoga to their disciplinary limits, requiring an interdisciplinary approach drawing from Jain Studies and Yoga Studies but also from Buddhist Studies, political science and art history to understand why these various influences converge in Dr. Jain’s popular mural. Even as Dr. Jain emphasizes a universalistic Jain and yogic identity and the apophatic nature of his artistic work, his engagement with all of the intersecting influences presented in this paper place his mural in a very particular socio-historical location, making his work both transcendent and contextualizable, from emic and etic perspectives, respectively.
Contemporary Jains often understand anekānta-vāda to have implications for interfaith goodwill and acceptance in the form of social- and intellectual-ahiṃsā. Following this contemporary approach, this paper considers one genre of Jain texts instrumentalizing anekānta-vāda not only as an epistemological dialectical logic, but also as a mandate for social-ahiṃsā between religions. I revisit several texts on yoga by Haribhadrasūri who is engaged in a type of interfaith dialogue in a way that affords significant positive valuation of other non-Jain yoga traditions. I argue that there is a current of philosophical pragmatism in these texts and within the thought of some other Jain thinkers which subordinates theory to practice and admits the fallibilism in mundane human knowledge in such a way that allows for significant positive valuation of other traditions, thereby fostering potential for interfaith goodwill. In this way, this paper is the first in-depth dialogue between Western Pragmatism and Jain tradition.