Chapter 16: Every tradition: services and what they need · Part 7
Jainism
Jain center
A Jain center of the kind most American Jains belong to: an independent society, a member of JAINA (the Federation of Jain Associations in North America, which has no authority over it), whose building houses Shvetambara and Digambara shrines side by side, with a hall used by Sthanakvasi members and for lectures. There are perhaps sixty to a hundred such congregations, mostly of Gujarati and Marwari families, from a few dozen families to Chicago's 1,800. There are no resident clergy: Jain monks and nuns walk everywhere and don't come to America, so members do the puja themselves, bathed and in puja clothes, take darshan through the day, and wave the lamps at the evening aarti; a hired pujari keeps the shrines, and scholars are brought from India for Paryushana. The weekend is the busy time: pathshala for the children, a sung puja and a talk, and a community lunch a family sponsors. Paryushana, eight days in late summer, is the peak of the year: daily discourses, fasting, the reading of Mahavir's birth and his mother's fourteen dreams, which outgrows the building, and Samvatsari's three-hour pratikraman and the asking of forgiveness. Money comes from honours more than offerings: the boli, auctions of the right to do each rite; fixed-price sponsorships of pujas, lamps and meals; and pledges. Dues are nominal, and a life membership ($301 at one center) brings the vote and the way to trusteeship. An elected executive committee and a board of trustees run it, and keeping the sects in balance is part of their work. The kitchen is strictly Jain: no meat, eggs, onion, garlic or root vegetables, and for many in Paryushana nothing after sunset, which the game can only ask of every meal, so it is discouraged rather than forbidden. Shoes and leather stay outside. Digambara-only and Sthanakvasi-only centers are rare variants. Much of this rests on a few large centers' own booklets, and is less certain than usual.
3 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →
Jain Vishva Bharati
A center of Jain Vishva Bharati, the American home of the Shvetambara Terapanth, a sect led by a single acharya (now Acharya Mahashraman) from Ladnun in Rajasthan. There are only three or four in the United States, in Houston, New Jersey and Orlando, each with a pair of samanis living on site: nuns of an order Acharya Tulsi founded in 1980 so that, unlike Jain monks and nuns, they could travel by car and plane and teach abroad. The acharya assigns them and rotates them every year or two, with a welcome when a new pair arrives and a farewell when it leaves; the local board doesn't choose them, and the senior samani leads. They take no salary and handle no money, and the center houses them and its families feed them. The Terapanth worships without images, so there is no shrine, no puja and no boli. JVB presents itself first as a center for Preksha meditation: its weekly session of yoga, breathing, meditation and a samani's talk is free and open to anyone, and draws many who aren't Jain, more interested in their health than in karma. Beside it the Terapanth families keep the Jain year: Paryushana with the samanis' discourses, samayik and pratikraman, Mahavir Jayanti, and Diwali as Mahavir's nirvana, the festivals moved to the nearest Saturday, and an annual meeting on New Year's Day at which the executive committee takes its oath. Children go to Gyanshala. The samanis bless homes with the mangal path and spend much of their time travelling to speak at other Jain centers, universities and interfaith gatherings. Food follows the Jain diet. The members are mostly Marwari and Rajasthani families, and few; Houston installed an image of Mahavir in its hall in 2009, a concession to a mixed congregation the game leaves out. The research rests on the centers' own pages and is thinner than most, so practice is less certain here.
3 required or forbidden in the building · services, rites, joining, giving, leaders and staff, life together, every item, and every factor →