Ana Bajželj (University of California, Riverside)
Jain Conceptions of Carelessness (Pramāda)
The notion of pramāda, commonly translated as carelessness, negligence, or stupor, appears already in Jain canonical sources as a type of disposition that influences actions. It is divided into several kinds and is variously linked with other dispositions, such as passions (kaṣāya). Most commonly found in relation to Jain theories of action and conduct, pramāda features in multiple configurations, each carrying its own contextual nuance. These range from pramāda being understood as a key factor in identifying a violent act (hiṃsā) and as a source of misconduct to its being defined as a cause of karmic influx (āsrava) and suffering (duḥkha). This paper traces the conceptions of pramāda in Jain doctrinal history and explores how its varied contextual usages bring different aspects of the term into view. It also situates the term within the broader South Asian religious milieu and investigates which of its articulations may be regarded as distinctly Jain.
Mikaela Chase (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
“One Eye Crying, One Eye Happy:” Martial Metaphors, Voice, and the Distribution of Mourning Santhāra
This paper examines how families navigate the complex emotional terrain following a mother's or grandmother's death by santhāra, the Jain practice of fasting unto death. While santhāra is celebrated as an exceptional spiritual accomplishment requiring the detachment and dispassion central to Jain ethics, family members simultaneously experience profound personal grief and loss. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with contemporary Gujarati Jain families in Mumbai, I analyze what I call "santhāra narratives," an emergent genre of intimate speech through which families recall these deaths. Martial metaphors drawn from classical Jain ascetic literature become vehicles for expressing and sublimating this ambivalence, and their articulation reveals aged and gendered distribution of grief and mourning within families. The warrior-in-battle metaphor, deeply embedded across centuries of Jain texts, is mobilized in contemporary narratives to reconcile feelings of pride and veneration with intense personal sorrow. When sons compare their mothers' sacrifice to soldiers dying at the Indian border, they draw on a masculine register of emotion that transforms individual loss into collective pride for the Jain tradition. Yet this metaphorical framework reveals its limits in women's voices, where embodied grief and visceral connection to maternal dying bodies gesture toward a different inheritance of santhāra's possibility. Since contemporary santhāras are predominantly undertaken by Shvetambar laywomen who are mothers and grandmothers, the practice emerges as fundamentally collaborative, requiring extensive affective labor to ethically secure these deaths as morally recognizable. The chapter demonstrates how sons and daughters, daughters-in-law and granddaughters carry different streams of affective continuity, revealing that while cultural scripts from doctrine for narrating ideal deaths remain available and vital to lay Jains in contemporary contexts, they also point to varied subjective stakes and embodied experiences of loss across gendered positions within kinship structures.
Gregory Clines (Trinity University)
Narrative and Doctrine: The Visceral Work of Karma in Raviṣeṇa’s Padmapurāṇa
This paper examines doctrinal karmic references incorporated into Jain-authored Sanskrit narrative, specifically the author Raviṣeṇa’s 7th-century Padmapurāṇa (‘The Deeds of Padma’). Looking primarily at dialogues embedded within the narrative, I argue that explicit karmic references in the Padmapurāṇa serve as starting points for engendering affective responses of exhaustion and aversion in the reader. These responses further contribute to the overall project of the text, to motivate the reader to renounce the world and enter mendicancy. This insight nuances the traditional understanding of doctrinal incorporation in Jain narrative literature, which has focused on narrative as a way of educating the reader about specifics of doctrine.
John Cort (Denison University, emeritus)
“‘Hail Hail Joy, Hail Hail Fortune’”: Reflections on Equanimity and Celebration in Jain Mendicant Funerary Practices
The attainment of equanimity and the overcoming of the binary of attraction and dislike is central to Jain mendicant practice, and in many ritual contexts it is emphasized for laypeople as well. At the same time, there is much in Jainism to be celebrated, and Jains are encouraged to joyously celebrate with great enthusiasm: the life and teachings of the Jinas, the lives and teachings of exemplary mendicants, and the lives of leading laypeople. In this paper I look on the basis of fieldwork and prior scholarship at how both equanimity and celebration are ritually embodied in the funerals of Śvetāmbar Mūrtipūjak mendicants. Fieldwork shows us that in a mendicant funeral these two are intermixed with a third emotional field, that of grief and sadness at the loss of the beloved and trusted guru. We thus come away from the analysis with an understanding that the interplay of emotions in Jain life is more nuanced and complex than textual sources alone would lead us to believe.
Tillo Detige (Rutgers University)
Reading Digambara pūjās: Emotions, Equanimity, and Bliss
The textual compositions used in Jain eightfold pūjās can be seen as constituting condensed manuals of Jainism, weaving together doctrinal, soteriological, philosophical, ethical, devotional, and historical contents. They follow a standardised template, often use numerical mnemonic techniques, and through recurrent, extended metaphors map core soteriological ideas onto the household objects (water, lamps, flowers, fruits, etc.) handled during the ritual. Jain pūjās are performed in a vibrant devotional context, typically in the sacred space of the temple and in front of jina icons. On festivals and special occasions, they are performed communally, on other days individually or by small groups of family members, yet still in view of other members of the temple community. These spatial and social settings, arguably, deepen the assimilation of textual contents. Pūjā, then, is one the main formats through which icon-venerating Jains recite, memorise, and come to embody core aspects of their tradition. While this qualifies as prime sources also for the study of Jainism, Jain pūjā rituals and especially their textual compositions remain largely unexplored by scholarship.
This paper seeks to analyse specifically the treatment of emotions and equanimity in Digambara pūjās, and the relationship they promote between both. I draw from a reading of pūjās in Hindi, Brajbhasha, and Sanskrit, compositions performed on a daily basis across northern India and in the diaspora, as well as new texts constituting more of a purely literary, eulogistic genre, often in veneration of contemporary Digambara renouncers. Both scholarship and Jain self-representations often continue to characterise Jainism as uniquely valuing the soteriological importance of detachment (vairāgya), renunciation (tyāga), control (saṃyama), and equipoise (samatā, samatvā). Yet, while pūjās do regularly remind practitioners of the importance of equanimity, the texts and the vibrant ritual performances in which they are recited often enough also bubble with emotion. Pūjā compositions voice a wide range of emotions, including hope, aspiration, and desire, supplication, admiration, and support (anumodana), as well as, often conspicuously present, joy, elation, and bliss. I argue that the Jain experience consists of the cultivation of both equanimity and intensely felt, lived emotions. During the staged, social performance of pūjā, emotions are ‘contagious’, passed on and multiplied between participants who reflect on equanimity while seeking heightened emotional states, and bliss.
Whitney Kelting (Northeastern University)
Protecting the Cash Drawer, Blessing the Account Books: Masculinity, Money Rituals, and Middle-Class Anxiety
While centering the money rituals of Gujarati Svetambar Jain laymen, this talk will examine ritual these men use to navigate the anxiety of balancing between traditional social structures that serve as safety nets while providing clear pathways to economic security and the demands of neoliberal economic structures that demand risk and individualism. In interviews, Jain laymen expressed the ways these rituals provide support of them as providers for their families. Rituals associated with currency, shops and accounts provide a site for appeasing the often unpredictable forces of the liberalized market and changing social formations.
Rahul Parson (University of California, Berkeley)
Rebels and Renunciants: Jain Emotional Strategies in Contemporary Hindi Novels
In modern literary studies, as in Jain studies, there has been limited research exploring contemporary literary expression by Jain writers and works with Jain characters. Sometimes what is Jain in this writing is quite subtle and reflects Jain mutability within a larger Indian public. This article focuses on Sej par Saṃskṛt (2010) and Kulbhūṣaṇ kā nām darj kījie (2020), Hindi novels by Madhu Kankaria and Alka Saraogi, respectively. These writers make contemporary Jains a “knowable community” in ways other writers could not, and particularly regarding religious practice and initiation, women, and nonconformists in the community. I argue that Jain social, philosophical and epistemological discourses shape the literary imaginaries in these works, emboldening a highly pluralistic consciousness in these novels that include the perspectives of religious minorities, revolutionaries and renunciants. These novels emphasize the social and emotional pressure of the Jain family and community on the individual, but also the way the individual can access Jain resources to navigate their personal predicaments.
Samani Pratibha Pragya (Florida International University)
Emotion of the Motionless: Exploring Ekendriya Jīvas of Jain Metaphysis
According to Jainism, one-sensed beings (ekendriyajīva) are the simplest forms of life possessing only the sense of touch (sparśa), their awareness is extremely limited and consequently devoid of conscious decision-making. These souls include earth-bodied, water-bodied, fire-bodied, air-bodied beings, and plants. A question arises: Do ekendrīyajīvas experience emotion? Generally, the mind is essential for emotional cognition. It is argued that a lack of sensory and mental faculty development did not stop the emotion of silent sentience. On the basis of Ācārāṅga-sūtra, Sūtrakṛtāṅga-sūtra, and Bhagavatī-sūtra it is proved that emotive potential is not restricted due to sensory limitation. Jain metaphysics presents examples of the emotion of pain and pleasure in non-mobile life forms (sthāvara-jīva) creating a paradox “Emotion of the Motionless.” In addition, this paper explores even without emotional response how and why ekendrīya-jīva accumulate (bandha) and annihilate (nirjarā) the past karma. Finally, it offers a rethinking of emotion beyond the anthropocentric framework by posing a Jain lens that accepts ekendrīyajīva carriers of consciousness which leads them on the long path to spiritual progress.
Nandita Punj (Arizona State University)
Tales and Tellings: The Immersive Experience of the Shalibhadra Chaupai
Sumptuously painted manuscripts of the Shalibhadra Chaupai, a Jain narrative tale on the benefits of almsgiving, make a compelling appearance in the visual culture of 18th century western India. Through a variety of colors, gestures and scene settings, these paintings take us through many layers of emotions experienced by the protagonists, ultimately guided by devotion towards the Jina and the path he teaches. The audience participates not simply as viewers of these brightly painted scenes of Shalibhadra’s life that ultimately journey towards him giving up worldly attachment, but also as participants echoing emotionally charged responses in the chorus accompanying recitations of the tale. The experience of viewing, listening, feeling, and sharing Shalibhadra’s journey is thus an immersive one, and that too in a religious setting meant to ultimately entice and inspire the audience to emulate Shalibhadra’s path, first towards riches and then towards renunciation. Through a study of the Shalibhadra painted narrative supplemented by examples from a few contemporaneous popular painted tales, this paper will query issues of reception and circulation of such materials, the emotions the artists sought to invoke, and the immersive experience created by the performance and recitation of such tales.
Aleksandra (Sasha) Restifo (Florida International University)
Pleasure and Pain: Reading the Kasāya-pāhuḍa and Its Commentaries
One of the texts devoted to the understanding of the workings of passions and emotions (kaṣāyas and nokaṣāyas) in the Digambara Jain tradition is the Kasāya-pāhuḍa attributed to Ācārya Guṇadhara, together with its commentaries: Yativṛṣabha’s cūrṇi and Vīrasena and and Jinasena’s Jayadhavalā. This paper focuses on selected sections of this collection of technical treatises to elucidate the ways in which it defines and discusses the concept of passions through the analytical method of naya (perspectives) and nikṣepa (parameters or modes of predication). It will explain the meaning of pejja and dosa, the Prakrit terms that denote categories that give rise to pleasure and pain, respectively, and which form an alternative title for the Kasāya-pāhuḍa, the Pejjadosa-pāhuḍa. The paper also shows how the commentaries differentiate among the different types of pejja, including the pleasure that is wellbeing (hidaṃ pejjaṃ), satisfaction or contentment (suhaṃ pejjaṃ), and attachment or affection (piyaṃ pejjaṃ). It further explores how other passions, such as anger (koho), pride (māṇo), deceit (māyā), and greed (loho) are classified in the commentaries. This paper argues that the Kasāya-pāhuḍa and its commentaries offer manifold ways of interpreting emotional states through Jain perspectivism, which allows for an expanded understanding of kaṣāya, as a graded affective state that can manifest in both material and immaterial forms, serving as sources of various types of pleasure and displeasure.
Raja Rosenhagen (Fresno State University)
The Glue of Passions, the Gaze of Love: A Jain–Murdoch Conversation
In this paper, I stage a conversation between Jain accounts of the passions (kaṣāyas) and Iris Murdoch’s idea of love as “just attention.” For the Jains, emotions such as anger, pride, deceit, and greed are not only moral failings. In the context of their material conception of karma, they serve as the “glue” that binds karmic particles to the soul, obscuring its innate capacities for perception and knowledge and thereby obstructing release. Spiritual progress, on this view, depends not on isolated acts of choice but on the gradual attenuation of these passions, which prevents further karmic bondage and allows the soul’s clarity to manifest. Murdoch, drawing on Simone Weil, likewise shifts the focus of ethics away from heroic acts of will. For her, the chief moral danger lies in fantasy and ego, which prevent us from seeing others in a way that does justice to who they are, while love—understood as disciplined attention—makes possible a more truthful vision of reality. Significant differences remain: Jain philosophy is framed by a metaphysical account of karma as subtle matter binding to the soul, whereas Murdoch’s vision is conceptualized against the backdrop of her familiarity with Platonic and Christian traditions. Yet despite these divergences, both Jainism and Murdoch converge in rejecting will-centered ethics and in affirming that genuine moral progress depends on the disciplined cultivation of perception—or so I argue.
Kristi Wiley (University of California, Berkley, emeritus)
Emotions and Karma Theory
In examining the topic of emotions through the lens of Jain karma theory, it should be acknowledged from the outset that discussions of the bondage of the soul by different varieties of karmic matter were not framed relative to a conceptual category that directly corresponds with the English term “emotion” in any of its modern senses. However, the closest equivalents are terms kaṣāya, commonly rendered into English as “passions,” and no-kaṣāya, “subsidiary passions” or “quasi-passions.” They arise through the operation of cāritra-mohanīya karma, the variety of karmic matter that causes delusion regarding proper conduct, causing the soul to become desirous, with attraction or aversion to sense-objects that are manifested through the four passions of anger (krodha), pride (māna), deceit (māyā), and greed (lobha) in different degrees of intensity. Delusion regarding the proper view of reality (mithyā-darśana), which is caused by darśana-mohanīya karma, and the kaṣāyas constitute two of the five causes of karmic bondage as listed at Tattvārtha-sūtra 8.1. Together these two main subvarieties of mohanīya karmas serve as the primary driving forces of karmic bondage, and suppressing and eliminating them are the keys to the path of liberation. A soul that has attained a proper view of reality through rendering darśana-mohanīya karma inoperative and thus attaining the fourth stage of spiritual purity (guṇasthāna) is guaranteed at some future time to attain higher states of purity through the reduction of the intensity of the conduct-deluding karmas, and ultimately will eliminate all mohanīya karmas, thereby attaining a state that is devoid of any passions whatsoever, just prior to experiencing the omniscience of a kevalin (13thguṇasthāna).
The varieties of karma associated with the passions are classified as destructive (ghātiyā) because they negatively affect the soul. They are operative in the souls of all living beings, not just humans. However, in discussions of emotional states, it should be acknowledged that all passions are not equally destructive. Thus, it would be productive to examine each of the passions and subsidiary passions individually, first by category, and then by their four degrees of intensity, from the strongest intensities experienced by a soul with a false view of reality (mithyātva), to those of lesser intensities experienced by those who have taken the lay vows (aṇuvratas) and mendicant vows (mahāvratas), and ultimately, the progression to the elimination of the most subtle forms of passions as soul proceeds to the highest states of purification.
A second English term that is sometimes included in discussions of emotional states is “feelings.” This term includes concepts that are viewed in a more positive light, such as compassion (anukampā, dayā, kāruṇya) and friendliness (maitrī), which are listed among the bhāvanās, or contemplations that strengthen the lay and mendicant vows. These will be examined separately and contrasted with the passions.
This chapter will also include a discussion of Kanti V. Mardia’s examination of these topics, and his use of the term emotion in his most recent publication, Destructive Emotions: Jain Perspectives (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 2024), where he has used both “passions” as well as “destructive emotions” as translations for kaṣāya.