The Jain Practice of Sallekhana: Suicide or not?
Jainism is an ancient religion which was born approximately 2,500 years ago and still persists in India. It is very closely related to Hinduism and is the minority religion of India. The universal message of Jainism is that of non-violence. The aim of Jain life is to achieve liberation of the soul. It all started with Mahavira who was born around 599 BCE, who decided to abandon his life and take a not so travelled path of an ascetic life. Jainism praises the practice of fasting unto death which is known as Santhara or Sallekhana. Modern scholars have pointed out that the practice of Santhara or Sallekhana is a type of voluntray death and sucide. But according to Jains, it is a good death. Santhara
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To dismiss the endless doubts and misunderstandings of scholars and people about the nature and scope of Santhara. The purpose is to explain as to how this sort of death is not tension but instead harmony with the Jaina value of non-violence, and how such death can prove to be self-evidently a “good death” in a complex legal world. The paper will argue that within Jain communities the moral presumption should be that Santhara is a valid religious ritual and therefore be legally protected if it is freely chosen by an informed person, free from …show more content…
Kishanji barely registered the presence of any visitors and stopped breathing after 35 days, after having attained Santhara voluntarily sanctioned by Jain scriptures. After his death, his relatives turned up in their finest bandhanis and sang songs rejoicing his departure. Very often critics have identified Santhara with suicide. However, one must not be misguided by the external procedure of its observance. A number of European scholars including, Emile Durkheim, would argue that Santhara is suicide by starvation, death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, when he is fully aware of the consequent result. These scholars claim that since Santhara is a result of a person’s negative fasting and fully aware of its results it can be seen as human suicide. Because of this the religion is encouraging. The problem of voluntary death can be viewed through different perspectives, depending on various factors such as intention, circumstance, accomplishment, and so on. All of these conflicting arguments lead us to a debate on whether the Jain ritual of Santhara can amount to suicide legally or
Jain and Jain renouncers are very dedicated to the practice of ahimsa, or nonviolence. They are very aware of their world around them and what will happen to their karma if they harm any walks life. Jains try to eventually purge any negative karma they might have accumulated over their lifetime. Through this dedication to nonviolence, Jains work tirelessly to make sure that their intentional actions will not bring harm to anything or anyone. Many objects and traditions are connected to objects that can be found in their environment. Jains coexist with the world and wish to be a part of it and not leave a mark on it. Through their practice of ahimsa, Jains have formed a unique relationship and lifestyle practice with the world around them.
Sheikh, A. (1998). Death and dying- A Muslim perspective. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 91, 138-140 Retrieved Aug.1 2011. From http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1296563/pdf/jrsocmed00027-0028.pdf
One constant between all cultures is the understanding that all lives will come to an end. Throughout one’s lifetime, virtue, character, and morality are sought, through different ideals and methods, with the overall endgame being the most ethical and desirable outcome possible. There are times, however, when an individual may feel like there is no hope of reaching a successful existence; therefore the act of suicide becomes a viable option. The decision to voluntarily take one’s life has always been a topic of discussion on ethical grounds. Whether or not the decision to die is an ethical one can be argued depending on from which ethical theory the act is being evaluated.
...eath is is not a cessation in Buddhism. Death can be seen as a new beginning. A new opportunity to reach spiritual perfection. Infant mortality is a difficult subject to talk about for many Tibetan parents. Survivors are often faced with poverty and other extreme hardships after the loss of a loved one. However, Buddhism provides great comfort to survivors by teaching that Earthly bodies are impermanent. Tibetan cremation procedures place great emphasis on reincarnation. Tibetan views about death are focused on nirvana and spiritual perfection. These practices are spiritually meaningful for both the living survivors and the dead.
The five Eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Shinto have some similarities when it comes to the their beliefs on death. Hinduism and Buddhism both believe in karma and reincarnation, while Daoism and Shintoism revolve their beliefs around nature. Confucianism chooses not to focus on things we do not know, so their beliefs on death are limited. In deciphering the different beliefs on death associated with each religion, it is important to understand the different belief systems and their origins. While some religions merged the views of the other religions, some came from the views of an originating founder. Each religion has their own view on life after death and whether or not their followers should be concerned
Life and death represent a dyad; their definitions inherently depend on one another. Simply defined, death is the cessation of life. Similarly, life can be defined as not death; however, not everything not alive is dead. Boniolo and Di Fiore explain this dyadic relationship well, and other authors have cited this interdependency to better define life and death.1-6 The academic literature contains multiple definitions for both terms depending on which discipline or interest group attempts the definition. Nair-Collins provides a thorough discourse on this diversity in terms of death, differentiating between “biological death, death of the person, death of the moral agent, death of the moral patient, legal death, and the commonsense notion of death.”2(p.667,668,675) Through the dyadic relationship, similar groupings could be arrived at for defining life. Whether or not one accepts Nair-Collins’ categories, at least some differentiation of this type is necessary given the complexity of these concepts. I propose a simplified categorization of the definitions of life and death: (1)scientific/biological, (2)medic...
From its inception, Buddhism has stressed the importance of death, since awareness of death is what prompted the Buddha to perceive the ultimate futility of worldly concerns and pleasures. Realizing that death is inevitable for a person who is caught up in worldly pleasures and attitudes, he resolved to renounce the world and devote himself to finding a solution to this most basic of existential dilemmas.
A Study of Suicide: An overview of the famous work by Emile Durkheim, Ashley Crossman, 2009, http://sociology.about.com/od/Works/a/Suicide.htm, 25/12/2013
Susan Thrane MSN, RN, OCN discusses the beliefs of Hindu culture in the article “Hindu End of Life: Death, Dying, Suffering, and Karma” published in the Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing. Thrane (2010) states that there are almost 2.3 million Hindus in India. Hindu’s believe in interconnectedness, karma, and reincarnation.
World renunciation is a major theme in Indian civilization, seen by the fact that all major Indic Religions deal with it in one way or another. The ancient Vedic texts laid out a cosmic and social hierarchy – a conception of ‘the world’ – and taught people how to act in accordance with their varna in a way that kept the world in harmony and kept the gods appeased. In the 6th century BCE, world renunciation emerged as a component of religious teachings that would become the heterodox traditions, the two most long-lasting of which are Buddhism and Jainism. Hinduism, which coalesced about a millennium later, included concepts of world-renunciation in the Varnashrama Dharma and other texts, but its best known treatise on world-renunciation is the Bhagavad-Gita. Within the umbrella of Hinduism, the Saiva and Vaisnava sectarian traditions provide distinct ideas of world renunciation, through modeling Siva’s asceticism or through acting in devotion to Krsna and Rama.
The concept of suicide has always been the controversial debate topic among the philosophers. Since the birth of Christianity in Western world, committing a suicide is generally accepted as the act of immorality and the transgression of our duty toward God. By mid-16th century, David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, questions this traditional duty-based ethic of suicide. As he
Thus, I thought that trying out the Jain diet for my project would prove to be an interesting yet challenging experience to take part in so that I can gain a little bit of insight into what life as a Jain might be like. Additionally, the man in the well parable also resonated with me. Even though the man has fallen down a well and will probably be attacked by the snakes or swallowed by the python, he is still focused on the honey dripping from the bees. This made me think deeply about how illogical it is for a person to be so caught up with the trivial aspects of life when there are far more serious issues at hand, like impending death in the case of the
...ld note that all three religions, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, have been the dominant, prevailing religious trends in India for many centuries, and they clearly reflect the culture, history, and spirituality of the country. All three of these religions effectively reflect the views of believers on life, death and honorable conduct. Nonetheless, despite the fact that they are very much related with each other, each has some distinct features distinguishing it from all others, and contributes to the understanding of the religious background in India both at the beginning of the new era of humanity, and in the contemporary period of time.
Hinduism has been a religion for a long time, the Buddha was a Hindu before seeing how terrible the world was, he then found the religion Buddhism. Since the creator of Buddhism was Hinduism as a child, it is only expected for the two religions to be similar. While the two religions are similar they are also quite different as seen by their creation stories. The creation stories are these religions way of explaining how the world started. With most religions the creation story gives the most basic beliefs of the religion as this is where their religion supposedly starts its life. The two stories this paper focuses on is no different, and since they technically have the same origin, it can be obvious as to how they would be similar. However, in the case of the idea of social order and moral decline, they can be different too.
According to a Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) study of 2008/09 done by the ministry of health and population in Nepal, suicide was found to be the leading cause of death among the Nepalese women. Nepal is a landlocked country with the population of 26.5 million among whom 51.5% are female while 48.5% are male (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2011) . Nepal offers a variety of diversity in regards to its religion, values, ethnicities, and geography, which have a huge impact on the socio-economic status of the people. In addition, Nepal is hugely a patriarchal society with a transparent social and economic disparity throughout the country due to its hindu caste- based hierarchy. As a result we can see that there is a huge unequal gap between the marginalized and disadvantaged groups who are usually the people at the bottom of the caste hierarchy (untouchables or Dalit and Janajati).