The panel seeks to extend the approach of comparative theology to Jainism.
Jainism is one of the oldest religions that are still practiced and has been called the world’s most peaceful religion. Jains apply their tradition to many contemporary challenges from religious plurality to animal rights. However, unlike Hinduism and Buddhism, the two major Indian-origin religions, Jainism has so far received almost no attention in comparative theology. This panel seeks to indicate some directions that could offer opportunities for comparative theological engagement with Jainism, ranging from philosophy to meditative practice to art and devotion. The first two speakers will connect anekāntavāda, the Jain teaching of non-one-sidedness, to Jewish and Hindu thought, respectively. The third paper will discuss human/non-human relationships in the context of Jain and Christian textual and artistic traditions. The fourth paper will read Jain and Cāraṇī devotional poetry on female goddesses in the light of each other.
This talk will engage in comparative theology to compare Jain conceptions of the non-one-sidedness of reality (anekāntavāda) to Jewish conceptions of pluralism. Often the comparison has been made in popular accounts but with insufficient knowledge of the actual Jain position. This paper will attempt to clear up various misreadings of the comparison to look for similarities. In addition, the Jewish concepts have often been read as literary indeterminacy, as textual infinites. We will explore how the anekāntavāda position generally does not use inference or textuality, but the Jewish pluralism creates a cognitive pluralism based on inference and texts. We will also look at the concept of omniscient beings as transcending the plurality. Finally, we will conclude with observations on how the comparison to Kabbalah can illuminate Jain doctrine.
The Jain teaching of the non-one-sidedness of reality (anekāntavāda) is of great interest to philosophers and theologians who seek to apply this concept to the diversity of worldviews, in the name of developing a pluralistic philosophy aimed at cultivating greater harmony amongst the adherents of the world’s religions and philosophies. Similarly, a central teaching of Vijñāna Vedānta, the worldview propounded by the modern Hindu teacher Sri Ramakrishna and his pre-eminent disciple, Swami Vivekananda, is dharmasamanvaya, or the harmony of religions, which claims that many religions can lead to the goal of the realization of humanity’s true, divine nature. This paper will seek to outline how each of these doctrines can be enhanced by the other.
The starting point for this paper is the discussion of passages from the Ācārāṅgasūtra, which instruct the renouncer on the appropriate relation to non-human life. Further lessons about the interaction between human and non-human life can be taken from Jain art, such as the statues of Bahubali or Parshvanatha, whose iconography combines the human figure with animal or plant life. The paper will relate these Jain attitudes to passages and artistic depictions from Christianity. I will focus on the painting “Saint Francis with the Animals” by Lambert de Hondt and Willem van Herp the Elder and discuss how this painting exemplifies Christian ideals of human/non-human relationships in ways that are comparable to the Jain statues. The claim of the paper will be that the human is in both traditions not decentered in favor of the non-human but to direct the human’s attention to a higher reality.
By approaching with the lens of comparative theology, this paper aims at reading literary compositions on the Jain Goddess Padmāvatī in the light of Goddesses in Cāraṇī literature. While goddess worship is integral to the Cāraṇs' theological and religious life, it has arguably remained marginal and relegated in Jain tradition. By reflecting on the distinction as mentioned earlier and then by ways of juxtaposing the similarities in the literary style, language, and motif used in both Jain and Cāraṇī literature on goddesses, I explore and discuss that Padmāvatī, a non-liberated female deity of the Jain pantheon is elevated as an object of bhakti; and śakti, the divine feminine energy in the same manner as goddesses are being depicted in Cāraṇī literature. By doing so, I address the tension and creative solution Jain literature uses to negotiate Padmāvatī's identity in Jain theological setting.