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Who can become enlightened?

Who can become enlightened? This question depends on who you ask. Theravada Buddhists say that only monastics can become "Buddhas" while Mahayana Buddhists usually focus on the Bodhisatva ideal of becoming a Buddha later on in some other life. But the real fact is this, nobody can know who can or cannot become enlightened and attain escape from samsara. Making dogmatic rules does not mean you are correct, it just means that you made a rule, you have not proven this, you have just invented it and state it as fact. Therefore Theravada Buddhists make a fact claim based on something they cannot possibly know. I contend that since we cannot know and have no way of knowing for sure who can attain "Nirvana" that everyone has the potential. I think this is certainly much easier if one is a monastic as a monastic has much more time to devote to meditation and study, but just because one is a monastic there is no guarantee that he or she will ever achieve anything. One can b
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Can Jainism Be True?

Can Jainism, a non-theistic religion, possibly be true? Many religions make claims to be true but they all are unable to prove in any satisfactory or scientific way that there is any truth to them. Before I delved into Buddhism and Jainism I began mindful meditation and I did notice a distinct change in my life. My mind was much more calm, I was able to handle stress more, and ultimately I was more aware of what was going on in the present moment. At the time I did not think much of this, only that meditation itself was a great benefit to me personally. When I began taking it seriously and dispensed with theism I wanted to make sure that any religion, theistic or non-theistic, that I got involved in had some amount of testable and provable claims to them. Since Buddhism and Jainism are non-theistic there is no god claim and therefore it makes testing it much easier. However, there are some fundamental beliefs in both that I found to be fantastical and could not possibly be true or eve
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How I Became a Jainist

My journey starts a long time ago. Essentially I was raised with no religion, or none was pushed on neither me nor my brother. We lived in a small town filled with churches so there was exposure to many different Christian denominations. I dabbled in some here and there but overall I did not really get it. Around the 8th grade I got a severe concussion which I later learned had caused temporal lobe epilepsy, but at the time was unaware that it was even a concussion or what a concussion was at all. Looking back I can now see the effect that it had on me as my personality completely changed from a reserved quiet introvert to an extroverted loud mouthed militant, or as I would say, religious atheist. Before that I kept my beliefs to myself, afterward I somewhat evangelized for atheism and openly attacked people of faith, and even mocked them. A couple years later a friend and I had moved out to Las Vegas in search of some adventure but also some good paying jobs. It was there that someon
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