Earlier, when I was working abroad, once an Indian expert came to the school, because I had long learned that this person was a vegetarian, the principal's secretary specially gave a vegan "iftar meal".
Unexpectedly, when I ate, I actually made some embarrassment. Originally, among vegetarian foods, there were fried potatoes. And this potato, in the eyes of Indian experts, is not considered "vegetarian".
It was later made clear that this Indian vegetarian was a Jain.
Compared with Hinduism or Buddhism, Jainism has stricter requirements for vegetarianism - eating the roots of plants is also considered killing!
Let's start with a brief overview of the Hindu and Jain understanding of vegetarianism.
For Hinduism, which accounts for 83% of the country's total population, there were originally only tumor cattle belonging to the immortal family, which were explicitly forbidden to eat, and did not include other breeds of cattle and other animal products.
But why, to this day, are all Hindus proud of being vegetarians?
It turns out that in our impression of an active vegetarian diet, mostly from the concept of "not being able to kill", Indians have a natural discrimination against animal products, they believe that animal products are too filthy, in order to maintain the purity and nobility of the body, close the distance with God, you must stay away from meat.
That is to say, in their eyes, eating meat will pollute the body and mind, will be disgusted by God, and is the behavior of "inferior people".
Therefore, most of the people of the middle and high castes in India, in addition to the tumor beef, the rest of the animal products are not willing to touch, for fear of "tarnishing" their noble status.
Over time, a large number of low- and middle-caste Indians have begun to "spontaneously" reject animal products in order to pursue this "noble" mode of life, thus forming an atmosphere of almost all people eating vegetarian food in India.
Vegetarian burgers in India
From this point of view, under the circumstance that most of the people do not eat beef, india's operation of exporting beef in large quantities can be understood - I do not eat it because I am disgusted with "being polluted" and exporting it to foreigners to eat, which naturally has a psychological burden.
Unlike Hinduism, which is "dirty," Jainism's concept of vegetarianism is very close to Buddhism's —it can't bear to kill.
Jainism, which originated in Hinduism, has a complex theoretical system like Hinduism, but the requirements for believers are, on the face of it, more demanding.
It is precisely for this reason that Jainism, which was born in the 6th century BC and once stood on three legs with Hinduism and Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent, due to the invasion of Muslims and the gradual maturity of Hinduism, the strict doctrine and the poor mass base, has finally become a "minority" religion in India in modern times - at present, there are less than five million Jains in India, accounting for less than 0.4% of the total Population of India.
However, although the jain doctrine is strict, the groups that can persist in it, their beliefs, are basically unusually tenacious.
Inside a Jain temple
Jains worship the Twenty-Four Patriarchs, and if translated literally, can be called "crossers."
In terms of "practice," Jains are required to follow these five precepts throughout their lives: not to kill (ahiṃsā), not to be deceitful (satya), not to steal (asteya), not to commit adultery (brahmacharya), and not to be greedy for money (aparigraha).
These five, taken literally, are still a more positive idea.
Their worldview is exquisite: everything has "gods", whether it is humans, animals or plants, all have birth and death, unless they achieve complete liberation through hard "practice" and enter the "paradise world" to enjoy happiness, otherwise they will continue to be reincarnated. And if you enter the cycle of reincarnation, it is very likely that you will be rich and noble in your next life, or whether you will be a cow or a horse, or even a lowly insect ant— but on the whole, if you do more merit, your fate in the next life will not be very bad; otherwise, if you behave badly in this life and are not religious enough, you will be tragic.
This is very close to Hinduism and Buddhism.
However, with regard to the method of getting rid of the "uncertainty" of samsara and gaining liberation into the "world of Elysium", the operation difficulty of Jainism is more demanding.
It does not simply require believers to simply pray to God to worship the Buddha, to chant and meditate on time, but to pay attention to the practice of seemingly masochistic".
This is very close to Hinduism.
Everyone knows that in Hinduism, there is a magical existence, that is, "ascetics". Some of their "cultivation" methods often have obvious "masochistic" colors in our eyes, such as simple clothes (only around a piece of cloth), no bathing, no haircut, a simple vegetarian meal a day, regular hunger strikes for half a month, insisting on raising an arm for years or even decades, having a house to live in but sleeping under a cave or under a tree, and so on.
Hindu ascetic
The deep "practitioners" of Jainism, on the other hand, go a step further, not only abandoning all the pleasures and material lives that normal people pursue, but even the basic means of subsistence as much as possible—thus, most of the Jain idols are naked, and even the private parts of men are carved to life.
In the process of inheritance, Jainism is divided into two schools: the Tianyi school and the White Cloth school.
The most intuitive difference between the two depends on whether the male monks are wearing clothes, and whether there are nuns among the monks.
The "Tianyi School" emphasizes the practice of not wearing any clothes and returning to nature (this is called the "naked outer path").
However, such nude practice is limited to a small number of high-ranking monks, most of whom still have to wrap a piece of cloth around their bodies.
Jain monk
Moreover, the "Tianyi School" is not very friendly to women, believing that only by performing well and waiting for the rebirth of a man in the next life can a woman become a "liberator" who transcends samsara and enters the world of bliss. Therefore, among the monks of the "Tianyi Sect", there were only monks, not nuns.
Look at the "white-clothed faction", as the name suggests, you have to wear white clothes.
The "white-clad faction" pays more attention to gender equality, believing that women can also enter the world of Elysium through "asceticism" and become "liberators". So, this faction has nuns. Moreover, compared with the "Tianyi School", the "White Clothed School" is more flexible in its grasp of doctrine.
The nun of the "White-Clad Faction"
For a long time, the Tianyi sect was mainly active in South India, while the White-clothed sect mainly gathered on the northwest coast of India (in these areas, the temperature will still be relatively low during the dry season, naked, and indeed cold).
Okay, let's get back to the topic of "not eating potatoes".
Compared with Buddhism, the Jain doctrine of non-killing is more stringent, with great emphasis on "non-violence" and the equality of all beings (jain's anti-Hindu caste system), and this non-killing and equality includes people and people, between people and animals, and even between people and plants.
Therefore, its followers strictly prohibit the consumption of meat, even plants can only eat certain parts of specific species, and unspring grains, beans, and rapeseed are the best foods. At the same time, it is strictly forbidden to eat rhizomes - the rhizomes of such plants contain a large number of microorganisms, which is "killing"; and when such plants are uprooted, they will also affect the surrounding plants and insects.
Obviously, potatoes, radishes, lotus roots, ginger, etc., Jain believers, are not edible.
In addition, eating fruit should also be divided into varieties. For example, tomato pomegranates with too many seeds cannot be eaten.
Therefore, the Jain "vegetarian diet" is much stricter than the Hindu vegetarian diet. For example, Prime Minister Modi, who adheres to the Indian vegetarian philosophy in order to maintain his "spiritual" state, simply does not eat meat, but eggs are still eaten occasionally; in the Jain community, eggs are forbidden to touch.
However, they are allowed to drink milk – perhaps this is almost their only source of animal protein.
In daily life, some devout believers also wear masks in specific areas to prevent accidental eating of insects (pictured below).
Bound by the "do not kill" precept, Jains are largely non-agricultural producers—doing farm work inevitably hurts insects.
Therefore, most Jains are engaged in industry and commerce. Through business, they have accumulated a lot of wealth from their ancestors and have a relatively high level of education. According to India's 2016 Economic Survey, more than 70 percent of Jains in the sample have incomes in the top 20 percent of the national level, significantly ahead of other religious groups. In the same year, the literacy rate of Jains was 94.9 percent, well above the Indian average.
Moreover, unlike ordinary rich people, the jain rich people are very low-key, and there is no common local tycoon style. For, in their doctrine, wealth that exceeds the needs of daily life should be regarded as social wealth that is kept by oneself, not to be squandered at will, and waste is also seen as a shameful act that has been rejected by God.
Therefore, the rich people of Jainism are very willing to engage in charity, enthusiastic about building and running schools, hospitals, shelters, hotels, orphanages, aid stations, animal shelters, and so on.
Obviously, these activities of "doing good" are very helpful to their "perfection of merit."
However, if you want to get rid of the problem of samsara and gain liberation into the "world of Elysium", you still have to be "cruel" to yourself.
This is jainism's most criticized custom, the "Salekhana" ritual.
In jain doctrine, the world is eternal, space-time is infinite, and there are only formal changes. And all matter contains two kinds of factors, namely material factors and spiritual factors. That is to say, the union of the soul and the body is arbitrary and unprovoked, and the human body is an obstacle that obscures the original brilliance of the soul and binds the soul.
Then, if you want to attain spiritual eternity, you must take the initiative to give up your skin, so that your soul can smoothly get rid of the body and cut off the karma.
According to this philosophy, some Jains not only refuse any medical treatment in their old age, but also gradually reduce their intake of food and water until their bodies collapse and eventually die.
In general, the process tends to be lengthy, even years long. Of course, Jainism traditionally believes that this is not called "hunger strike suicide", but a rather noble and sacred act - only by actively "giving up" one's decaying skin bag can the soul finally gain eternal life and enter the world of Elysium.
A scene of a "Salekhana" ceremony
For "Sarekhana", during the Mughal period in the early Mughal Dynasty, it was forbidden for Indians to practice this ritual at will.
Because the rulers of the Mughal Dynasty were all Muslims from the north.
According to Islamic teachings, suicide is a taboo and a crime of blasphemy.
In the later British colonial era, as well as the current Indian government, various restrictions were imposed on "Sarekhana". At present, except for some temples in South India that are regarded as "holy places" that occasionally circulate one or two "saints" who perform "Salaekhana" rituals (all of whom have a formal hospital diagnosis certificate and are no longer cured, otherwise they will not be approved), this kind of "hunger strike" among ordinary Jain believers is quite rare.
To be honest, although the teachings of Jainism are very strict, and even some aspects seem to be quite extreme, they are only strict with themselves, and they do not use the same standards for others, so that everyone around them unconditionally accommodates themselves.
Therefore, in general, Jains are often not disgusted and are very well connected. For example, the Indian expert mentioned at the beginning, when he found potatoes with a "killing" nature, did not angrily say that he was offended, but calmly explained this special belief, and then ate other acceptable "vegetarian food" in the order besides potatoes.