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 even scientifically provable.
One of the main ideas behind both Jainism and Buddhism is reincarnation. Depending on a persons good or bad karma depends on the persons rebirth. I have always found this laughable, but admittedly never fully understood this. Therefore I studied the idea and its claims and then sought to disprove it, which I honestly thought would be easy. However it was not that simple.
I came upon a Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist who many years ago heard of stories of claimed reincarnation and hypothesised that these people had some previously unknown personality disorder. He sought to study what he assumed was a personality disorder. At some point he realized he could verify some of the things people were claiming in instances when there was no way they could have known these things about the person they had claimed to be. So he had to alter how he approached his study of these claims in order to make sure he was doing the research properly. Many years later and thousands of cases later he has documented numerous cases of claimed reincarnation. I have looked at as many of these cases as I could and was quite literally startled at the evidence I seen. Dr. Stevenson, however, does not leap to the conclusion that reincarnation is true, he states that there is enough evidence that science needs to take it seriously and study it more in depth than he has. (I do not have time to go into his case studies here, you can look up his published works)
The one thing I love about science is that it is universal, no matter where you go in the world science is the same. It is not like religion where depending on what country you are in depends on what the religious climate or beliefs are. What Dr. Stevenson showed is that these claims transcend that, much like science. I was expecting these claims to be confined to the Indian subcontinent, where most everyone believes in reincarnation. To my surprise he had cases from across the globe that all followed the same basic patterns. The U.S. being the only place where he found cases of people claiming to be reincarnated the opposite gender. It surprised me because of the fact that Americans, almost as a whole, reject reincarnation. Yet here we have cases that follow the same basic patterns as those from Africa, Europe, India, and elsewhere.
This research did not show humans in a past life being anything else but human, so there is no evidence that humans can be reincarnated as anything but human beings. That however could be explained as meaning that animals tend to not have the memory capacity that humans do, perhaps?
One of the main doctrines of Jainism is Ahimsa or non-violence. Now, this is not just not physical violence towards a human being, it is non-violence in thought, word, and action towards all living beings. It even extends further than that to mean living in a manner that is as minimal as possible. As a Jain monk once told me: "Human need is limited, but human desire is limitless." So while there are karmaic principals tied to Ahimsa in Jainism, even if we took that away, the principal itself is true with or without karma. Living in a manner that is in harmony with all beings is a good way to live. Taking care of all beings and the environment is a good way to live. If all people lived according to Ahimsa we would solve climate change in a matter of days. Therefore the doctrine of Ahimsa is truth.
Another Jain doctrine is Anikantivara(sp?) which means "non-one sidedness" or as I like to say "many sidedness". This means that to all things there are many sides. For instance if a friend and I are discussing how to solve a particular problem both of us perceive the problem differently for different reasons and are likely to come to different solutions. Both of these solutions could work, both may not work, but the point is there are many sides to the same issue. Even if we look at a table, sure, we can all probably agree that is a table but there are other sides to it that we cannot see. If we were able to look at the subatomic structure, we would all see something different and may draw many differing conclusions. If we went further and were able to see it from the quantum level, we may have even more vastly differing views about what we are seeing.
Even in religion it is the same principal. Jainism has often been tolerant of other religions, looking at other religions as just different ways to reach the same goal. However in Mahaviras time the religions that were surrounding him were all similar in the sense of the goal was to escape samsara. Jainists should not accept any religion based on violence or any religion who's main deity is a violent one, who has required animal sacrifice to appease his anger, has committed genocide, etc. That is where Jainists should draw a distinct line in the sand. Not only that, western religions do not even deal with suffering and how to escape it. They are fear based religions rooted in appeasing an angry god who will send you to torment if you do not listen to him and do as he says, even though he claims to love you.
While I agree there are some true statements and beautiful passages in western religious texts, the overall teachings are incorrect. Even from the Anikantivara perspective we can draw conclusions as such when the evidence is so clear. We cannot justify a violent and angry god who himself does not practice Ahimsa, but quite the opposite. Jainism teaches its adherents to open the mind and be receptive and not be dogmatic, while western religions do the exact opposite. This I find unacceptable.
So can Jainism be true? Yes it can be true indeed, there is enough evidence to support it being true but I leave this decision up to the reader.
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 even scientifically provable.
One of the main ideas behind both Jainism and Buddhism is reincarnation. Depending on a persons good or bad karma depends on the persons rebirth. I have always found this laughable, but admittedly never fully understood this. Therefore I studied the idea and its claims and then sought to disprove it, which I honestly thought would be easy. However it was not that simple.
I came upon a Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist who many years ago heard of stories of claimed reincarnation and hypothesised that these people had some previously unknown personality disorder. He sought to study what he assumed was a personality disorder. At some point he realized he could verify some of the things people were claiming in instances when there was no way they could have known these things about the person they had claimed to be. So he had to alter how he approached his study of these claims in order to make sure he was doing the research properly. Many years later and thousands of cases later he has documented numerous cases of claimed reincarnation. I have looked at as many of these cases as I could and was quite literally startled at the evidence I seen. Dr. Stevenson, however, does not leap to the conclusion that reincarnation is true, he states that there is enough evidence that science needs to take it seriously and study it more in depth than he has. (I do not have time to go into his case studies here, you can look up his published works)
The one thing I love about science is that it is universal, no matter where you go in the world science is the same. It is not like religion where depending on what country you are in depends on what the religious climate or beliefs are. What Dr. Stevenson showed is that these claims transcend that, much like science. I was expecting these claims to be confined to the Indian subcontinent, where most everyone believes in reincarnation. To my surprise he had cases from across the globe that all followed the same basic patterns. The U.S. being the only place where he found cases of people claiming to be reincarnated the opposite gender. It surprised me because of the fact that Americans, almost as a whole, reject reincarnation. Yet here we have cases that follow the same basic patterns as those from Africa, Europe, India, and elsewhere.
This research did not show humans in a past life being anything else but human, so there is no evidence that humans can be reincarnated as anything but human beings. That however could be explained as meaning that animals tend to not have the memory capacity that humans do, perhaps?
One of the main doctrines of Jainism is Ahimsa or non-violence. Now, this is not just not physical violence towards a human being, it is non-violence in thought, word, and action towards all living beings. It even extends further than that to mean living in a manner that is as minimal as possible. As a Jain monk once told me: "Human need is limited, but human desire is limitless." So while there are karmaic principals tied to Ahimsa in Jainism, even if we took that away, the principal itself is true with or without karma. Living in a manner that is in harmony with all beings is a good way to live. Taking care of all beings and the environment is a good way to live. If all people lived according to Ahimsa we would solve climate change in a matter of days. Therefore the doctrine of Ahimsa is truth.
Another Jain doctrine is Anikantivara(sp?) which means "non-one sidedness" or as I like to say "many sidedness". This means that to all things there are many sides. For instance if a friend and I are discussing how to solve a particular problem both of us perceive the problem differently for different reasons and are likely to come to different solutions. Both of these solutions could work, both may not work, but the point is there are many sides to the same issue. Even if we look at a table, sure, we can all probably agree that is a table but there are other sides to it that we cannot see. If we were able to look at the subatomic structure, we would all see something different and may draw many differing conclusions. If we went further and were able to see it from the quantum level, we may have even more vastly differing views about what we are seeing.
Even in religion it is the same principal. Jainism has often been tolerant of other religions, looking at other religions as just different ways to reach the same goal. However in Mahaviras time the religions that were surrounding him were all similar in the sense of the goal was to escape samsara. Jainists should not accept any religion based on violence or any religion who's main deity is a violent one, who has required animal sacrifice to appease his anger, has committed genocide, etc. That is where Jainists should draw a distinct line in the sand. Not only that, western religions do not even deal with suffering and how to escape it. They are fear based religions rooted in appeasing an angry god who will send you to torment if you do not listen to him and do as he says, even though he claims to love you.
While I agree there are some true statements and beautiful passages in western religious texts, the overall teachings are incorrect. Even from the Anikantivara perspective we can draw conclusions as such when the evidence is so clear. We cannot justify a violent and angry god who himself does not practice Ahimsa, but quite the opposite. Jainism teaches its adherents to open the mind and be receptive and not be dogmatic, while western religions do the exact opposite. This I find unacceptable.
So can Jainism be true? Yes it can be true indeed, there is enough evidence to support it being true but I leave this decision up to the reader.
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