Session 5 – Minor Eastern (India) Religions

In this session we will change our focus from Hinduism and Buddhism to two other popular religions in the India area of Asia

We will look at the world religions of Sikhism and Jainism in this session, and next session

we will look at Chinese and Japanese religions of Shinto, Taoism, and

Confusciousism

Sikhism

The word "Sikhism" derives from "Sikh," which means a strong and able disciple.

There are around 23 million Sikhs worldwide, making Sikhism the 5th largest

religion in the world.

Around 19 million Sikhs today live in India, primarily in the area of Punjab.

Sikhs can also be found in United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.

(among other countries)

Sikhism was created by Guru Nanak (1469–1538), a religious leader and a social

reformer during the fifteenth century in the Punjab region.

Nanak was born to a Hindu family (which comes out in many teachings)

He was born in the village of Talwandi, now called Nankana Sahib, near Lahore in

present-day Pakistan.

Nanak got married to a woman named Sulkhni; together, they had two sons

One morning, when he was 28 years old, Nanak went (as usual) down to the river to

bathe and meditate.

Tradition says that he was gone for three days before he returned home

When he got home, it is said that he had the spirit of god within him, and he said

"There is no Hindu and no Muslim."

It was at this point that he began his missionary work and the religion of Skihism

was born into the world.

After he took a journey to Tibet (North), Sri Lanka (South), Bengal (East), Mecca, and

Baghdad (West), he began teaching to groups of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains

and by doing so he created a group of followers, or disciples, called Sikhs

He taught that religion was a way that people could be united, but when practices,

it seemed to set men against each other

Guru Nanak's most famous saying is, "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim, so whose

path shall I follow? I shall follow the path of God."

After his great journey, Nanak settled in Punjab (town of Kartapur) on the banks of the river Ravi where he continued to teach

for the next fifteen years

Many people would move to this area to hear him teach, at first they didn’t tag

themselves as a religion, they would still consider themselves Muslims, Hindus, etc.

But they would become known as the Guru’s

disciples, or Sikhs, and it’s at this time his

followers start referring to him as teacher/guru

According to Sikhism, the same spirit that inhabited Guru Nanak and his nine

successors. Today, this spirit can be found in the

teachings of the Guru Granth Sahib, the

foundational scripture of the Sikh tradition.

Not all Guru’s were people (10 were, one was scripture/holy text)

Sikhism was founded by those ten Gurus between the dates of 1469 and 1708

Sikhs do not see these ten Guru’s as being divine, but

more as enlightened teachers through whom God has

revealed his will to us, each Guru appointed his successor

Guru Gobind Singh the final Guru in human form is considered very important

What do they believe?

1. Who is God?

There is only one God (Waheguru), who has infinite qualities and names. God is Creator and Sustainer - all that you see

around you is His creation. He is everywhere, in everything.

He is without birth or death, and has existed before Creation and will exist forever.

Sikhism does not acknowledge an anthropomorphic God (one who has

human like characters)

Sikhs allow for the idea that god is the universe itself, but do not believe that that

God is personal (like Christianity)

This idea is completely opposite to the views found in the Bible (but similar as you

can tell to Hinduism and other religions)

Many Bible verses show that God is personal, not an impersonal force (or being)

Ephesians 2:4-5: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in

trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),”

An impersonal god or universe is not able to love, care, have mercy, etc.

2. Reincarnation, karma and salvation

The journey of the soul is governed by the deeds and actions that we perform

during our lives.

Titus 3:5: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration,

and renewing of the Holy Ghost;”

Reincarnation is rejected by the Bible, the idea of us coming back over and over again

The Bible says we have one life and then we go to judgment

We won’t talk much to the topic of Karma right now, we covered that in detail when talking about Hinduism. It’s similar to sin,

but different in many ways at the same time

3. Humanity (brotherhood): All human beings are equal. We are sons and

daughters of Waheguru.

According to the Bible, not all humans are sons and daughters of God, only those who

have been born again by belief in Jesus Christ (a personal God) have that status

Galatians 3:26: “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”

4. All paths lead to God

Sikhs are not special; they are not the chosen people of God. Simply calling

yourself a Sikh does not bring you salvation. Members of all religions have the same

right to liberty as Sikhs

John 14:6: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh

unto the Father, but by me.”

There is a lot of other information about the Sikhs that we could talk about

There is much emphasis on moral values, personal sacrifice, disciplined life

They have rituals (of a sort) that they practice on a daily basis

If you want to dig deeper there is a lot of information out there, don’t let your

study stop here

Jainism

Jainism is not quite as large (by number of followers) as Sikhism, it has around six

million followers (many in India)

While the Sikh religion originated in the past 600 or so years, the Jain religion is much, much older, dating

back around the time of Buddha

The religion of Jainism gets its name from the jinas ("conquerors"), which is a title

given to twenty-four great teachers (tirthankaras), through whom their

faith was revealed.

The last of the tirthankaras, is considered the “founder” of Jainism

The origins of Jainism is not entirely clear, it wasn’t so much one man who started the

religion (seems more gradual)

Rishabha, also known as Adinatha, is the traditional founder of Jainism. He was the

first of the twenty-four tīrthaṅkaras

According to legends, he belonged to the Ikshvaku dynasty of ancient Ayodhya.

Understand that of the 24 figures, only the final two have decent historicity to them.

Rishabha is mentioned in later Hindu scriptures (Puranas)

Mahavira (599 BCE–527 BCE), also known

as Vardhamana, was the twenty-fourth and

last tirthankara

Mahavira was born into a wealthy, royal family in

modern day Bihar, India.

When he was 30 years old he left his home to peruse “spiritual awakening”

For the next 12 years, he practiced intense meditation and severe penance, after which

(according to Jains) he achieved Kevala Jnana (Enlightenment)

He then would travel around (the area known as India today) for the next thirty

years to teach his philosophy

According to Jains, he achieved the state of nirvana at the age of 72

While we could spend an entire class talking about the history associated with Jainism, we don’t have time! We will instead focus

on their core beliefs from here out

Jain Beliefs

The universe

Jains believe that the universe and everything in it is eternal. Nothing that exists now was ever created, nor will

it be destroyed.

They’ve run into some problems with science (and the Bible)

For a long time cosmologists believed the universe was eternal and infinite in size!

They were wrong.

How do we know that the universe has not always existed?

There are actually a few ways, and this is not debated very much anymore

Norman Geisler put it well when he said the following: “When we consider the

consequences of a universe that obeys the second law (of thermodynamics) there is only

one logical conclusion: The universe will eventually run out of usable energy. Since there is no place for the universe to obtain

more fuel; we live in a finite universe”

Background temperature decreases in space is evidence that there was a beginning

Genesis 1:1 “In the Beginning God Created the heaven

and the earth”

The Bible says the universe (Time, Space, and Matter) had a beginning

The Bible stood opposed to “science” for quite some time on this topic, claiming the

universe had a beginning. Now we know that the Bible was correct in that matter

Jainism on God

Jains do not believe in an ultimate creator (omniscience, omnipotent, omnipresent)

creator like we have in the Bible

Jains believe the universe is uncreated (as we talked about) and that there is some sort

of universal oneness

They believe souls (and spiritual things) are governed by the universe (like gravity is)

The universe consists of three realms: the heavens, the earthly realm and the hells.

There are seven levels of heaven in Jain cosmology. The top level, "the Realm of the

Jinas" is reserved for liberated souls. The next level down is the realm of the gods.

Sometimes Jinas are looked at as gods, and devotion is given to them. But in the end

they are just enlightened (liberated) humans

The earthly realm is divided into seven regions by six mountain ranges. Deliverance

and religious merit is possible in three of these regions (India being one of them)

The eight hells become progressively colder as they go down

So while Jains don’t believe in an ultimate God (creator/sustainer figure) they did believe in smaller gods who occupy the heavens (governed by the universe still)

The creator sustainer God of the Bible

Colossians 1:16-17: “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that

are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all

things, and in Him all things consist.”

Not only does the Bible present a creator God, but one who is personal

Each person perceives truth and reality differently and no single view is complete

Truth and Reality

The idea that is commonly given to explain this doctrine is the blind men and the elephant, when each of them touch a

different part of the elephant, they will think it’s different than the others (depending on

if they’re touching the belly, tail, ears, trunk)

Jains also categorize all living beings (jivas) that are here on the earthly realm

This is important because the idea of nonviolence in Jainism (Ahimsa) extends to

all Jivas (living things)

In Jainism, a Jiva is a soul that’s attached to a body. Because the soul is flexible and not

one size, the same soul that fits in a humans body can fit in an ants

According to the Jain scriptures, there are 8.4 million species of jivas. They fall into two

broad categories: immobile single-sensed and mobile and multi-sensed.

A. Immobile and single-sensed1. Earth-bodied (clay, sand, metal) 

2. Water-bodied (dew, fog, ice, rain, ocean)3. Fire-bodied (flames, hot ash, lightening) 

4. Air-bodied (wind and cyclones) 5. Plant-bodied (trees, seeds, roots) 

    a. One-souled (trees, branches, seeds) 

Mobile and multi-sensed1. Two-sensed: touch and taste (shells, worms,

microbes) 2. Three-sensed: touch, taste and smell (lice,

ants, moths) 3. Four-sensed: touch, taste, smell, sight

(scorpions, crickets, spiders, flies) 4. Five-sensed: touch, taste, small, sight and

hearing (humans and animals)     a. Infernal (in one of the hells) 

    b. Non-human     c. Celestial (in one of the heavens) 

While all these things have the same soul, only the humans can achieve liberation

(this is your purpose in life)

In Jainism, the soul has infinite power and knowledge, but it is trapped inside the body (whatever that looks like) and locked in the

cycle of reincarnation

By ridding oneself of karma, you can rid yourself of these “restrictions”

The main teachings of Jainism include the Five Great Vows

1) The killing of living things 2) lying3) greed

4) sexual pleasures 5) earthly attachments.

Each is focused on some form of self-denial, including renouncing

In order to achieve liberation, you must go through many steps (which we don’t have

time to discuss)

But, like always, it boils down to works, and if you can save yourself

Their view of Karma is a bit different than Hindus and Buddhist, they see some karma

as affecting the body, and some affecting the soul (destructive and non-destructive)

Memory Verse

Galatians 3:26: “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”