Ghostface Buddha's Guide To Jainism

Reversing recent trends, here comes an effort-post.

Another day another big-ass sacred mountain. As I stood at the bottom of Shatrunjaya hill, the most holy place in the entire Jain religion, the dholi litter-bearers were desperate to carry me to the top. "It's over 3000 stairs!" they would proclaim, sure that this would persuade me to retain their services. "Only 3000?" I replied, "Bitch, please", and set off up the stairs.

This post, centered upon my visit to Shatrunjaya hill, is the first in what will hopefully be a series of Ghostface Buddha's guides to various subjects of Indian interest. I had planned to begin with the vital subject of Hinduism, only to discover that it was incredibly difficult for the same reason it is neccesary: Hinduism is really, really complicated. I will instead delay that venture until I have a better understanding of it, and will instead begin this series with Ghostface Buddha's guide to Jainism.

The Jains revere Shatrunjaya as a piece of mountaintop plucked from the Himalayas (and coincidentally deposited in Gujarat where all the Jains happen to be living) where Adinath, the first tirthankar, and 19 of the other 23 tirthankars attained enlightenment. (However this is disupted; many are said to have attained enlightenment elsewhere. This discrepancy may be due to difficulties of translation, as their are multiple levels of enlightenment, and none of these should be confused with moksha or "liberation", which most found on the other side of the country). Below Shatrunjaya is the town of Palitana, a truly unremarkable dump of a town that with only one decent restaurant, and even it serves only Jain cuisine. You've been hearing a lot about the Jains from me lately because Rajasthan and especially Gujarat were strongholds of Jain influence. In Gujarat they are common enough that most Gujarati restaurants (which are marvelously quirky places) offer "Jain options" on the menu, and invariably serve onions, lemons, and chilis on a separate little plate so as not to mistakenly serve them to Jains. Gujarati restaurants also finish the meal with a little dish of lemon-water for you to wipe your fingers in, but this is probably just the product of Gujarati restaurants' pretensions of world-class service. It is also said that Shatrunjaya will be the one mountain that floats above the floods when the world is destroyed at the end of this age. The town of Palitana at the bottom will not be spared from the Deluge. I'm sure it won't be missed.

Anyways, as I ascended the 3000 fairly forgiving stairs the temple city at the summit slowly came into view. Shatrunjaya boasts over 900 temples. I was unimpressed by this figure. Indian sites always claim to have "hundreds of temples", most of which turn out to be little boxy shrines barely big enough for to contain a small idol or mini-temples to deities' animal servants and the like in the approaches to the main temples. I climbed first not to the main cluster of temples, but to the uppermost ones from which I had a view of the entire complex, and lo and behold, there actually were 900 real temples, containing thousands upon thousands of lesser shrines. Across the plateau the linear form of the fortified walls of the numerous tunks, or temple precincts was punctuated by a sea of mighty spires projecting from within. The tunks sitauated below me revealed a labyrinth of temples small and large, squeezed between eachother wherever they could fit. As I wandered through the precincts the temples only seemed to multiply, as popping through narrow passages, rounding corners up half-concealed stairways, and weaving through forests of columns and arches led to more and more of the magnificent Jain shrines. In the lesser-known upper tunks I meandered almost alone through the canyons of carved stone, from time to time stumbling across a small group of lay pilgrims or monks paying their respects to the main temples of the less-revered tirthankars. Young pujaris (I believe this is the term), or temple-keeping apprentice priests dressed in yellow and orange carried pots of burning incense and tended to the rituals on the thousands of unvisited tirthankar idols.

Tirthankar idols are perhaps my favorite of all Indian religious art. They are similar to Buddha statues, but usually carved of serene white marble, with facial features and simple accessories made from metals, jewels, and semi-precious stones. They sit in the kayotsurga position (closely related to the lotus position), and are frequently found with offerings of lotus flowers in their laps. The more magnificent idols reach tremendous sizes and positively shine from the radiance of their marble, the glittering of silver and gold on their bodies' energy points, jewels upon their heads, and glorious crowns. Far more common are the throngs of minor idols, often numbering 108, that line the periphery of many temples. These are small, simple marble idols adorned with ceremonial pastes that reside in their own little shrines in gallery-like collections of tirthankars. One temple I was invited into was a dark, cylindrical chamber built into the bastions of a tunk which contained a circular promenade of thousands of tiny idols, repeating the chain of tirthankars through some sacred number of repetitions. Photography of Shatrunjaya's idols is strictly forbidden, but this was perhaps the last Jain site I will visit in a long time so in an ancient subterranean temple I snapped a few shots of neglected old idols purely to illustrate the art form.

Eventually I made it to the main tunk, which enclosed the temple of Adinath, the Holy of Holies in Jainism, the temple to the first tirthankara on the mountain where he found the Truth. Entering through a carved arch, the solemn austerity of the silent other tunks was replaced by the bustle of monks, nuns, and priests ascending and descending a wide staircase lined with twisting trees and marble temples with fantastic idols shining out through the many chambers. Many of these temples are the religion's principal shrine to that tirthankar, marking the point of his (or in one case, her) ultimate enlightenment, and the fineness of the idols within bears testament to their significance. Particularly striking were the figures of Neminath, in brillant black marble, and of Parsvanath with his hood of snakes.

At the top of this staircase a tunnel led into the final enclosure, the inner tunk-within-a-tunk that housed the Adinath temple. A great clamor or bells and chants echoed off the walls as hundreds of pilgrims recited prayers and from time to time praised "ADINATH....ADINATH". A pujari led me to a staircase that led to the roof of the tunk walls, from which I observed the activity below. The tops of arches formed stairs and bridges between the roofs of temples, and by one of these paths I entered the Adinath temple from above. A circular orifice allowed me to gaze down at the prostrated pilgrims in the main temple chamber below, engrossed in prayer. In the wings a long line of pilgrims snaked out from the courtyards, waiting their turn to approach the threshold of the sanctum sanctorum and pray before the main Adinath idol, a brilliant 7-foot seated statue with a silver and gold crown and huge jeweled eyes. Though high above the worshippers I remained unnoticed I took no pictures. Some things just have to be respected. From here I wandered across narrow bridges to other rooftops before returning to the Adinath temple where I stepped out onto the balcony and beheld a majestic view of endless temples crawling down the slope. The temples in the innermost tunk were unique, bizarre constructions, some with open-air shrines facing in all directions from atop towers, the shining tirthankars gazing in the cardinal directions from their lofty thrones radiating like lighthouses out to the world below.

I returned to the main level of the courtyard and circumambulated the Adinath temple. The temples behind were shaded by a revered tree, which I was told was the very tree under which Adinath achieved enlightenment (Buddhists have a similar practice, though the particular tree Buddha famously found enlightenment under is gone, and the trees revered today are ones carefully cultivated from that tree's descendants). How Adinath, who by all accounts was hundreds of meters tall and crossed kilometers with every step meditated under this tree was beyond me, but I felt it best not to poke at this precise moment. While I admired this tree, a lay Jain in pilgrim's attire approached me and spoke to me in flawless English. He took it upon himself, much to the satisfaction of his family, to explain Jainism and the Shatrunjaya hill to one of the few foreigners who had seen fit to make the journey to this sacred place. His name was Raaj, and I am indebted to him for his thoughtful explanations that demystified much of Jain belief and mythology for me.

The Jains do not believe in a "God" in the sense that Christians or even Hindus do. There is just the universe, whose lost shards are the souls of living beings. A Jain's highest goal then is to return to unity with the universe through attaining enlightenment and then liberation. The Jain cosmos is shaped like a hourglass, with this Earth in the middle. Above the Earth are about 26 layers of heavens, divided into 3 classes of abodes of gods and other heavenly beings that have attained different levels of enlightenment. This Earth is the home of humans, animals, and other lesser 'gods' (for the lack of a better term) that remain connected to earthly affairs. Below the earth are seven hells, and you do not want to be reborn there. In addition to this world, there is a parallel world, for reasons we will see later.

Time is infinite and cyclical. There is no Alpha and Omega. There are merely cycles, or chakras, of great duration in which all the events of the universe essentially repeat themselves. These chakras are divided into subperiods. We are presently in the age of kali-yuga, the age of wickedness and chaos, a concept shared with Hinduism (the age of Kali, mistress of Chaos). As the last age of the cycle, it is destined to be wicked as most of the finest souls have already been liberated from this world, leaving mostly the impure, the weak, and the wicked behind. Striving for total enlightenment in this age is hindered, in fact impossible. Thus, one must hope that the virtue of their life earns them rebirth in one of the lower heavens, from which it is possible to then hop via rebirth into the parallel world, which is currently undergoing the age of virtue. When this age ends, the world will be destroyed and history will begin anew. Raaj said we are quite close to the end, which will come in about 1000 years from today on some calendar. Jains that adhere to the other, "cosmic mind-fuck" calender of ridiculously long time periods (see below) also say that we are near the end, but have at least 100,000 years to spare.

In each cycle, many souls may achieve enlightenment, but exactly 24 will achieve such perfection as to shine as beacons to the rest of the world. These are the tirthankaras, or "crossing-makers". Of the 24 tirthankaras of the present age, the most revered are Parsvanath the 23rd, who laid out the most influential of the Jain teachings and Adinath, the first. Historians conclude that only the last two, Parsvanath and Mahavira can be dfinitively cited as historical figures, living around 800BC and 550BC respectively. Historians have traditionally said that Mahavira is the true founder of the Jain religion, and that earlier tirthankaras are likely myths, while clues indicate the some were prophets remembered from a distant, hazy past at the dawn of Indian civlization. Increasingly, they are beginning to reconsider some Jain claims that the religion is much older and may date hundreds of years earlier to at least Parsvanath's age in the same form, and may have precedents as early as the Indus Valley civilization. Jains claim that the founder of the religion (in this age) was Adinath, and depending on who you ask this happened about 80,000 years ago or some ludicrous distance (such as "592.704 Quintillion Years") in the past. Jains thus claim that they are the world's oldest active religion, Hinduism dating a mere 75,000 years in their view. From a historical perspective they may be correct, as some of the other extant religions of great age, such as Hinduism and Judaism did not exist in anything resembling their current form until well after Jainism and Buddhism were established around 550BC (Jainism slightly predates Buddhism. Some Jains will claim that Buddha himself was a Jain for some five years before rejecting it as one of the extremes to be avoided on his Middle Path to enlightenment. It is certainly known that Buddha was closely associated with some of Mahavira's disciples.)

I mentioned before that enlightenment is different from liberation. Liberation is the final act of uniting with the universe, i.e the death of an enlightened being, though "ascensions to heaven" in the Jesus-like fashion distinct from worldly death are possible but exceedingly rare. Enlightenment refers to the moment when the knowledge itself is achieved, in the Buddha-like fashion, and leaves the enlightened being time to live, walk the earth, spread his wisdom, and so on.

I gained little knowledge regarding the various fantastic myths of the various tirthankaras. There seems to be little agreement or consistency on the points of individuals living millions of years and so on. Some accounts from scripture read like the acid trips of an ascetic monk with a well-used graphing calculator, while some Jains cite figures that are surely legedary but at least try to ground themselves in the real world. If I ever get to the bottom of this matter I will let you know.

Just as there are multiple heavens, so too are there multiple levels of enlightenment, and every soul in the universe rests somewhere on a detailed map of how enlightened they are. For instance, a soul that has truly realized the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence, has achieved the second of about fourteen major levels. Jainism describes five main principles for humans to concern themselves with: Non-Violence, Detachment, and Truth are the most important. Non-theft and Celibacy (in a sense) also are significant. The principle of ahimsa is from which the Jains adopt their strict vegetarianism. Many Jains wear masks to prevent breathing in and killing insects, and taken to logical extremes many monks refuse to bathe for it will kill bacteria, which are deemed just as worthy. Jains praise the marvels of modern science for making them aware of such beings, but also hold some quirky scientific beliefs. For instance, some insist that it is quite impossible to take an airplane or boat across the South Pole because it passes on the lower half of the cosmic hourglass, while passage over the Arctic region is simple and commonplace. "Look at any airline chart" Raaj told me. I declined to contend that the dearth of flights across the Antarctic likely had much to do with a low demand to short flights between Sydney and Tierra del Fuego.

The principle of Detachment is where the sects of Jainism divide. Degembara monks insist this must include clothing and wander about naked, whereas Svetembara Jains believe that due to the nature of society, limited clothing must be worn if the message is to be shown to the people. As a consequence of Degembara belief, they also claim that since women can't go around naked, women can't achieve enlightenment. Svetambara find this mysoginistic and are one of the few indigenous Indian religions that actively encourage female participation in higher religious and monastic life.

The relationship between Jainism and Hinduism is vigorously, though amiably contested. Hindus will say Jains are part of their fold. However, this is part of the same process of "Hindu-ization" that has been going on for thousands of years. Essentially, the Hindu faith attempts to co-opt any sect it does not completely despise (i.e not Muslims) by merging their gods into the Hindu pantheon, typically as "aspects" of the major deities. Criteria for inclusion in Hindu-dom seems to rest more closely upon the sects' willingness to participate in the caste system. For this reason Hinduism clashes aggressively with Islam and Christianity, and has historically tried to subvert Jainism and Buddhism for denying caste. Their answer to Buddhism for instance is to claim that Buddha was merely the 9th incarnation of Vishnu and had some pretty nice things to say but y'all are missing the point and need to start being good Hindus again. Jains accept the existence of Hindu gods, but not as "Gods" per se. They are considered more as powerful, semi-enlightened souls in the heavens that also look up to the tirthankaras, and spend their time meddling in earthly affairs for human benefit. Lakshmi thus intervenes to ensure wealth, and Ganesh is like a cosmic accountant of karma, who can advance the fortuitous benefits of good karma you are destined to accrue at a later date. A key distinction is that although they are invoked as celestial actors, like the tirthankaras themselves (which they are beneath), they are not actually Gods and are thus not worshiped.

Jains now number some 5 million people, a paltry 0.5% of the massive Indian population, which leads some of them to pessimistically label their own religion extinct in the present age. Their influence however is widely felt, as they were once much more prominent. Even today, this 0.5% of the population controls 20% of India's wealth (they are prominent figures in commerce and industry), a staggering disproportion that even they themselves are at a loss to explain. In the past when they were much more numerous, Jain ideology had a significant impact on Hinduism and vice versa. Many scholars cite Jainism as the inspiration for many Hindu sects adopting vegetarianism and non-violence. Gandhi himself credited a Jain teacher for inspiring many of his own beliefs, and the ideals of ahimsa and satya (truth) for which he was best known are distinctly of this heritage. Jain art and archicture also intertwine with Hindu traditions. Jain and Hindu temples have similar external appearances, though the figures identfied as gods or earthly chrachters such as sexy musicians in Hindu temples are said to be residents of the lower heavens in Jain templs, a sort of angel-like position of semi-divine souls that sacrifice full enlightenment for the time being to focus on helping mortals along their path.

Raaj and I concluded our discussion with an exchange of contact information (so that Raaj's somewhat well-known scholarly uncle might forward me recommendations of good books on the subject of Indian religions) and the revelation that Raaj has moved from his home in Mumbai and currently resides in -I kid you not- Edison, New Jersey.

Reading this over, I seem to have engaged in a few too many digressions and may not have done the best job of explaining some of the central tenets. In particular I wrote this a little non-sequentially with insertions and re-shufflings galore so the division of paragraphs is far from optimal, but so it goes. This is as good an explication of a complicated, ancient faith as you are going to get from a writer whose usual material consists of dick jokes and antagonistic remarks towards cows.

I finally walked back down the mountain. I had poked into nearly all the tunks, and though a few remained I felt that laying eyes on 700 or so out of the 900 was probably good enough, and the day had reached a suitable climax at the Adinath temple, so I began my descent. As I neared the bottom a crooked-toothed old man in Jain robes hobbled up to me and spoke. "Did you climb the mountain?" He asked. I responded that I had, and he asked me "Did you see the Sanctum Sanctorum?" Taken aback by his startling vocabulary I replied that yes, I had seen that as well. "You are lucky" he said. I pressed him further. People had been calling me lucky all day, in a blissful way that indicated some sort of deeper luck than merely being fortunate enough to see a lovely place. He continued "Shri Adinath teaches us that only the most lucky people can climb this mountain. You the outsider have come a very long way and shown you are among the lucky. Surely you were called here, and are doubly blessed." The Jains, in my experience, have always been among the most welcoming and magnanimous people, and they often do make me feel as though I am truly lucky.

I got off the mountain and passed through the bustle in the town below. I had a ticket for a sleeper-bus that night out to the major cities and the 'real world.' As the bus began to thump along the awful rural roads and oblivious Indian youths used their speakerphones to blare "Filmi" music well into the night, I felt as though I really was re-entering a different world. And so it is too that we return now to Ghostface Buddha's usual fare.

The hell-forged iron can rumbled down the road, the diesel fumes sneaking through its broken window frames as proof of its diabolical origin. Somewhere in Elysium, a suddenly roused Plato raises his finger and proclaims to the unhearing world above "Aha, verily the Idea of the noisome shit-wagon has been at last realized in physical form!"....