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Christopher Jain Miller and Cogen Bohanec, "Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Studies of Jain Social Engagement" (SUNY Press, 2026)
01:05:10
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello and welcome back to the New Books and in Religions podcast, a podcast channeling on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Balran. More importantly, it is my double delight to welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Christopher Jane Miller and Dr. Kojan Bahanik. This is actually Vice President of Academic affairs and professor of Jain and Yoga Studies at the Arhant Institute. And Kochi is Assistant professor in Sanskrit and Gene Studies at the Arihanta Institute. In addition to hearing more about this fascinating phenomenon of the Arihanta Institute, we will certainly dive into today's work which is engaged critical and constructive studies of Jain social engagement. Brand new SUNY Press publication. Gentlemen, welcome back to the podcast.
- [01:54]
C
Thanks, Raj.
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D
Thank you for having us again, Raj.
- [01:57]
B
So where are you both now currently physically located that might be of interest to the audience? Not in the holy city of Toronto. You're elsewhere, I'm sure.
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D
Oh, yes, I'm in Zurich, so I'm in cold, almost Snowy Switzerland. And Dr. Bohannic, where are you?
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C
I'm in the pleasantly foggy Eugene, Oregon. And it's quite beautiful here right now. It's getting cold, but no snow yet.
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B
Pleasantly foggy. Almost snowy and already intermittently snowy Toronto. All on one call. Okay, good times. So tell us about the backstory of Engage Genism how did this come into being?
- [02:35]
D
Well, I suppose I'll start there. Thank you for the question, Raj. And My co editor, Dr. Bohanick can, can add in as well here. But we organized a conference back in 2023 called defining applied Gene Studies where we ended up talking about Engaged Gene Studies as a better way for thinking about what it is that we were talking about in that conference, which is how do Janes engage with the world? How do Jane ideas engage with current philosophical debates in ways that may be innovative? How can we address contemporary issues and concerns using Jain thought and looking to the Jain community specifically whether those are ecological, social justice, animal rights related concerns, for example. And out of that conference and alongside that conference, we also developed our Engaged Jane Studies graduate program at Claremont School of Theology. So this is all happening at the same time and this volume really emerges. I mean the bulk of the contributors emerged from participating in that inaugural Engaged Jain Studies conference that we held in that first year of 2023. Dr. Bohannick.
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C
Yeah, I would just add that there's a real need for this sub discipline within Jane Studies. And I think a lot of people who are doing South Asian Studies or Jain Studies sort of sense this need where increasingly like Jain Studies positions when you're hired for, they expect that you have some sort of engaged or applied component to them and they may even mandate having community partnerships. And there's a lot of reason for that. You know, first of all, Jainism is very ethically centered tradition, as is well known. And so that tends to be expected from donors and from, from faculties are hiring. And I think that we really see a need for articulating what this sub discipline looks like, what kind of methodologies can be used in the sub discipline of applied or what we call engaged Jain Studies. And so I think that Dr. Miller was really the instigator for the volume. You know, I think he really saw the market and the need for that and how to articulate it. And so then the volume was sort of birthed and a lot of it was because of the, what I would say is a brilliant introduction that Dr. Miller wrote, which really lays out the methodology of what this sub discipline could look like.
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B
Yeah, very interesting threads there. I would love to hear, and when I say I, I sort of stand in for questions, for questioners I imagine exist in the audience. One might love to hear a little bit more about the ecosystem of both Ariananta Annual work there along with this new program at Claremont Annual. Clare maybe upon setting that stage we'll dive into the contours of this burgeoning, engaged Jainism phenomenon.
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D
Absolutely. So we have at Arijunta Institute, a collaborating partnership with Claremont School of Theology to offer a fully online graduate program in engaged Jain studies, soon to launch, also a fully online PhD program as well. And both of these programs are meant to democratize academic study of the Jain tradition, broadly speaking. We also have on our website a lot of public courses and free events and conferences and things that try to do the same for those who may not be interested in a degree program. And the whole idea around it is to one, get a foundational understanding of the Jain tradition from anthropological, historical, philosophical, linguistic perspectives. So our faculty teach across all those disciplines and, and also to be able to then start thinking about the ways in which the Jain tradition can be brought into dialogue with issues of contemporary relevance in a very kind of careful way, in an academic way, and at the same time to show that this tradition and the people who live in it have a lot to offer to many of the challenges that we are facing as a global society. And so our platform is intended to create all different kinds of spaces where conversations around those things, both within academic and non academic, more public facing orientations can all take place. And so I say there's kind of something for everyone. We also have a podcast, Raj, as I think you know as well, the Engage Jane Studies podcast, where we have scholars, practitioners and alike. So our vision is really to democratize Jane Studies and also to show its contemporary relevance to, across a number of issues. Dr. Bohannig, did you have something you.
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B
Want to add to that?
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C
Yeah, yeah. I would say that in order for South Asian traditions, or really any tradition that's non European in the modern times, to survive, it's very important that these religious traditions engage in relevant social issues, demonstrating their relevance. And I think it's kind of a truism that the more a tradition disengages from the society, the more endangered it becomes. And you can see this is the history of religions that disappear. And also there seems to be a sort of long standing critique against religion in general of being too otherworldly oriented and too disengaged from society. Even though religions famously have morality at the center of them, quite often they also get critiqued for their disengagement. This is particularly true for the Jain tradition gets kind of stereotyped as being overly aesthetic, ascetic, overly otherworldly looking, overly transcendental, and therefore lacking the capacity to really address social, social issues. So I think between the prosperity and the proliferation and survival of the tradition, but also to sort of counter, like, what's actually really an unfair stereotype against Jainism. I think there's other sort of additional reasons why this type of volume and articulating this sub discipline is really important for us.
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B
Yeah, it might be useful for folks to hear. We'll touch on a couple of the papers, particularly your contributions, but to hear about the structure of the book. Subtlety. A great foyer into the avenues of engagement of Jameson.
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C
Would you like me to start? Yeah, there's basically, let's see, I think there's 17 different chapters and they're divided into five different sections. So the opening section is like Critical Issues and Engaged Jane Studies, where we have Stephen Vose and Tiney Vickermans who both talk about some of the issues around. Like, Voce particularly talks about, like some of the issues surrounding donorship with Jane's Studies positions. Tine Vickamens talks about what it's like to have these epistemic frictions when dealing with some of the medical claims that happen with various different mantra healing systems and those sort of critical issues that we can see in Jain Engagement. And then our second section is. I guess I probably shouldn't go over every single chapter, but we have Social Engagement within the Diaspora with some really interesting chapters in there, including Dr. Miller's chapter and then Engaging Jainism with Business and Economy. We have a couple chapters there Engaging to Protect Animals and the Environment. And that's probably one of our longer, longer sections with about five chapters in there. And then our final section is section five on Interfaith Engagement.
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D
Yeah. So I think what we've tried to do is include the topics that were not only relevant in Jane Studies and talked about a lot in Jane Studies, but also the relevant research that was actually taking place during the conference. So this volume emerges out of that initial conference that we had at arihante institute. And Dr. Bohannik did a really nice job organizing them into these various thematic sections in the volume to kind of showcase what's happening in what we're calling Engaged Gene Studies. And so the volume is really meant to really showcase a snapshot right now, to theorize what that means and also to show how different scholars are doing it.
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B
Fantastic. And of course, you talk very much about that in your introductory chapter. Maybe we could hear a little bit from. Actually, Chris, if you also want to talk a little bit about your Engage Jain Yoga chapter, that'd be great. And then we hear about from Cogent about his chapters.
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D
Sure. So the introduction chapter that I wrote was for me, a way of conceptualizing this field by what it was that I observed was taking place, which begins with as. As Dr. Bohannik just mentioned, there's been a massive infusion of donor capital into the field of Jane Studies recently, which is, on the one hand, created incredible opportunities for so many different scholars, both in Jane Studies and adjacent fields, and at the same time, has, of course, reshaped and influenced the way that the field operates. It's created a lot of internal politics. It's created a lot of things that happen when money influences academia.
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C
Right.
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D
And so we didn't want to try to. We wanted to be honest about that up front. So we basically, in the introduction show the different methodological approaches that are being used in what we're calling engaged gene studies. And we acknowledge up front that this is being influenced by the infusion of capital, essentially. Right. It's on the one hand providing opportunities, and on the other hand it's making scholars think about the way they do Jane studies. And so what we've tried to do is outlay a way, a kind of contract with the donors in the community. They didn't sign this contract, but lay out a way of saying, look, this is how we do Jain studies in an engaged way. And we're willing to take this step with you because we believe in what it is that the Jain tradition might be able to offer to society and across all the topics that Dr. Bohannic just mentioned. And at the same time, we want to recognize the importance of academic freedom and independence and the academic method.
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C
Right.
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D
So it's a simultaneous. It's a way of grappling simultaneously with the kind of promise of Jain praxis and philosophy and. And the commitments that we have as scholars in the academy at the same time to remain true to what it is that what we do. And so I could use my chapter briefly as an example of one way of doing that. So one way of doing this is I studied Narendra Kumar Jain, who's this wonderful artist who did an incredible mural on the Berlin Wall on the east side gallery. And he did this at the time when the Berlin Wall was about to fall, but had not gone down yet. And what's really interesting about him is that he was able to get a visa to go to East Berlin to paint on that side of the Wall when a lot of other artists were not able to do that. And what I love about Narendra Kumar Jain, he's a Jain, he's painting a yoga mural on the Wall with the seven Chakras. He calls it the seven Stages of Enlightenment. And he's trying to convey a message about India's kind of contribution to. To the unity of east and West. And that very much comes out in this mural. And from the social perspective, from the historical perspective, what I try to show in this chapter is why he in particular was an actor who could actually go to the other side of the Wall precisely because he was Indian, not just because he was Jain, but precisely because he was Indian and Indians were allowed to go to East Berlin. And so the whole chapter draws out that historical narrative and shows all the manifold influences that are influencing his mural of this yogi on the Berlin Wall. And at the same time, it's showing the ways in which India had its own particular message for freedom and unity at that Wall, which was, of course, the site of great violence, great suffering, great political strife. And so the whole chapter does a kind of constructive thing of showing, like this is what his message seems to have been drawing from his interviews, his online archives, and at the same time shows him as a very historical human person who is at the center of all of these debates that were taking place at the Berlin Wall at that time. So it's a very kind of social, historical approach to interpreting that that's both simultaneously critical and constructive. And I think that's really what we're trying to get at here, finally, in Engaged Jain studies.
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C
Yeah, if I could add a couple of things to that, just to back it up. This volume, as I said, is really articulating an emergent subdiscipline where there's a really great need for it. And the work itself is seminal, and it's a seminal work in the field. And I think a lot of that, again, is credited to Dr. Miller in his particular framing. And what he does in the introduction is he sort of lays out this sort of dialectic between what would be like an emic and an edic perspective, and something of a synthesis between those. But the first one he lists is this, like, constructive reproductive method, where this is really what we would see with a lot of emic scholarship, which is promoting Jain values as solutions and really a lot of strong normativity versus, second, the juxtaposition in the dialectic would be the critical analytic model, which tends to be more of the edict, outsider, social sciences, historical, anthropological, a little bit of philosophical as well, too, but one that really maintains a certain degree of academic neutrality. And then, of course, the third method is like this critical constructive, which sort of integrates both of these by Balancing objectivity with normativity as well. So you can have objective scholarship that also makes normative claims like we would do with like the field of ethics for example, which I guess this segues me to my own volume and we really. My own chapter, two chapters actually I have in there. But we really went through an effort to really try to understand the sort of methodological background behind all of the contributing authors, to really see what kind of methodological perspectives that they were coming from and to try to understand how the field of engaged Jain studies could be understood from the broadest possible methodological scope, which allows for emic scholarship, edict scholarship, empiricism, objectivity, but the normativity of philosophy, it sort of allows for whatever your methodological predilections are, how you can still engage in the field of engaged studies. So my own chapters. Did you want to say something before I talk about my own chapters or.
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B
So then would you say that this emerging field of engaging studies, would you say that it softens or does it further complicate the etochemic divide?
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C
It can do both. I think that, you know, like I think about my work in particular is really tricky because I do try to problematize that and you know, I'm an actual Hegelian anyway, so I resist binaries in general and try to synthesize wherever I can. But you know, I follow a certain degree of methodological relativism that's very different than philosophical relativism. I'm not a philosophical relativist by any stretch of the imagination. I do ethics, I make broad normative claims all the time. But methodological relativism in the sense that I'm able to situate myself within different philosophical traditions, even possibly contradictory ones, and understand them by their own self understanding and then see how those traditions would make normative claims based on their own self understanding. So this is kind of like, you can see there's a synthesis between Emek and Edict right there at the onset with what I do. So like I wrote a chapter on eco theology from Jane perspective. I wrote a chapter on Jane virtue ethics and animals where that's a very, you know, that's basically how I approach it. I don't have a first person disclosure about what my own necessary predilection is like. It's not my first person voice in the scholarship yet I'm perfectly happy to make normative claims by the self understanding of the Jain tradition. So you can see right there that critical constructive model, the third sort of synthetic model that Dr. Miller so brilliantly articulated that really, I think is that sort of Hegelian impulse to sort of synthesize that otherwise that tension between emic and edict. But that's not to say that everybody's a Galilean. I mean, people might be perfectly happy with having a stronger binary between emic and edict and have a very strong empiricist methodology. And they may maintain that and they may even think that that's the better way to study and they can still do engaged studies. And the same can be said for people who are really self first person situated within the tradition, using their own first person experience from as practitioners of the tradition, doing scholarship. And they may even may or may not believe that their way is the best way to understand the tradition as well too. But then that methodology can also be applied. So it's not that we're really saying that one methodology is the best approach. It's not one size fits all. But whether you're more emic or more etic or somehow more synthetic, or even if you really have a strong binary between those, either way, we're trying to show a way forward for everybody who's involved in Jane studies to be able to do engaged scholarship. I hope that makes sense.
- [20:38]
B
I think it does. And maybe one question. There are probably a number of intriguing points here, but we'll save the nerdy footnotes for another time. But one question that comes to mind then is from a religious studies perspective, are these various tools in the toolbox, all that you mentioned in terms of the gaming divide and synthesis, et cetera, are they are. Would they all fall within the academic study of Jainism, would you say, or not necessarily?
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C
Well, yeah, I mean every, everything we have in the book. Sorry Chris, I'm talking a lot. But yeah, everything we have in the book is academic, right? Like we don't have, it's an academic publisher. State University of New York Press. So everything that we do, everything that we publish is academic. So I mean that's not to say that people can't do engaged Jain studies. From a non academic perspective, that's fine too. But we're, we're primarily academics and engaging with academic authors. But also I think we're hopeful too that we have non academic audience too. Sorry, Chris, if you want to chime in there.
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D
Yeah, I mean I would even say that part of what the enterprise is in that introductory framing chapter, what I've tried to do is invite in as many serious voices that want to make a contribution to engaging studies as possible. And part of the reason I did that is because there are so many community members within the Jain community who have these sort of well thought out, articulated ways of understanding their community, understanding themselves, understanding their textual traditions that may not have the rigor that you would find in more critical methods in Jain studies, but are still interesting for us to consider and maybe frame in some kind of analytical way, maybe later look at in a more critical way. But we didn't want to fundamentally exclude those voices from this emerging field. We wanted to leave a space to listen to them. And it happens a lot, for example, in other events that we do on our website, where we have community members come in and talk about how they're teaching, for example, nonviolence and ahimsa in light of gun violence in America, and how they train Jain community members and students to think about those things from the perspectives of ahimsa. Those are the kind of voices that we wanted to make sure we're included here without, you know, totally pushing them out. And so we created this category within the introduction and we have a couple of chapters that identify themselves as taking that perspective of a kind of like, it could be like a straight scriptural reading or autoethnographic experience of growing up in the community, for example, as at least partially true. Right. And so one way I thought of as I was writing the introductory chapter was that we wanted to do a kind of ane Kantavada, a multi perspectival way of doing Jain studies, that no one part held the full truth or way of doing it, but it was as inclusive as possible to help us reach perhaps closer to some kinds of truth or truths.
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B
Great, thank you. Part of the reason I ask is because often when folks think of the ITech IMIC divide, many times they will be thought of as writing from particularly within confession of the Richard scholarly writing. And so we want to make clear for the audience that obviously it's Sunnis and academic press, and these are academic enterprises, but ones that are very attentive to the life of tradition and the perspectives of practitioners. So, Pojin, did you want to say a bit more about your actual contributions?
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C
Yeah, I'm liking this conversation too. I just want to add something about. I think a lot of what we try to do at Arihanta Institute is try to decolonize South Asian studies and decolonize Jain studies. And a lot of what we're talking about is creating a platform for the emic voice within scholarship. I think that really goes a long way. We really are interested in including as many South Asian voices and people who are from the Jain community in scholarship as well, because we think that historically a lot of those voices have been marginalized. This is also true in I guess South Asian studies in general, where you don't really have a lot of perceived validity to first person and subjective and normative scholarship the way you would in like Abrahamic traditions, for example. You know, you can be an academic Christian theologian, but then the field of like Hindu theology is that, you know, it's a burgeoning field and it's one that's looked on with a lot of suspicion, you know, and I guess we could say the same thing for Jain's studies as well too. So I think part of the interest in decolonizing Jane studies would be to uplift emic voices and to allow them to do their own self subjective, you know, to, to allow that and to articulate that is a viable academic method. But yeah, if I were going to talk about my chapters, I, I believe my first chapter is chapter eight. It's on virtue ethics and animal rights from the Jain perspective. Again, this is, you know, I make normative claims because as an ethicist, that's what I do. You shouldn't hurt animals, you shouldn't kill and harm animals for your own personal recreation and enjoyment. I'm happy to make that claim. But I do that from the perspective of the Jain tradition. You know, I also am very interdisciplinary in my outlook. I've written a lot about virtue ethics. I have a book on Bhakti ethics, on Gaudiya Vaishnava ethics. And virtue ethics is a very strong part of how I frame that methodology in there. I kind of aggregate virtue ethics with some other things, egofeminism, feminist care ethics, theological voluntarism and several other things. But I'm a Die Hard MacIntyrean. I don't hear that word very much. But Alastair MacIntyre's after virtue is one of my favorite books and I use that a lot when I articulate ethical systems. And so I think that in animal rights in general, the discourses predominantly like the Singer version of utilitarianism versus the Kantian rights deontological model of Tom Regan. And not a lot of conversation in the animal studies world about virtue ethics, which is the third main normative ethical system. It just seems to have not really reached animal studies. So I myself am a virtue ethicist. So just understanding how we can look. And I think that virtue ethics is a much more natural fit to karma theory and to South Asian traditions. Much more natural than deontology. And utilitarianism I just don't think worked very well for South Asian traditions in general. So I make all of those arguments sort of synthesizing Jain doctrine, Jain philosophy with a virtue ethics model articulated by MacIntyre, but which is very sort of a standard model of premodern thought and pre modern ethics, particularly notable for its teleology and its metaphysics and then how all of that applies to animal rights. So that's the first chapter and then the second chapter I do. I guess I'll be a little bit more brief with this one, but it's eco theology. Now, as an eco theologian, again, I obviously come from a perspective of animal rights and virtue ethics, care ethics, ecofeminist ethics, all of that. But when I go into eco theology, I bring all that to the table. But I also do a lot with ecopsychology and biophilia, which is really the sort of finding that it's an interdisciplinary sort of field, biophilia in particular, that we've evolved in nature and therefore our exposure to nature can have a healing effect. And that sort of healing effect actually maps on very nicely to a spiritual soteriological process in a lot of ways. We see soteriology is being spoken about in terms of therapy and healing. And so I apply that model to the Jain tradition. Okay, now I'm going to stop talking.
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B
Yeah, there's some really fascinating points here, so maybe I'll do the second one first. Although I really want to dig a little bit into McIntyre and virtue ethics. But what you just said about the resonance with nature and nature affecting healing, would you say then that that is the case for when the malaise is born of society or something other than nature? Because certainly nature presents no shortage of ailment, disease, predators. How would you.
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C
Oh, yeah, yeah. So biophilia is kind of a broader rubric. I would say that ecopsychology is very related to that. But biophilia also includes domination of nature as being psychologically healthy, necessary psychologically, because let's face it, nature wants to kill you, right? You spend too much time in nature and with it, enough artificial help from shelter, you name it. And also, if we were in a natural state, we'd have very, very high infant mortality rates. Any number of reasons that nature wants to kill us. So yes, defying nature and dominating nature is also part of our exposure to nature. That can be healthy. And you see this with, you know, like rishis who go to the forest, you know, in some ways they're overcoming the wildness, the untamed nature of their natural surrounding. And that has an analog to them overcoming the wildness of their internal passion. And then also you see virtues present in nature. You see serenity, you see calmness, you see tranquility. There's a sense of awe, mysterium tremendum. It's any number of spiritual virtues that nature imbues and that actually, by our exposure to nature, we also learn to cultivate those ethics within ourselves, those virtues within us. And so that's kind of like a really broad way of talking about it. It's not like overly glorifying. Nature is this sort of perfect thing. And the more natural we, you know, like, get back to nature, be more animalistic or something like that. But it's really. It's a very critical way of understanding our relationship with nature in ways that we have to define nature, but in ways that we also have to expose ourselves to nature. And if we remove ourselves from that experience and live in purely artificial environments. I think about my brother a lot with this. My brother's a mountaineer, and he climbs mountains. You know, this is a type of biophilia. It's very healthy psychological overcoming of the difficulty of, you know, he's a wilderness guy. You know, he spends a lot of time in the wild overcoming nature. And I see this as sort of. There's some overlap there between with what I believe is happening in a lot of South Asian literature of the forest. Rishi, where the forest, as I'll quote Dr. Rita Sherman here, forest is the locus of spiritual revelation. And of course, I think that links very well and maps very nicely onto the scholarship on ecopsychology and biophilia.
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B
Yeah, it's certainly a captivating encapsulation of the forest. I often think of it perhaps in two archetypal terms, but often the city is the conscious map, rational impulses and the forces, either the subconscious, the unconscious, or certain cases, maybe the superconscious, where it's. The forest is the domain of, you know, the beastly and the super normal alike. Lots of fun in the forest, let me tell you. So, yeah, are there. I mean, there's no shortage of works in this book that we can engage, and there's much to be said about the building as a whole. What direction might you like to take this in? Is there a particular paper or two that may like to comment on?
- [32:37]
D
Well, maybe what I was hoping we'd be able to do, and this might be a good opportunity, Raj, is just to say a little bit about a couple other chapters that we edited, that we're methodologically close to and appreciate, and maybe I can do that in Cogent. There are probably a couple that you could. You could pick out and say, hey, these are representative of the work we're doing. And so a couple for me. I'll start coding. Already mentioned a couple at the beginning, but one that hasn't been mentioned yet is Johannes Belt at the museum here in Switzerland. He and I worked on a number of things together, including I was on the advisory board for the Jane exhibition here in Zurich from 2022, 2023. And one of the things that came out of that and I asked him to do was to write a chapter for us on Engaged curation. And that's the title of it, Engaged Curation Challenges, Experiences and Potentials from a Museum Exhibition about Jainism. What I really liked about this chapter is that one, Johannes Belt is himself a brilliant scholar who has studied caste and engaged Buddhism already and did his PhD in this. And now he's the director at a museum in Zurich, a secular museum that's putting on an exhibition that is, on the one hand, showing Jane items and articles and things of historic relevance, paintings, you name it, and on the other hand, is also engaging the Jane community as a regular part of the exhibition to showcase how Janes live their everyday life, particularly here in Switzerland. Though there were also Janes who came from the UK and from India, for example, to participate in these tandem tours that went around inside of the museum exhibition itself. I was lucky to participate in some of that myself and just answer questions from the Swiss community. And what I love about this chapter is it doesn't overly glorify what the Jain tradition could do or what was exhibited in the museum, but it kind of shows like, look, here's nonviolence, here's the way that Jane's expressed it. Here are some difficult questions that the Swiss community, that we, the Swiss community, reflected back to the Janes about the way that they were living their lives, that that might actually be paradoxical or perceived as hypocritical in light of the values they were espousing and at the same time recognizing that, yes, there is something here to this, that we could think more deeply about the way that we engage with animals, with the environment, and even with each other. And so a lot of these frictions and challenges and things come out in this chapter, as well as a great overview of the exhibition itself, which was a wonderful exhibition. And so that was one chapter that really stood out to me as particularly engaging. And then the other one that I can just think of off the top of my head is our colleague, Professor Jonathan Dickstein, who works a lot in vegan studies, critical animal studies, wrote a really fun chapter about. It's called An American punjabol Engaging Tradition and Innovation at Love in Arms Animal Sanctuary. The reason I really love this is that he went and did ethnographic fieldwork at Love in Arms Animal Sanctuary, which is a Jain founded sanctuary founded by members of the Jain community in North America. But what he really shows is how there's an entanglement here between the American rescue and sanctuary movement and Jane values that at first are kind of not being publicly expressed, but later start to emerge as the founders themselves start to realize, like there's some resonance of this ahimsa thing with the North American community and with our donor community that will really stand out. And I really love the entanglements he shows between Western sanctuary culture and this notion of an Indian Punjabol meeting in one place in Erie, Colorado, and how it manifests on the ground all the way into the present. So those are two very ethnographic chapters and I think that resonates very much with my own training. Dr. Bohannik, over to you.
- [36:27]
C
Yeah, yeah. I have a lot of these chapters I'd really highlight. You know, it's so hard to. Because, like, I want to talk about every one of them because I really, really like. And every one of these scholars is so diverse and unique in their perspective and their methodology. I really love Jonathan Dickstein's chapter and his work on love and Arm sanctuary in general. Of course, as a longtime animal rights activist, I've been an animal rights activist for about 30 years. I really like to see this type of applied ethics. I spend so much time thinking metaethically and normatively, but to actually get on the ground and see people who are actually rescuing and saving animals, I think is such an important paradigm. It's also something that's getting increasingly marginalized in the animal rights movement, animal advocacy movement. So I'm really glad to see that Dr. Dickstein is highlighting that, just to go over a few others. Alba Rodriguez Juan. She is a brilliant scholar and she's been working on the Bhavanas, you know, Maithari. I usually do the Yoga sutra version, Maithari, Karuna, Mudita and Upeksha. But of course that would be Maithari, Karuna, Pramoda and Madhyastha from the Jain perspective and how these Bhavanas are applied across various different traditions, Buddhist traditions, they're the Brahma, Vihras, it's actually a topic that I started first studying when I was on my master's degree. And I just really love the work that Alba has been doing with that in general. I've seen her present on this topic multiple times and I'd really like to, you know, really enjoyed that chapter. And then of course, Krina, her chapter on the Yoga Pradipa, she's been working on the critical edition of that text and really engaging that with other philosophical systems and other yoga practices. And I think that that's just her study and her scholarship on that in general is just really outstanding and her career has been really fun to watch. Likewise. I think Dr. Chappell, Christopher Keith Chappell, he does the thing with the Yoga Bindu and interfaith dialogue, which I think a lot of people are really noticing. You know, the Yoga Bindu in particular for, you know, Haribhadra's engagement with other different traditions and how he talks about that. And I think it's really nice that Dr. Chapel like brought the pen to the paper there and really articulated something. I think a lot of people in Jain yoga studies have, have noticed. And of course the last one I would mention is Jeffrey Long. Doctor. Dr. Long. I'm just a huge fan of both Dr. Chappell and Dr. Long. But one of the things that has really resounded to me was with Dr. Long's chapter, he brings Anekantavad into conversation with Advaita Vedanta and he asked this very poignant question. Is it possible to come to something like Anekantavad from different worldviews? You know, and I think that's just such a poignant question. And it's such an important sort of cross religious studies to sort of, you know, I argue a lot in my work for commensurability of ideas. You know, that's a big academic debate, commensurability versus incommensurability. I'm very strong on commensurability because like Dr. Long, I'm a metaphysical realist. I believe that truth is objective and it can be discovered from multiple different venues and different cultures. And he makes that argument from the perspective of something like Anikantavad. Similar to that can exist in other traditions. It may not be a one to one thing, but something similar. Some perspectivist positions can come in there. So those are just to highlight some of my favorite chapters. But if I left at any, it's not because I love them any less. I really think that this book is a fantastic read from front to end. And I can say that because I've read it probably about six times, all the times that we've headed it, but it really, really is just full of treasures and everybody doing this from a very different perspective. And I really hope that everybody gets a chance to read all of the chapters.
- [40:39]
B
Yeah, there is no shortage of food for thought in this book, whether about Jainism and classes of Jainism for those interested in the study or practice thereof, and certainly for those interested in the various avenues of engagement, ethical engagement in particular, that currently plague our planet. Jeffrey Long's paper got me thinking. Someone approached me recently about an interfaith panel and one perspective, a particular worldview is just that, particularly from a religious paradigm that has its sort of world building or its world making innate to that worldview. And yet it seems to me that religious spiritual virtuosos from all stripes can arrive at a place that without sort of appropriating one, subsuming one worldview within another, can approximate what we think of as the saakshi or the witness or sort of a perspective of entertaining various ideas, various spaces, without sitting in any one of them in particular. And it's a compelling notion that the pursuit or perhaps indeed embodiment of truth necessitates abiding in a place where one can see the various perspectives that rise and fall in the intellectual sphere. Question for you. 30,000 for a few questions, but how do I phrase this without it being a leading question? What change might you like to see by virtue of this book or beyond? And you know, this is the subfield.
- [42:17]
D
Yeah, thanks, Raj. I would like to see personally, and Dr. Bohannic can agree or disagree with me, but I would like to see on the one hand, more serious engagement with Jane ideas in a bit more of a constructive way, taking practitioner perspectives seriously. And this goes back to that Emek edict thing we were talking about. And it also just talks about religious studies in general. What I would hope would happen is that this book will spark the ongoing study of not just engaged Jainism, not just engaged Buddhism, from which we draw dramatically, as you saw in the introduction, but also just engaged religions in general, because as we know the field of religious studies, the study of religion, it needs some revitalization. And part of that is, I think, taking serious the perspectives of first person experience alongside the critical study of religion and putting those things into dialogue with one another. So I'm hoping that this will really spark renewed interest in the study of not just the Jain tradition, but religious traditions as engaged more broadly, and will also drive more research as we open up our PhD program next year and continue to do graduate studies, that this is going to become a sub discipline of itself that inspires much more to come, not only from us, but from our graduate students and graduate students and scholars at other universities who would like to work with us and already are.
- [43:47]
B
Dr. Bohenek, just one quick question, Chris, if you don't mind, just while it's fresh in my aging brain here, a couple sort of meta questions that are follow ups to what you're saying that arise and may need arise in the minds of some of our audience are as follows. One, could you comment about the either the intersection or the disambiguation between or across, you know, taking the emic perspective seriously while remaining within an academic paradigm, or maybe more specifically, taking seriously the perspective, the emic perspective, but not adopting a confessional stance. Just comment about that maybe, if you don't mind. And the other thing either or both of you can comment on is the extent to which, because you mentioned religion in general and the academic study of religion in general, and one wonders whether or not the engaged piece of engaged Jainism might be a path forward for religious studies in general, that doing a better job of demonstrating the applicability and the vitality of what we do at the academy and studying religions that I think perhaps our discipline is not been superb at. And if it were, we wouldn't be headed towards the way of the Dota.
- [45:10]
D
Absolutely. Yeah. So I think these questions go hand in hand. And part of the emic and academic divide, maybe we might say the community practitioner versus academic divide, I think that's part of what could make us more relevant if we could bridge that divide a little bit more. And as someone like Dr. Bohannik, who hasn't worked as long, for example, in animal rights, knows that when you want to bring people in to work with you or bring people in to be part of what you're doing, it doesn't work to just go hitting them over the head with propaganda and trying to convert them. And that's not what we're trying to do. Right. I mean, we are trained both as practitioners but also as critical scholars. And what we want to do for, for, for Jane's is, as I said, sort of at the beginning is create this contract where, yes, we want to listen to you, we want to hear your voices. And anthropologists already do that.
- [46:03]
C
Right.
- [46:04]
D
Historians reading Jane works already do that. We are listening. We have to listen deeply to understand what's taking place. But does that mean that we Go native or convert or go into the tradition. It might, but it doesn't have to. But I think we have to be willing to leave the risk open that we might, as some theologians do, but that doesn't mean we have to do that. I think what more so the objective here with engaged Jane studies is to create a bond of trust with the community members and also for them to trust. For them to trust us and for us to trust them. And that's a hard thing to do. It takes risk, it takes being open, it takes a lot of vulnerability to do that. But at the same time, and this is the contract I wrote in the introduction, when the things that Janes say in particular because we're talking about engaged Jainism, contradict science or are in some way socially violent, it's still our job as scholars to point that out from the best of what we know, right? So the Janes have inspired me to think about the way that I treat animals, to think about what I eat, to think about how I travel. I credit them with that. I credit them with that. I know some very intelligent Janes who have inspired me deeply to do that. And at the same time I want Janes that I interact with to be open to the idea that caste matters, for example, right? That notions of casting class have to be discussed and that Janes are part of that dynamic that is making caste society what it is. Right? We're all in place in those things. That's just one example. Another quick example is that sometimes I teach courses on Jainism and climate change and there are certain climate facts, climate data that when I present it to Janes, they deny it. Right. And so part of the contract in this volume is to say like, we recognize where you're coming from, please recognize where we're coming from, meet us there and let's have a conversation and see how we can mutually inform one another. And let's respect peer reviewed international scientific method, social scientific method and those, those kinds of things. So it's trying to write a contract between those things and I think part of what that is, that is engaged gene studies in and of itself, the way that we are engaging with the community and the community is engaging with us, that makes religious studies much more interesting. It allows people to have a voice in academia which is seen as this kind of ivory tower. There's a lot of anti intellectualism, but we want those people in with us, in our classrooms, with us. We want to be in dialogue with these people. And so there has to be a way for us to ignite a new form of doing religious studies the way we're doing it, this way. To try to bring as many people in as possible to feel included and to feel like their voice matters, but always with the risk that one or the other side might be inspired by the other to, you know, to listen to one another in a serious way.
- [49:03]
B
Yeah, certainly there is. You know, I'll allow listeners and readers to. To adjudicate the various merits of the books themselves. But I will comment on the. The vitality of integrating polarity rather than further polarization and the vitality of, you know, binaries constitute a reality. And the extent to which we can responsibly integrate them versus polarize them may well lead to more productive futures. And there is certainly this, this. This holding constructive chain commitments, you know, in tandem with critical academic analysis, you know, that. That greater tension without collapsing into advocacy, collapsing into denigration, collapsing into quote, unquote, you know, objective detachment. I mean, there's a. There's a vital tension there, and that's just a microcosm of the macrocosm of religious studies as a whole and perhaps even life. Maybe I've been reading too much of the mahartele. Who knows? Kojun, I think I interrupted you about three footnotes ago. Shomir. Tom, forgive me. Please continue.
- [50:11]
C
Yeah, I guess there's a fork in the road of two different subjects that we had open there. But I would also add that confessional scholarship can be rigorous and that I think that we should have a space for theology to be an academic, rigorous discipline. I come from Graduate Theological Union. I currently teach at the Claremont School of Theology. So there's a place where confessional scholarship really can be rigorous. And I see an absence of that in South Asian studies, where you don't really find that in Abrahamic studies. And I think that there's something almost colonial about that, that there's like a bias.
- [50:46]
B
There's no almost about it.
- [50:51]
C
It's okay to do confessional, rigorous scholarship from an Abrahamic tradition, but certainly we can't do that from whatever the reasons are. I'll just leave it there. But that being said, that doesn't necessarily mean, as you said, we can still take the emic position seriously without becoming confessional. And I mentioned earlier, I think of that. I frame that in terms of methodological relativism, which is something that I learned teaching undergraduates. My goal as a teacher is that whenever I'm teaching anything, I will teach it so that it's so convincing that the students will buy it and I don't care whether I agree with it or not. So one minute. Yeah, that's how to do it, right? So one minute I'll be teaching Nietzsche and I'll have everybody convinced, you know, that Nietzsche has discovered everything. And then I'll flip around and I'll start teaching something else, you know, Hegel or something, Plato that completely contradicts that, and I'll convince them of that. And I think that if you really are a good thinker, you realize that all of these worldviews, whether they're religious or philosophical, all of them are internally coherent. Of course, I'm quinian too. I follow into coherentist epistemology, and I understand what a web of belief looks like. And I understand there are infinite background beliefs that we have that inform our belief systems. And with. With various different data points, these systems are extremely coherent and extremely rational. Even if they're mutually exclusive, even if they both can't be right, they still are. I don't believe in apodicticity, for example, with most truth claims, I think that it really is fuzzy. I follow Quine with fallibilism in that way, too. And so in that way, I'm able to step into various different philosophical religions, traditions, and give a convincing rendering of them with the understanding that they're internally coherent. And if I can't see how they're coherent, it's because I don't understand the system. And I think that's a way that we can approach very, you know, methodological relativism came from anthropology. I use it as a philosopher, but that came from social sciences as a way of being able to value emic perspectives. Now, I don't turn it into philosophical relativism or. But I think that's a really important way that we can understand that traditions are internally. They're plausible, they're worthy of our respect. Whether we agree with them or not, that actually can be secondary. It doesn't always have to be at the forefront of our scholarship. What we believe, what we agree, what we disagree with, what can be at the forefront of our scholarship is how these systems are plausible and internally coherent. And a lot of what I do is I'm also a phenomenologist, right? So I'm not into analytical philosophy. I'm much more continental. And so therefore I believe in the power of subjective streams of data to support truth claims. And I would even venture to say I've done work with contemplative studies where I've suggested this as well, that the majority of data that supports Religious truth claims comes from first person subjective experience. And that means that if we are not experiencing a tradition from a free first person perspective, we're not accessing the data that supports that truth claim. And if we can acknowledge that with humility, then we're going to be much more inclined to take the emic positions seriously and do all the things that Dr. Miller has suggested, having a seat at the table for people from different worldviews, people who are confessional, people who are working emically and that. So I guess I'll leave it at that.
- [54:33]
B
Yeah, I found myself chuckling to myself, thankfully muted on zoom at a number of your comments. One is this notion, this almost hinotheistic notion, but in an academic context that I've adopted for guest lectures, where I forgot about this, but a colleague just wrote a reference letter for an application and they mentioned I gave a guest lecture some years ago in their Intro Hinduism class. And according to them the students were spellbound because for a third of the class I proved to them that Vishnu was the greatest Hindu deity. And then for a third I proved to them the Shiva was the greatest Hindu deity. And then further in the class I proved to them that the Devi was the be all and end all. And I taught intro religion at a university, downtown Toronto, and it was a World of Religions class. It was their first world religious class. And students, apparently students had bets being placed on apparently I was Muslim when I was teaching Islam and might have quite been Jewish when I was teaching Judaism. And it was, it was hilarious. But, but what comes to mind really, I think where the rover meets the road with so much of what we do as scholars is in pedagogy, as in the cogent communication of ideas to others that facilitates understanding. I mean, there's the, there's the, there's this sort of meta engagement there where the rubber meets the road and when somebody contexts, whether teaching adult learners or undergraduates, one thing I find myself just instinctively gravitating towards is the imperative to think alongside the worldview. Not just apply elements of one worldview into your worldview, but to actually think alongside of an entire worldview. If you are reading the Bhagavad Gita and try and understand the Bhagavad Gita, you have to do your best to dispense with consciously or unconsciously notions of imagine what it's like if one had multiple lives and that, you know, God or goddess could take the day or the eon off, because karma does all the heavy lifting of, you know, what Would that be like. What would it be like when reading the Devi Mahatma? What would it be like if, you know, the CEO is actually a she? You know, there's a divine mother. That's it. The elevator stops there. Okay, Go up to the penthouse and it's a she.
- [56:46]
D
What would the.
- [56:47]
B
What would the universe look like, feel like? And so whether or not, obviously it's not our. Well, it's not. It's not my particular business to sell anything in particular other than different lenses that people can look through. And they want to keep the lens forever or take it off in five minutes. That's their business. But we cannot properly run the. The apps of various other traditions without also running, even in a limited way, the software or thinking alongside the software. And in so doing, we have to dispense with and at least register our own software. And so it's so much of the data of that tradition is to be experienced directly. And I think there are ways in which we can simulate or approximate that. And you know, to my mind, that that really is at the heart of taking seriously the emic perspective whilst engaged in academic inquiry. We were answering too much.
- [57:46]
D
No, we've had these conversations before, and I appreciate this perspective so much because I think, and you've said this before, that this is what the field needs, I think, in general, for it to be resuscitated in a way that students will enjoy it, the research will be reinvigorated, and it doesn't diminish like some religious traditions have into obscurity and disappear itself.
- [58:11]
B
Yeah. And the conversation so crucial. It's so be. I mean, I had the good fortune of writing the forward to Russell McCutchens. You know, he's talking about, you know, he's, he's, he's very big on, you know, the innovations that he feels religious studies needs. And I may not necessarily subscribe to his particular view of what religion is or how it should function, but there's no question in my mind he's absolutely right to call out, the building's on fire, folks, and business as usual is going to end up in extinction. There's no question about that. It's ironic that many of his, because of various antecedents and religious studies, some of our listeners will know about. He's very big on the idea that religion is not a special category. Nothing in the legacy here, folks. You just would normalize religion like all the other things. You'd have a future and of course, end up writing the introduction. And what do I do? I very much treat religion as something very different. Hey, let's go on retreats, on educational retreats. Hey, let's have these courses. And so I think there are a number of approaches, but clearly, demonstrably, religious studies has painted itself into a sort of corner, and it needs to pivot somehow to get out of that corner. That doesn't mean intellectual responsibility. That doesn't mean placation of a necess of an interest group. That just means re envisioning, really, I love the humanities re envisioning what this inquiry could and perhaps should like. Because as interesting and as important as it is to us, it's not so much so to so much of the public or, you know, and so unless we find ways, and that's part of the reason why I love this podcast, unless we find ways to communicate the content and vitality and significance, unless we find ways to engage, you know, what is the future of what we're doing. Okay, I pontificated far too much for a particular podcast. So any final thoughts, questions, requests, critiques, complaints?
- [60:06]
D
Well, Raj, I just want to thank you once again and I'm glad you mentioned your introduction to Russell McCutcheon's book, which I just saw, I think yesterday or the day before. And I just hope that we all who are doing this kind of work can continue to work together. So not only you, Raj, but anyone else. Raj, hit me up. When you're in Switzerland, please. And any other colleagues who want to work with us as mis engaged in these engaged methods, whether you're in Jain studies or in other engaged religions, please reach out to us.
- [60:36]
B
I will definitely hit you up. I discovered. Well, I just interviewed her, actually. We're on the podcast now, so I think two podcasts ago. Shantala, she's a. She's a. She's a sort of IT professional who happened to have a heritage as part of a lineage, the preserved traditional South Indian Vedic chanting. And she teaches online. And this is a vibrant group of global students, like so many of our platforms. So I probably will go visit and collaborate with her in Lugano. And I will certainly hit you up because I think we're overdue for a conversation in the same room other than my zoom room. So definitely Cochin. Is there anything that you want? Complaints, Critiques, requests, professions?
- [61:17]
C
No, I would just, I would like to say that, yes, all, all issues that are vexing the world today have some religious component to it. I will proselytize for religious studies. I won't pro. I mean, I'll teach religion. I'll teach Philosophies but when it comes to education, I actually proselytize. And I think that that's why religious studies is so important. I think a lot of non European traditions are struggling to, to survive. And in the interests of cultural diversity, I think it's really important for scholarship to uplift those traditions. And I like to think that what we're doing with engaged Jain studies is making we're part of that broader project of making religions or talking about religions in an engaged way so that they have relevance in modern society, so that as scholars we can study the religious aspects of traditions so that we can understand our diverse societies, so we can sympathize and empathize with our neighbors. And I think that our goal is nothing short of world peace when it comes to what the project of religious studies is. Whether that's an achievable goal or not is another story. But really, I think that bringing about harmony and in particular with a small minority tradition like the Jain tradition, that's particularly important in the modern age, especially with a tradition like Jainism that has so much to say about nonviolence and ethics and virtues that are relevant to today's society.
- [62:47]
B
Well, thank you very much both for appearing on the podcast today.
- [62:51]
C
Yeah, thanks for having us, Raj.
- [62:52]
D
Thanks, Raj.
- [62:53]
B
For those listening, we've been speaking with doctors Christopher Jane Miller and Kojan Bahanik, who are co editors of this brand new SUNY Press publication, Engaged Critical and Constructive Studies of Jain Social Engagement. Until next time, keep well, keep listening, keep reading and keep contemplating the applications of religions new and old. Bye for now.