Jainism

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Jainism

Dada Bahgwan Foundation

Federation of Jain Associations in North America (JAINA)

International Nahavir Jain Mission

Jain Meditation International Center

Osho Commune International

Dada Bahgwan Foundation

For information: [email protected]

Dada Bhagwan Foundation is the vehicle for the teaching of Shri Ambalal Muljibhai Patel, fondly known as Dadashri or Dada Bhagwan. Patel is considered by his followers to be a gnani purush—“one awakened to the self,” or “enlightened being.” He teaches the path to realization called Akram Vignan (science without steps), which is viewed as a shortcut for attaining self-realization. A contractor by profession, without particular religious training, Patel was sitting on a railway bench in 1958 when a spontaneous and natural phenomenon occurred: Dada Bhagwan, the Lord within Ambalal Patel, began to manifest. At the end of the process he was a self-realized person, and he began to teach others the spiritual science of Akram Vignan, which provides ultimate salvation—the acquisition of freedom from the cycles of birth and death.

Akram Vignan is described as the science of the tirthankars (divine omniscient lords, the twenty-three men and one woman who are believed to have been the founders of the Jain movement). Dadashri describes his teachings as simply the collective knowledge of the tirthankars, and himself as merely the instrument through which this knowledge flows. During his spontaneous enlightenment, Dadashri noted that he made a connection with the living tirthankar Lord Shri Simandhar Swami, who lives in Mahavideh Kshetra, a world outside this galaxy where Jains believe that tirthankars are still being born. He made his communication with Simandhar Swami through his astral body and received answers to his questions. According to Dadashr, direct liberation from planet Earth is no longer possible due to the negative conditions here, but it is possible from Mahavideh Kshetra. Having acquired self-realization in this life, the soul will be reborn in Mahavideh Kshetra, where it will experience the darshan (presence) of Lord Simandhar and begin its final journey to moksha (liberation).

Dadashri teaches through satsangs (spiritual discourses), with students asking questions that he answers. Many of these have been transcribed and published.

Since the 1990s support for Dadashri has grown quietly throughout the Indian diaspora community. There are groups of followers in Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, and the United Kingdom. In North America groups have appeared in New Jersey, Florida, Kansas, Texas, and Los Angeles, and in Toronto and Montreal, Canada. The movement’s international headquarters is located at a trimandir constructed on land between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, Gujarat State, India, which features a 13-foot statue of Shri Simandhar Swami.

Membership

Not reported.

Sources

Dada Bahgwan Foundation. www.dadabhagwan.org/.

Federation of Jain Associations in North America (JAINA)

PO Box 700, Getzville, NY 14068

In the nineteenth century the Jain community, until then largely confined to Persia (Iran) and India, began to disperse around the world. Of those who left their home-lands, the largest percentage moved to England. A few moved to North America, though large-scale immigration did not occur until after the change in immigration laws in 1965. As the number of Jains increased, organization was possible. The first such organization, founded in 1973, was the Jain Center of Greater Boston.

Subsequently centers were founded across North America, and the Boston center published a directory in 1979. In the meantime, two Jain organizations had been started by Acharya Sushil Kumar Ji and Gurudev Chitrabhanu Ji. Both were active in 1981, when an initial meeting was held by four of the Jain centers and the Federation of Jain Associations in North America (JAINA) was organized. The organization expanded rapidly.

JAINA provides a united voice for the Jain community in North America and has been able to provide religious activities and educational materials that no one center could provide. In addition, it promotes two important opinions of the group that are shared by many non-Jains: vegetarianism and ahimsa (nonviolence). Finally, through JIANA Jains stay in touch with the Jain international diaspora and the base communities in India and Iran.

JAINA conventions are held biennially. The organization was active in response to the January 2001 earthquake in Gujarati, India. JAINA is led by its president, Dr. Bipin D. Parikh, and an executive committee consisting of national officers and regional representatives.

Membership

There are 62 Jain organizations representing over 100,000 individuals in the U.S. and Canada.

Periodicals

Jain Digest • JAINA Spectrum.

Sources

Federation of Jain Associations in North America. www.jaina.org.

International Nahavir Jain Mission

Acharya Sushil Jain Ashram, 722 Tomkins Ave., Staten Island, NY 10305

Since 1965 Jains began to immigrate to the United States, along with Hindus and Sikhs. Because of restrictions on travel over water, Jains did not arrive in numbers that rivaled those of other Indian religious groups. Among the immigrants were individuals associated with the International Mahavir Mission. The mission had been founded in India in 1970 by Guruji Muni Sushul Kumar (b. 1926). As a teenager Guruji entered the Sacred Order of Jain Munis, receiving from his guru two traditional symbols of nonviolence: the mukh-patti, a white mask worn over the face to keep the wearer from accidentally swallowing an insect and thus killing a living soul, and an augha, a broom for sweeping surfaces before sitting lest a living entity be harmed. The mission was brought to Europe and North America by its members. Guruji traveled to the United States in 1975 to visit the Jain communities.

The mission emphasizes the Jain tenets of vegetarianism, ahimsa (nonviolence), and anekantavada (the many-faceted nature of truth). It teaches hatha yoga, pranayama (breath control), japayoga (the use of mantric words of power), ayurvedic medicine, and chanting.

In the United States an urban ashram was opened in Staten Island and a rural center, Muni Sushil Yogville, was opened in upstate New York. Centers have also been opened in England, France, Germany, and Canada. The international headquarters are in New Delhi, India. Guruji has been active in interreligious work (growing out of the Jain belief in anekantavada) and organized the World Fellowship of Religions, which periodically sponsors international interreligious conferences. In 1977 Guruji also participated in the first North American Jain Conference held at Berkeley, California, in 1981.

Membership

Not reported.

Periodicals

News from Jain Ashram.

Sources

International Nahavir Jain Mission. www.acharyasushilmuni.org.

Kumar, Acharya Sushil. Song of the Soul. Blairstown, NJ: Siddhachalam Publishers, 1987.

Jain Meditation International Center

Box 230244, Ansonia Sta., New York, NY 10023-0244

Gurudev Sri Chitrabhanu (b. 1922) had been a Jain muni (monk) for 29 years. During that time he had become widely known and respected in his native India and had, in 1965, founded the Divine Knowledge Society in Bombay. Then, in 1971, he gave up his monastic existence and rejected the millennia-long taboo on traveling over water and by means other than foot so that he could travel to the United States at the invitation of the Temple of Understanding to lecture at a conference at Harvard University. Following that conference he stayed in North America and lectured widely to other Jains who, like him, had immigrated to America. In 1974 he founded New Life Now, an organization dedicated to the spiritual illumination of the West. New Life Now evolved into the Jain Meditation International Center. Chitrabhanu defines a Jain as one who “speaks of a personal responsibility for his own deeds, regards a person as a master of his own destiny, and refrains from violence.”

The center is headquartered in New York City and teaches meditation, yoga, vegetarianism, and tai chi. While moving among Jains who have immigrated to the United States, Chitrabhanu has had great success among people outside the Indian American community as well. Groups have been established in Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, West Orange, and Toronto. He has also worked in Brazil. The associated Jain Peace Fellowship is headquartered in South Norwalk, Connecticut. Chitrabhanu participated in the first North American Jain conference, held in Berkeley, California, in 1981.

Membership

Not reported.

Periodicals

Newsletter.

Sources

Jain Meditation International Center. www.jainmeditation.org.

Baakza, A. H. A. Half-Hours with a Jain Muni. Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1962.

Chitrabhanu, Gurudev. The Philosophy of Soul and Matter. New York: Jain Meditation Center, 1977.

———. The Psychology of Enlightenment. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1979.

———. Realize What You Are. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1978.

———. Twelve Facets of Reality. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1980.

Osho Commune International

80 Fifth Ave., Ste. 1403, New York, NY 10011

Alternate Address

International headquarters: Osho Commune International, 17 Koregoan Park, Poona, India 411001 %bul; Osho International, 304 Park Ave. S., Ste. 608, New Yor, NY 10010.

Osho, formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, was born Rajneesh Chandra Mohan in a small town in Madhya Pradesh, India, in 1931. He became one of the most controversial spiritual mystics to travel to the West and establish his teachings there. Born of Jain parents, Osho, even as a child, began to question the wide variety of traditional religious beliefs to which he was exposed as a young man— Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, or Jain—and asserted that individual spiritual experience was the only true value and that such experience could not be organized into any belief system.

At the age of 21, during his college days, he had what he termed an experience of samadhi, or spiritual awakening. Nevertheless, he decided to continue his academic studies, earning a master’s degree in philosophy and sharpening his skills as a speaker by debating at universities all over India. In 1966 he resigned his post as professor of philosophy at the University of Jabalpur in order to share his understanding of religious experience and to conduct experimental “meditation camps” using his own unique methods.

In the early 1970s he began to initiate people into “neosannyas,” a radical departure from the traditional Hindu form of sannyas in which the spiritual seeker renounces home, family, wealth, sex, and the material life. Instead, Osho taught that the real challenge for the sannyasin is to remain in the world, enjoying life to the full, but not being attached to it—“to be in the marketplace but not of it.” Initiates were asked to dress in orange, wear a mala (a necklace of 108 wooden beads containing a locket with Osho’s picture), receive a new name, and meditate for at least one hour a day.

In 1972 the first Westerners visited Osho while he was living in Bombay. Many of these newcomers were therapists from the Western humanistic psychology movement who were attracted by Osho’s teachings that self-expression and emotional release are useful preparations for meditation. In 1974 a group of disciples purchased property in Poona, near Bombay, and this spot quickly became an international ashram attracting thousands of visitors from around the world. Daily activities included a 90-minute discourse by Osho, a regular program of meditation, a wide variety of therapy groups, and work in the commune. The best-known of Osho’s spiritual disciplines is dynamic meditation, which lasts one hour and has five stages:

deep, rapid, chaotic breathing through the nose;
emotional catharsis, allowing free expression of anger, sadness, joy, and so on;
jumping, with arms raised, while saying the mantra “hoo!”;
complete silence and stillness;
celebration through dance.

In his daily discourses Osho commented upon all of the major religious traditions and the sayings of many enlightened mystics, including Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Krishna, Mahavira, and Bodhidharma. He explained this as his way of “gathering his people,” who would otherwise have remained involved with other religious disciplines.

Osho came to the United States in 1981. After a short stay in New Jersey, he moved to a 64,000-acre ranch in Central Oregon. Within a year a city named Rajneeshpuram had been incorporated on the ranch, with a population that rose to 5,000 people. The community aroused mounting opposition from local ranchers, Christian fundamentalists, the Oregon state government, and the Reagan Administration; much of the antagonism to the city centered on Osho’s fleet of 93 Rolls-Royces and acts such as inviting thousands of homeless people to live at the ranch and vote in local elections.

In 1985 Osho, who had remained silent from 1981 to 1984, publicly revealed that his secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, had been involved in a number of crimes against his disciples and people in Oregon, and he invited the police to investigate. A few weeks later Osho himself was arrested by federal agents, jailed, and charged with immigration fraud. Although insisting on his innocence, Osho agreed to a plea bargain with federal prosecutors and was deported from the United States. With Osho no longer in residence, the Oregon commune was no longer an economically viable proposition, and the residents departed, turning Rajneeshpuram into a ghost town. Sheela and a small group of close associates arranged plea bargains with state and federal prosecutors and served jail sentences.

Osho returned to India, staying briefly in the Himalayas. Then, in 1986, he embarked on a world tour, during which he was refused entry by 21 countries, partially because of pressure from the Reagan Administration. He went back to India once more and in January 1987 returned to his old ashram in Poona, which quickly revived as a large international commune. At about this time Osho advised his disciples to drop their distinctive clothing and the mala because the Indian authorities were making it difficult for them to enter the country.

In 1988 he dropped the name Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and assumed the name Osho, a Japanese term of reverence and endearment used by disciples to address their spiritual masters. During this time Osho’s body became very weak, and he suffered from a variety of puzzling symptoms, including severe bone pain, hair loss, and impaired vision, which led his disciples to believe that he had been poisoned while in the custody of the U.S. government. He died on January 19, 1990, and a sacred grave was made for his ashes inside the commune. Before his death Osho had guided a group of 21 disciples into assuming control of the worldwide activities of his movement. This group is known as the Inner Circle.

In the United States, after Osho’s departure, the movement decentralized and returned to its pre-1986 state—a loose association of meditation centers and small communes scattered around the country. A bimonthly news magazine for sannyasins, Viha Connection, is produced by the Osho Viha Meditation Center in Marin County, California. An English-language edition of Osho Times International is available online at www.osho.org. In 1995 about 500 sannyasins living in the United States gathered at an Osho center in Fairfax, California, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Rajneeshpuram.

Meanwhile, legal actions growing out of events at Rajneeshpuram continue. Sannyasin attorneys have been challenging the U.S. government under the Freedom of Information Act in the hope of gathering enough evidence to prove that the Reagan Administration acted illegally and unconstitutionally in destroying the Oregon commune. The U.S. Justice Department is also pursuing cases against Sheela and her associates. In 1995 two former Osho disciples were extradited from England to Portland, Oregon, and convicted of conspiracy to murder former U.S. Attorney Charles Turner, who led the Reagan Administration’s efforts to shut down Rajneeshpuram. The two disciples served short prison terms and are now back in England.

Through the 1990s Osho Commune International in Poona has expanded greatly and has become one of the world’s largest centers for spiritual-growth activities; it offers a wide variety of classes, workshops, and training. Visitors still come from Europe and America, and increasingly from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Russia, and Israel. Osho International has opened a New York headquarters, which oversees the publication of Osho’s books; those works are increasingly available from commercial publishing houses in England, Germany, and North America. Osho International also prepares videotapes of Osho’s discourses for relay through a number of Asian commercial satellite-television channels. In India Osho’s books and audiotapes can be found in stores nationwide.

The Osho International Foundation is located in Zurich, Switzerland.

Membership

There are Osho centers in more than 60 countries. In the United States, as of 1997, there were 50 centers serving approximately 10,000 people and 20 centers serving some 4,000 people in Canada. There are a reported 900,000 people related to the 750 centers worldwide.