 Reincarnation and Deliverance
Like many Eastern religions, Jainism uses the concepts of reincarnation and deliverance.
* Reincarnation
When a being dies the soul (jiva) goes to its next body instantly. This body may not be human or even animal.
The quality of its next life is determined by its karma at that time.
The mental state of the being at the moment of death is also important: a calm and contented death, with the mind focussed on spiritual matters is the best.
* Deliverance
A being achieves deliverance when it is free from all karma.
This is not the same thing as enlightenment. An enlightened being is free of all harmful karma, but still subject to the non-harmful karma. However an enlightened being cannot attract any harmful karma, and they cannot do anything bad. Such a being is called an arihant.
Despite being still human, an arihant has perfect knowledge, and happiness. All tirthankaras were arihants (but not vice versa). A tirthankara is an arihant who founds a religious community of monks and nuns (there was no organised laity in early Jainism).
An enlightened being does not achieve deliverance until all the non-harmful karma has expired. During this time it continues to be embodied and can live in the world
God
Jains do not believe in a God or gods in the way that many other religions do, but they do believe in divine (or at least perfect) beings who are worthy of devotion.
This makes it difficult to give a straight answer to the question "is Jainism atheistic?" The scholar Heinrich Zimmer suggested that a new word was needed - transtheistic - meaning "inaccessible by arguments as to whether or not a God exists".
Scripture
The texts containing the teachings of Mahavira are called the Agamas, and are the canonical literature - the scriptures - of Svetambara Jainism. Mahavira's disciples compiled his words into texts or sutras, and memorised them to pass on to future generations.
The texts had to be memorised since Jain monks and nuns were not allowed to possess religious books as part of their vow of non-acquisition, nor were they allowed to write.
Jain theology developed after Mahavira through the teachings of particularly learned monks - these teachings too, had to be memorised - and so the amount that the monks had to remember steadily increased
The Soul
Jain ideas about the soul differ from those of many other religions.
The Jain word that comes closest to 'soul' is jiva, which means a conscious, living being.
For Jains body and soul are different things: the body is just an inanimate container - the conscious being is the jiva.
After each bodily death, the jiva is reborn into a different body to live another life, until it achieves liberation.
Jains believe that:
- the soul exists
- the soul lives for ever
- each soul is always independent
- the soul is responsible for what it does
- the soul experiences the consequences of its actions
- the soul can become liberated from the cycle of birth and death - not all souls can be liberated - some souls are inherently incapable of achieving this.
- the soul can evolve towards that liberation by following principles of behaviour.
Karma
The Cosmic Scorecard
"The karma theory is the scorecard of life and your actions."
Karma is the mechanism that determines the quality of life. The happiness of a being's present life is the result of the moral quality of the actions of the being in its previous life.
A soul can only achieve liberation by getting rid of all the karma attached to it.
Karma is a logical and understandable way of making sense of good and evil, the different qualities of different lives and the different moral status of different types of creature, without having to involve rules laid down by a god.
Karma works without the intervention of any other being - gods or angels have no part to play in dispensing rewards or punishments.
Karma is a concept found in religions which include reincarnation in their beliefs. Different religions have different ideas as to exactly how karma operates.
The Jain idea of karma is much more elaborate and mechanistic than that found in some other Eastern
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