EDUCATION
Jain Yoga: A Fascinating and Under-ressearched Tradition
Jain Yoga: A Fascinating and B Under-researched Tradition y Christopher Jain Miller . PhD By Christopher Jain Miller, PhD
Christopher Jain Miller is co-founder, Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Professor of Jain and Yoga Studies at Arihanta Institute. He is a Visiting Researcher at the University of Zürich’s Asien-Orient-Institut and Visiting Professor at Claremont School of Theology. Christopher is the author of Embodying Transnational Yoga: Eating, Singing, and Breathing in Transformation (Routledge 2023) and co-editor of the volume Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Approaches to the Study of Jain Social Engagement (SUNY Forthcoming).
As the well-known scholar of yoga traditions David Gordon White noted long ago, the word “yoga” and its corresponding verbal root “yuj” have more definitions in the Sanskrit dictionary than most any other word. “Yoga” is often popularly understood to imply that something has been “united,” which is certainly one of the many meanings of the term, though every time it is used in South Asian texts, we must carefully consider the term’s precise meaning. This is particularly important when we are studying the term “yoga” in Jain scriptures, where the definition of the term changes to imply a variety of meanings as it moves through new historical contexts.
Acharya Sushil Kumar in Shoulderstand Posture (śīrṣāsana), Siddhachalam, New Jersey (Photo by Parveen Jain)
Yoga continues to increase in popularity, particularly with regard to the mental and physical relief it can bring in our shared times of global uncertainty. I have practiced yoga for 15 years, worked in the yoga industry, taught yoga at the popular and university levels, and have even finished a PhD and published a new book on the subject of yoga. Throughout all of these years and activities, my own appreciation for 22
yoga has only increased, and particularly for the Jain yoga tradition, due to its recommendation for living morally amidst all of life’s ethical challenges. Jain Yoga has a long and complicated history that is under-researched, though it continues to receive renewed attention. The tradition has some origins in the Ācārāṅga-Sūtra, the earliest surviving Jain scripture (ca. 4th c. BCE), where we find Mahāvīra meditating in various situations and postures. Meditation, or “dhyāna” (Prakrit: “jhāṇa”), becomes a key purifying spiritual practice during Mahāvīra’s years of ascetic wandering before he attained omniscience. Arising from Mahāvīra’s meditation is, of course, his commitment to the vows of non-harming, truth, not stealing, celibacy, and non-possession. Indeed, when Mahāvīra realizes through his wanderings and meditations that life is everywhere and that nothing wants to experience pain, he does everything he can to avoid causing harm to other living beings. In some of the other earliest references to yoga in other Jain texts such as the Sūtrakṛtāṅga-Sūtra (ca. 2nd c. BCE), for example, we find that the term yogavān (Prakrit: “jogvaṃ”) is used to refer to “one who applies himself to contemplation or yoga” (Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary). What this means, according Jinadāsa’s later commentary on the text, is that one who practices yoga exercises saṃyama by continually exercising carefulness (samiti) and restraint (gupti) (Samani Pratibha Pragya 2020). i This is a clear continuation of the teaching of Mahāvīra, which prizes the protection of life in pursuit of the spiritual path. Yoga is in these ancient sources, in other words, constituted by restraint (saṃyama) in all that one does in pursuit of liberation. Interestingly, as the Jain tradition further develops into the classical period, the word “yoga” seems to have expanded to take on new meanings. For example, in Umāsvāti’s Tattvārtha-Sūtra (ca. 5th c. CE), we find in verse 6.1 that “Yoga is the action of the body, speech,
