The Wisdom of Jainism

I am increasingly becoming an admirer of Jainism. This religion/philosophy is at once ancient and modern, the exact prescription for what ails us, in my opinion. As with mainstream Hindu beliefs, the core principle is nonviolence. The aspect of this tenet that interests me most with respect to plants relates to diet. As I described briefly before, the main value lies in eliminating harm, so one may eat a part of a plant (a fruit, say) but not the whole thing (for example, a carrot), because doing the latter would entail killing the entire plant, an outcome that is not a consequence of the preceding scenario. Uprooting a plant would also harm animals clustered around its roots or lodged in its leaves and stems, so there is an ecological aspect to the practice as well. By similar logic, one cannot drink wine or beer, or any fermented thing, because to do so would require killing the beings that live in the product, those that are responsible for the fermentation. Even water is filtered, to remove any little creatures resident therein. Traditionally, one drew water from a well, filtered it through a cloth, and then rinsed the cloth with some of the filtered water back into the well, so as to return the creatures to their original home. Needless to say I find Jainism to be enormously appealing, not only for its direct effects but also for the mindfulness that such careful daily practice must cultivate.

I suppose I could argue that the bacteria in the yoghurt I eat would just reestablish themselves elsewhere in either the ecology of my body or that of a larger scale environment. Or, I could take what I believe is a Buddhist approach, and view life as an energy that is resident in a being and therefore, like all energy, capable of being neither created nor destroyed, rather just temporarily present. But from an ontological perspective, this latter view does not rest easy with me. Where life is instantiated in a being, it is the being that matters, not the life: the particular form takes precedence over the abstracted essence, in other words. I find that this approach is much more conducive to mindfulness, as it would lead one to understand that one is eating this onion, this fish, this cow (God forbid), rather than an onion, a fish, a cow. General principles are fine, but I think it is safer to pay attention to what lies immediately in front of you.