Olivia Strittmatter - Jainism and Ecology

 Blog Post 5 - Topic of My Choosing 1

Week 5

        For this semester I decided that the topic of my choosing will be comparing how different religions interact with nature and the ecology that surrounds that followers of each religion. Obviously I can’t do all religions, and so I’m just going to pick five that stand out to me and pique my interest. I will add a link to a pdf if anyone's interested in some more reading, I used pages 207-223.

The first religion that I chose, and it’s interaction with nature, is Jainism. I chose this one to look into and write about first because we talked about it in class, and how the people that follow Jainism are unable to cook food for themselves. In class we talked about how they believe that they are killing the organism when they cook it, and that they cannot eat food raw because that also would be killing it. I thought that was really interesting because it’s a similar thought to what (some) vegans and vegetarians believe: that eating the animal is directly linked to the death of that animal, and that it’s wrong to kill animals for food. Except that the Jains believe that even plants are life that should not be killed for food for them. I also thought it was interesting how they will eat if someone else cooked it, and that they didn’t know the Jain was coming to beg for food because if the person knew, then they would have prepared the food for the Jain. This would therefore mean that the life ended because of the Jain, and that’s what they’re avoiding.

The Jains have a unique view on life, their definition is much more than the typical one that includes plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria. Their definition of life reaches all the way down to the elements themselves. Everything in the universe is pulsing with energy and life, and should be respected the same way anyone else would respect a dog, a giant sequoia tree, or another person. I think that this view causes a much deeper appreciation for the world around them, and a real relationship between the Jains and the ecosystem that surrounds them.

So I did some research on Jainism and their beliefs and how those beliefs affect their reality. The Jains view humans as a parallel to the cosmos. The eyes represent the sun, mind represents the moon, breath is wind, feet are the Earth, etc. This shows the link between humans and the cosmos, and how all structures in life have a parallel to the cosmos.

I also thought that it was interesting how all life forms fit into a graded order based on senses. The first order is made up of beings who only experience touch, such as fire, water, microorganisms, and plants. The second order is made up of beings who experience touch and taste, such as worms and leeches. The third order adds the sense of smell to the above experiences, such as most insects and spiders. The fourth order is all of the above experiences, but they can also see, such as bees and butterflies. The fifth order introduces hearing, this is where humans, mammals, reptiles, and birds lie.

One thing that I did find very interesting was that the Jains do have a concept of nonliving things, but they are very different from most other groups of people. The Jains classify things like time, space, and karma as nonliving. I think that this is a very interesting idea because it really shows how life energy flows through everything that is physical. 

I think that more people should adopt the general ideas of the Jains, such as that all things are alive, and everything that is alive deserves respect because of the relationship you have with the other life forces. If more people adopted these ideas then I think that humanity’s relationship with our world would improve drastically. There would be more respect for the planet, and I think we would be able to tackle climate change more aggressively and head-on.

https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/daedalus/downloads/Daedalus_Fa2001_Religion-and-Ecology-Can-Climate-Change.pdf