Naturism & Religion: An interesting perspective from India

[beachpuppy]

The Jains: Keeping Your Mind Clear by Keeping Your Body Free


   Jains comprise one-third of one percent of the people of India.  Yet they have remained truer to their original principles than any other religion on earth.  They carry an economic clout out of all proportion to their numbers, and their teaching of non-violence has spread around the globe.  How have they done it?

   Jains believe in no gods.  You must work out your own life; no magical creature sitting on a cloud is going to help you.  But there are worthy examples you can follow.  Jains look to a series of 24 Tirthankaras, or moral guides, stretching far into prehistoric times.  Parsva, the twenty-third Tirthankara, lived in the eighth or ninth century BCE, and taught total non-violence.  Mahavira, the last Tirthankara, lived in 500 BCE, and knew the Buddha.  For several years, Mahavira taught in partnership with Gosala, who later founded yet another religion: the Ajivikas.

   Gosala advocated total nudity for holy men, and Mahavira likewise preached nude.  Jains call this important practice Nirgrantha, or freedom from bonds.  Jain thinkers have elaborated on four aspects of this freedom:

1.  Freedom from mental dependance, or doubts.
2.  Freedom from desire for worldly comforts.
3.  Freedom from aversion for the body, or excessive attention to it.
4.  Freedom from inclinations to harm other living things.

   Yet to accommodate the clothed remnant of Parsva's following, Mahavira allowed Jain monks to be clothing-optional.  Eventually, the Jains split into two main branches: the Shvetambara or "white-clad" monks, and the Digambara or "sky-clad" naked ascetics.  Today, about 40% of Jains belong to the naked branch.  (Of the few Jains who have emigrated to the Western hemisphere, an estimated 90% belong to the clothed tradition.)

   Besides non-violence and naked asceticism, Mahavira taught that our own idea of truth is not universal; each person has a different idea of truth.  Jain teachers like to tell the story of The Blind Men and the Elephant (here set to English verse by John G. Saxe):

It was six men of Indostan,
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant,
(Though all of them were blind,)
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind,

The first approached the elephant,
   And, happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
   At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the elephant
   Is very like a wall!"

The second, feeling of the tusk,
   Cried: "Ho! what have we here,
So very round, and smooth, and sharp?
   To me 'tis very clear,
This wonder of an elephant
   is very like a spear!"

The third approached the animal,
And, happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up he spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the elephant
Is very like a snake!"

The fourth reached out his eager hand,
And fell about the knee:
"What most this wondrous beast is like,
   Is very plain," quoth he;
"'Tis clear enough the elephant
   Is very like a tree!"

The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
   Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most:
   Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant
   Is very like a fan!"

The sixth no sooner had begun
   About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
   That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the elephant
   Is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan
   Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
   Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

   Sañjaya, another contemporary of Mahavira and the Buddha, also taught tolerance of other viewpoints.  He insisted that every question has four possible answers: yes, no, both, or neither.  Sañjaya founded the Gymnosophists.  After the Gymnosophists went extinct and no longer posed a threat, Jain scholars adopted Sañjaya's thought, and elaborated it into a rather contrived seven points:

1.  Maybe the answer is yes.
2.  Maybe the answer is no.
3.  Maybe the answer is both at different times, or change.
4.  Maybe the answer is both at the same time, or contradiction.
5.  Maybe the answer is 1 and 4, or conditional affirmation.
6.  Maybe the answer is 2 and 4, or conditional denial.
7.  Maybe the answer is 3 and 4, or conditional change.

These two teachings on tolerance by Mahavira and Sañjaya combine to form the Jain Doctrine of Manysidedness.

   Most Jains extend their belief in non-violence to all living creatures.  The naked monks own just three possessions: a water jug for their travels from village to village, a feather duster so they don't accidentally hurt an insect by sitting on it, and books.  In contrast, monks of the clothed Sthanakavasi sub-sect sweep the street in front of them and even go so far as to wear masks, lest they accidentally breathe in an insect and harm it.  (Why do religious extremists need more clothes than other people?)

   Non-violence rules out many professions such as becoming a farmer (who must uproot weeds, and accidentally slice through worms).  As a result, Jains have become the scholars of India, and now the leading businesspeople.  Wealthy Jains often figure out how much money they need to live simply, and donate all of their earnings above that to charity.  Respecting the sacredness of all life, they sponsor many free veterinary clinics.

   Jains led all of India's other religions into vegetarianism.  Ancient scriptures refer to four kinds of necessary nourishment:
    food and drink taken through the mouth,
    clean air for the lungs,
    sunshine absorbed by the naked skin,
    thoughts for the mind.
Mahavira eventually came to realize the hypocrisy of vegetarianism, for plants are living creatures too.  So he starved himself to death.  Self-starvation is still considered an honorable way for elderly Jains to go.  Jains take their religion very seriously.

   Gandhi learned non-violence from a Shvetambara Jain teacher.  Martin Luther King learned it from Gandhi.  The idea has spread around the world to such unlikely places as the Philippines, where a housewife named Corazon Aquino toppled a dictator by adopting the yellow ribbon as a symbol of non-violent protest against the government.  (Within a few years, some Americans got it all wrong, and began using that same symbol of non-violence to show their support for war.  We still have much to learn.)

   The most famous Jain was Chandragupta Maurya who, in 323 BCE, hung around the camp of the invading Alexander the Great.  Learning his lesson well, Chandragupta soon united India into an empire for the first time.  But the cares and risks of power weighed heavily on his mind.  He finally passed the kingdom on to his son, and became a naked Jain monk.  He accompanied a group of Jains to Shravana Belgola in south India, where he starved himself to death on a hill still venerated as sacred ground.

   But the Greek connection doesn't end there.  Nude temple sculptures at first followed Greek proportions.  Greek sculptors in Asia also tended to emphasize a ridge of muscle following the bottom of the rib cage—a feature clearly visible on two of three seated Tirthankaras found at Durjanpur.  Unlike Hindu and Buddhist statues, Jain sculptures often show careful attention to the modeling of the back—even if no one will see it.  Because they had no other examples of the male nude except old Jain statues, sculptors revived these same elements several times over the centuries.

[Durjanpur]

   Hindus and Buddhists rarely put a date on anything, but the Jains had a stronger sense of history.  The Durjanpur Tirthankaras are inscribed with a date equivalent to 375 CE.  Moreover, the great Jain libraries preserved not only Jain philosophy and paintings, but also the classics of Sanskrit drama and literature.  Some three million manuscripts await translation into modern languages.  Knowledge Fifth (January 5) is a holy day when Jains inspect the books and worship pure knowledge.

[Orissa]

   An undated sculpture of about the twelfth century presents Rishabha and Mahavira, the first and last Tirthankaras.  Jain iconography called for long earlobes (just like Buddhist statues) and fingers that reached to the knees.  Because the resulting figures all tend to look alike, each is identified by his symbol on the statue base—in this case a bull and a lion.  Mahavira's iconography is similar to that of the Buddha, often including snail-shell curls and a bump of knowledge to contain his superior intellect.  Rishabha can usually be spotted by his long hair, though it is here piled high on his head.

   A favorite folk hero in south India is Rishabha's son Bahubali, who gave away his kingdom to his brother, and stood meditating so long that vines grew up around his legs and arms.  Two sculptural traditions developed.  A gigantic free-standing figure (also known as Gommateshvara) was carved from a hilltop at Shravana Belgola.  (For an illustration, see chapter 68.  For fuller details of the Bahubali legend, see chapter 14.)  Other colossal carvings have been erected over the centuries—the most recent at Dharmasthala in 1973.  There, I was privileged to spend a day with the naked monks who, every morning, walk through the village, bathe, and pay their respects by the ancient practice of walking clockwise three times around the statue.  Then they sit and meditate on the example of Bahubali.

[Ellora]

   The other sculptural tradition showed the long-haired figure in relief, accompanied by his brother and two sisters.  And here we encounter the problem of creeping conventionalism.  Conventional moralists say that Bahubali's self-centered pride kept him from reaching complete bliss—that his sisters entreated him to give his brother the very ground he stood on, so he could forsake everything physical and reach complete spirituality.  Jain leaders have had to insist that, on the contrary, pride in oneself is the beginning of self-understanding and all understanding; Bahubali had to give up the ground beneath his feet because even that connection to the world was distracting him from concentration on the self.

   Jain teachers tell another story of a disciple who figured out that his teacher's great spiritual power came from meditation.  So he asked his teacher, "What do you meditate on?"

   "I meditate on God."

   The young man went off and meditated on God.  Then a thought occurred to him.  He went back to his teacher and asked, "What does God meditate on?"

   "God meditates on himself."
   So the young man went off, meditated on himself, and became God.

   This, of course, is playing with words—where "God" means self-fulfilment or human potential.  By the 800s, devotional Hinduism was sweeping across India.  Hinduism absorbed the Buddha as just one more incarnation of Vishnu, and Buddhism disappeared from the land of its birth.  Many Jain laypeople wanted to join the new fashion of worshiping gods.  Unable to totally resist this popular demand, Jain leaders conceded people could have their gods if they wanted the useless things.  Gods are about as effective as leprechauns.  But people must remember that only humans can grow in their understanding.  If the gods want to experience that, they must be reborn as humans.

   Unlike the Buddhist monks and nuns, Jains developed a set of lesser vows that their lay supporters could adopt.  Only Digambara monks walk about nude (though there have been sparsely documented reports over the centuries of groups of monks or nuns who undressed only at mealtimes).  A lay person can briefly experience the ascetic life by stripping off all clothing in the privacy of his or her own home, and meditating for up to 48 minutes.

   Also in the 800s, the philosopher Jinasena developed a strategy for surviving as a minority:  Jains should outwardly conform to the dominant culture.  They should celebrate their holy days on the great Hindu holidays—but for quite different reasons.  For instance, each October the Hindus observe Diwali, or the Feast of Lights, to celebrate Rama's triumphal return from exile.  Jains also observe Diwali, but in commemoration of Mahavira's victory of the spirit through self-starvation.  Thus, by neither outwardly clashing nor forgetting their own tradition, the Jains have endured.

[Ajita]

   The Digambaras flourished in south India.  The clothed Shvetambaras concentrated in the area north of Bombay.  Some Shvetambaras claim that all but the first and last Tirthankaras wore colored clothes.  "Naked," they say, means that those two wore white clothing.  Consider a 1062 Shvetambara statue of Ajita, the second Tirthankara.  He wears a sheer skirt from waist to shin.  As in Buddhist and Hindu styles, the cloth is visible only where it bunches under the penis and zig-zags down to the hemline.  To the irreverent, it looks like a very long corkscrew penis.  This is a clear case of a clothed figure appearing sexier than a nude one.

[Malli]

   Both major branches of Jainism are in a state of denial concerning Malli, the nineteenth Tirthankara.  Digambaras insist that Malli was a naked man; Shvetambaras insist she was a clothed woman.  Yet a headless meditating nude female figure from about 1000 survives.  (Some pious soul has scratched out Malli's jar symbol at the base.)  This image may belong to a now-extinct compromise group, the Yapaniyas, who tried to combine the Shvetambara scriptures with Digambara nudity.  The Yapaniyas, alone, sponsored naked nuns.

   Though nuns far outnumber monks in the clothed sects, the more traditional Digambaras feel nervous about sacred nudity for women.  Some state that a naked woman could never concentrate on meditation for fear of rape.  Others of¬fer an interesting three-step argument: (1) Because of her menstrual periods, a woman must at some times depend on cloth; (2) The use of clothing cannot help but be associated with shame; (3) Shame has no part in the makeup of an enlightened person.  Still others say it is OK for an old woman to be publicly nude while she starves herself to death.

[Sittannavasal]
[Mt. Abu]

   Yes, sexist attitudes prevail.  Like Hindus and Buddhists, clothed Jain leaders are happy enough to gaze on images of naked apsaras, or heavenly female attendants.  We see a dancing apsara in a Digambara painting of about 600, and a stone flute-playing maiden from a Shvetambara temple of about 1150.  Yet the Jains have been very resistant to Tantra, or sacred sex.

[released spirit]

   Using the nude body to depict a state of spiritual other-worldliness has always been difficult.  That's why Jains have followed the iconographic rules scrupulously.  There is an interesting twentieth-century painting in the temple at Sarnath of a group of naked monks floating slightly above the grass, with little flames shooting around their ankles.  But surely the most ingenious solution has been the metal Icons of the Released Spirit.  The viewer looks right through the cut-out figure.  The body has evaporated into spirituality, and only the gross material remains around it.  This particular example is a rare case of Tantric influence, with the center of understanding neatly circled.

   Jains practice one of the world's oldest living religions.  Relying on nothing but their own efforts and the good example of those who have gone before, naked Jain monks continue to walk the back roads and streets of India, spreading their timeless message of non-violence, tolerance for other viewpoints, and simple living.

[NatureForever]

That was a good way to refresh my memory. Very nice article!

[Northman]

 

[Gman707]

Gotta love jainism. It had a huge effect on the development of daoism in asia. Many of the greatest thinkiers in china followed jainism based systems. 

[rajnature]

very good article about jainism....it refresh and gives lots of insights about Jainism.....i met couple of ''Digambar'' Jains... really they inspired  us how to follow the naturism