599
infinities into the singularity of pain in individuals, and the supreme importance of
orienting one’s life toward the amelioration of all suffering in all beings. The first
and oldest of the Jain agams, or religious texts based upon the teaching of Mahavira,
the Acharanga Sutra, extolls the most mathematically paradoxical of all contexts
when it lays the groundwork for fully appreciating the challenge of simply recognizing and revering every individual within a biosphere of hallowed interdependency. Not numbers, personages. Today’s genomic, computational and synthetic
biological research is in many respects at odds with Mahavira’s teachings because,
simplistically stated, such analyses fail to recognize individual trees within the forest. Or have forgotten that across the digital spans of 1-0-1-0-1, there are real individuals involved.
All of the algorithms, population dynamics, and Big Data fall short of explaining
the fate of an individual in the environment, and the phenomenon of individual
kindness that today is clearly the most challenging and critical prelude to understanding, and mitigating the full scope of the fast burgeoning Eremozoic era, that
period of Great Dying; of human loneliness in an increasingly depauperate world.
Even a more mundane, mathematical approach to extrapolating large forms of
behavior in species, our own included, relies in conventional ecological research on
“mapping techniques” which, in turn, define the so-called biological optimum,
2
which also presumes “a minimum set of basic habitat requirements of a species.”
3
63.2 A World of Nigodas and Jivas
The spiritual topology that is Jainism, with all of its ethical aspirations, today must
confront the very real possibilities of a wasteland, solely induced by human collective behavior. But through its reconciliation of the one and the many, the living Jain
legacies of ahimsa have introduced a stark contrast to brute collectivities and the
cold calculus of biological taxonomy by way of the formulation of jivas and nigodas, individual, inviolate selves and souls, and our ethical responsibilities toward
them. Pivotal to that collective of individuals is the Jain computation of pain upon a
world stage of biological vulnerability, which represents a departure from all other
traditions. Given that the modern ecological revelations and calls for action all summon levels of unprecedented moral restraint and re-engineering, the role of Jain
computations in the midst of a Samsara-driven global-level extinction event is
wholly relevant to today’s Anthropocene—whether in computing the moral equivalencies owed a Blue Whale or the most humble flea (Fig. 63.2).
2 See “A Minimalist Approach to Mapping Species’ Habitat: Pearson’s Planes of Closest Fit,” by
John T. Rotenberry, Steven T. Knick, and James E. Dunn, Chapter 22, in Predicting Species
Occurrences – Issues of Accuracy and Scale, Edited by J. Michael Scott, Patricia J. Heglund, and
Michael L. Morrison, Jonathan B. Haufler, Martin G. Raphael, William A. Wall and Fred
B. Samson, Island Press, Washington, Covelo, London, 2002, p. 283.
3 ibid.
63.2 A World of Nigodas and Jivas
infinities into the singularity of pain in individuals, and the supreme importance of
orienting one’s life toward the amelioration of all suffering in all beings. The first
and oldest of the Jain agams, or religious texts based upon the teaching of Mahavira,
the Acharanga Sutra, extolls the most mathematically paradoxical of all contexts
when it lays the groundwork for fully appreciating the challenge of simply recognizing and revering every individual within a biosphere of hallowed interdependency. Not numbers, personages. Today’s genomic, computational and synthetic
biological research is in many respects at odds with Mahavira’s teachings because,
simplistically stated, such analyses fail to recognize individual trees within the forest. Or have forgotten that across the digital spans of 1-0-1-0-1, there are real individuals involved.
All of the algorithms, population dynamics, and Big Data fall short of explaining
the fate of an individual in the environment, and the phenomenon of individual
kindness that today is clearly the most challenging and critical prelude to understanding, and mitigating the full scope of the fast burgeoning Eremozoic era, that
period of Great Dying; of human loneliness in an increasingly depauperate world.
Even a more mundane, mathematical approach to extrapolating large forms of
behavior in species, our own included, relies in conventional ecological research on
“mapping techniques” which, in turn, define the so-called biological optimum,
2
which also presumes “a minimum set of basic habitat requirements of a species.”
3
63.2 A World of Nigodas and Jivas
The spiritual topology that is Jainism, with all of its ethical aspirations, today must
confront the very real possibilities of a wasteland, solely induced by human collective behavior. But through its reconciliation of the one and the many, the living Jain
legacies of ahimsa have introduced a stark contrast to brute collectivities and the
cold calculus of biological taxonomy by way of the formulation of jivas and nigodas, individual, inviolate selves and souls, and our ethical responsibilities toward
them. Pivotal to that collective of individuals is the Jain computation of pain upon a
world stage of biological vulnerability, which represents a departure from all other
traditions. Given that the modern ecological revelations and calls for action all summon levels of unprecedented moral restraint and re-engineering, the role of Jain
computations in the midst of a Samsara-driven global-level extinction event is
wholly relevant to today’s Anthropocene—whether in computing the moral equivalencies owed a Blue Whale or the most humble flea (Fig. 63.2).
2 See “A Minimalist Approach to Mapping Species’ Habitat: Pearson’s Planes of Closest Fit,” by
John T. Rotenberry, Steven T. Knick, and James E. Dunn, Chapter 22, in Predicting Species
Occurrences – Issues of Accuracy and Scale, Edited by J. Michael Scott, Patricia J. Heglund, and
Michael L. Morrison, Jonathan B. Haufler, Martin G. Raphael, William A. Wall and Fred
B. Samson, Island Press, Washington, Covelo, London, 2002, p. 283.
3 ibid.
63.2 A World of Nigodas and Jivas