(a)

My understanding of Jainism began with Mr. Larry's sudden ordination. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

The suddenness is just a suddenness for us and other spectators, and for Mr. Larry himself, this moment has been a long time coming, and it is a matter of course.

After reading some of the Jain texts, I found that there are many things about this religion that fascinate me deeply. Moreover, like Hinduism and Buddhism, it has a place where they are connected by blood, and that kinship is clear at a glance.

Jainism is a very small religion relative to Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, and even Sikhism. It survives and multiplies in the cracks of these many religions, and in the collision and integration with the above religions, it has formed and maintained its own complete doctrinal system and development history.

Although Jainism also originated in India, it was not developed on the basis of the Vedas. The number of people who believe in it is small, but it also has a long history like Hinduism.

I have never figured out when Jainism began, only that it predates the beginning of Buddhism.

In Jain legend, its founder is named Rashpa. Judging from the statue, he is always naked, wearing nothing, standing or sitting, always immersed in deep meditation.

Rashpa's secular origin was supposed to be that of a nobleman or a king, because legend has it that he gave birth to 101 sons, which a poor man of a humble position could not afford.

Later, Lashpa was deified or completed the process of transcendent sanctification and became the god Lashpa.

When Rashpa grew older, he divided his territory among his sons, the largest of which was given to his eldest son, Bahara.

But Bahara was ambitious, and he wanted his other brothers to obey him and annex their territories.

All the brothers succumbed to his dominance, and only one half-brother named Bahu Bali refused to obey.

So, the armies of both sides fought a decisive battle in the field.

The war unnerved the sages of both camps. The sages of both sides believed that it was only a personal dispute between the two brothers, and that there was no reason to sacrifice thousands of innocent lives for it.

So, they decided to refuse the war and let the two brothers themselves go into battle and duel for three rounds to determine who was the ruler and who was the obedient.

Bahu Bali won back-to-back battles, and in the end, with his height and strength, he grabbed his brother and raised him above his head, ready to throw him to the ground.

And at that moment, a thought flashed through his heart: "What am I doing here?" Am I going to kill my own brother now for the sake of a small piece of land? So he hesitated. He put Bahara back on the ground.

At the same time that Bahara is being laid, Bahu Bali is also letting go of the whole world. He canceled his war plans and spent his days standing and meditating.

For 12 years, he was in meditation. Vines climbed up his legs, snakes entrenched on him, and birds nested in his hair. He always stood and was not shaken.

People thought he was crazy and tried to break his meditation, but he remained motionless.

However, he seems to be trapped by something and is unable to achieve ultimate free liberation from meditation.

So, the worried people went to Rashpa, the patriarch of Jainism, and asked why his son had fallen into meditation and could not find liberation for so long.

Rashpa said, "Because before my son started meditating, what he thought in his heart was: I am standing on my brother's land." He is still differentiating between you and me, and he has not yet fully understood. This idea of separation hindered his enlightenment.

The eldest son, Bahara, followed his father's instructions to pray for his younger brother. He came to his brother who was standing still, and said to him, "Bahu Bali, my brother, all land is shared by billions of living beings, and it is the land of the universe. It was never anyone's, it wasn't yours, and it wasn't mine. To think that you possess the earth is just a vain fantasy. ”

When these words reached Bahu Bali's heart, he suddenly let go of the idea of separation and suddenly realized that the door to ultimate freedom was opened.

(c)

After the founding of Lashpa, Jainism has been passed down for a long time, with a total of 24 generations of religious leaders. They are called "patriarchs" by their followers, and each of the leaders who are called "patriarchs" continue to carry forward their teachings.

The 19th ancestor was a woman.

The 22nd patriarch is said to be the cousin of the Hindu god Krishna. This cousin loves animals. Legend has it that he was planning his wedding, and when he heard that a large number of animals were going to be slaughtered because of the wedding, he couldn't stand the wailing of the animals, so he decided to cancel the wedding and began a life of asceticism, and his fiancée became a spiritual nun.

The 23rd patriarch was a prince in whose hands the teachings of Jainism gradually became complete and systematic.

The 24th patriarch and Shakyamuni were contemporaries named Mahavira. He was also a prince of a Kshatriya tribe, and like the Buddha, at the age of 30, he also gave up his princehood and wealth to become a spiritual seeker and began a life of asceticism.

He practiced for 12 years without speaking. He was naked and on a strict diet, both cold and hot, and he always went into meditation for long periods of time. Once, the villagers saw him sitting there meditating for a long time and thought it was weird. They managed to bomb him away. They plucked out his hair, cut his flesh with knives, and threw filth on him. They lifted him up and threw him down again. But because Mahavira had lost any attention to the flesh and had gained freedom from desire, he could no longer feel the pain of the flesh.

He eventually attained enlightenment and began to spread his ideas throughout the Pawa region.

In Mahawera's time, for the first time, a large-scale Jain Sangha was formed, with a size of more than 100,000 people and a population of all castes, as Jainism did not recognize that there was a distinction between sentient beings.

After his death, the teachings he taught were never written down and were passed down orally through generations of monks.

(iv)

Around 300 BC, there was a schism among the Jains.

One faction adhered to the ascetic and non-written traditions of Mahavira, while the other began to move in the direction of modern religious organization. The latter faction compiled 45 Jain scriptures and formed a Council of Elders to administer religious affairs.

There are also many differences between the two in terms of practice methods, the most striking of which is that the more traditional sect insists on using the sky as clothing, the monks are naked, and basically does not accept women as monks, which is called the "empty clothes faction", which is the sect that Mr. Larry believes; The latter, more modern faction, which believed that wearing a white garment did not hinder their freedom, also accepted women as monks, and was called the "white clique".

The White Cloth later developed a significant number of nuns, accounting for more than 99% of the number of professional female Jain monks. Many of these nuns come from well-to-do families, many of whom hold doctoral and master's degrees, and some of them are lawyers or teachers before becoming monks. This is a very special phenomenon in Indian religion.

In fact, many Jain families are highly accomplished families. These homes, like Jain temples, are extremely clean.