|| Om Namah Siddhebhya: ||

A JAIN THANKSGIVING DAY

Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday season in North America. But what is Thanksgiving anyway? Well, history suggests that several hundred years ago pilgrims and Native American Indians had dinner together, expressed thankfulness for successful harvest season and also expressed gratitude towards great things in life. Today, family members get together but having Turkey at the dinner has become inseparable identity of the Thanksgiving Day.

Given its importance, schools discuss it at length which was evident when my 5 year old son walked home from school talking about the Turkey. I am sure this sounds too familiar to you. He completely surprised by asking why don’t we celebrate JAIN THANKSGIVING DAY? Perhaps we can but that thought had never crossed the mind before. Now that it has, here we are to share our thoughts on what we can possibly do from Jainism perspective to celebrate this day.

Primarily, 2 things stand out – thankfulness and non-violence. First and foremost, we should be thankful today that we are not turkey! No, it’s not a joke. In all seriousness, we need to be appreciative of what we have - 5 senses with mind (dravya man). And, believe it or not, Turkey is a bird with 5 senses as well and possesses power to attain Samyak Darshan like us.  Its killing and consumption can’t be without extreme cruelty and violence.

Lord Mahavir’s message is more relevant than ever in today’s world – Live and Let Live. Jainism teaches non-violence by giving very unique perspective of viewing everyone as soul. Each soul possesses equal powers and the ability to become god. Today’s Turkey (its soul) can be tomorrow’s Siddha bhagwan. How can anyone even think of not treating others with respect having such a viewpoint? Charitra automatically follows having such level of understanding.

So just how lucky are we to have 5 senses and mind? As you might know, all beings are divided in to 1 sense, 2 sense, 3 sense, 4 sense and 5 sense beings (with and without mind). So humans are right at the top of the pyramid. According to Jainism, soul is eternal without any beginning or an end. Every soul remains as Nigod being (1 sense) for infinite time. Few extremely lucky souls get out of there but for a maximum period of 2000 Sagaropam years. This time period is like a drop in the ocean when compared to eternity. And, if soul doesn’t attain Moksha in this timeframe, it invariably goes back to Nigod. Within 2000 Sagaropam years, soul spends most of it circling around in 4 Gatis, 84 Lakh yonis soul. It gets ONLY 48 chances of being human and many of these 48 births include deaths in mother’s womb (Labdhi Aparyapt Jiv).

We are not only Labdhi Paryapt Jiv but have born in to Jain family. This could very well be the last chance (48^th) of being human. Let’s make the best out of it to get rid of this birth-death cycle. We must be proud of belonging to rare breed but also careful in how we invest our life in securing long term future beyond current life.

We should be thankful to our lords who shared the knowledge of how to be like them. Jainism’s core principles of Syadvad and Anekant are very pragmatic, helps bring piece in day-to-day life. We must not forget all the selfless gandhars and acharyas who wrote Jinvani telling us about how to liberate ourselves. And certainly thankful to our parents, family members or whoever provided exposure to Jainism.

As Native American Indians were thankful to successful harvest, we should be too being advocate of non-violence. You might ask why? No one would have been vegetarian unless humans knew how to harvest! And, who else to thank but 1^st Jain tirthankar Sri Adinath Bhagwan for teaching how to harvest during 4^th era (Kal) when wishing trees started vanishing. Let’s all wish that we get to harvest infinite pure (shuddha) paryays as Siddha bhagwan.

But most importantly, we need to be thankful to ourselves. A soul safeguards its characteristics or powers even after being ignored for such long due to wrong beliefs such we are body and not soul. For infinite time, we have suffered in 4 Gatis due to this, but have remained Achal, Anupam and Dhruv. We still have our qualities intact such that as soon as we correct our beliefs, we will be on the path of liberation which will eventually end at Siddhalay and will be happy FOREVER!...

This is a humble attempt to ignite further thoughts in the direction of how can we celebrate Thanksgiving while staying close the Jainism. We can perhaps now celebrate Thanksgiving with our kids in a Jain way – A Jain Thanksgiving Day!

Jai Jinendra and Happy Jain Thanksgiving to all!

JainMediaLive Team

(Bhavesh Mehta)

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