Jain traditions emphasize transforming the self through virtuous conduct informed by right view and knowledge. Across various texts, Jain authors have articulated what ethical cultivation entails, describing and promoting virtuous dispositions and behavior while discouraging harmful ones. This session explores Śvetāmbara and Digambara philosophical, doctrinal, and narrative approaches to ethical cultivation. The first paper discusses pramāda (carelessness) in the Tattvārthasūtra tradition as a cause of misconduct and an obstacle to ethical cultivation. The second investigates how bhāvanā connects ethical practice with transformation of the self in a treatise by the early modern philosopher Yaśovijaya. The third examines how Bharata’s ascent of Mount Kailāsa in Jinasena’s Ādipurāṇa guides readers toward ethically formative devotion to the Jina. The fourth explores how medieval Śvetāmbara narratives promote lay virtues through positive and negative role models. Together, the papers illuminate processes, obstacles, and literary strategies related to Jain ethical cultivation.
The notion of pramāda, commonly translated as carelessness, laxity, negligence, non-vigilance, or stupor, appears already in Jain canonical sources as a disposition that influences actions. Divided into several kinds and variously linked with other dispositions, such as passions (kaṣāya), pramāda features in multiple configurations, each carrying its own contextual nuance. These range from its role as a key factor in identifying a violent act (hiṃsā) and a source of misconduct to its being characterized as a cause of karmic influx (āsrava) and suffering (duḥkha). Focusing on the Tattvārthasūtra tradition, this paper traces the conceptions of pramāda in Jain doctrinal history and explores how its varied contextual usages illuminate its contribution to failure in conduct and its significance as an obstacle to ethical cultivation. It also situates the term within the broader South Asian religious milieu and investigates which of its articulations may be regarded as distinctly Jain.
This paper examines the concept of bhāvanā in Yaśovijaya’s Dvātriṃśaddvātriṃśikā, showing how it links ethical cultivation with ontological transformation. Bhāvanā in this text denotes a sustained and discerning practice of inner cultivation oriented toward the self. Yaśovijaya presents it as the disciplined formation of ethical virtues that gradually reshape one’s inner condition, weakening harmful tendencies and stabilizing wholesome dispositions. External religious acts, he argues, function only as supports; what ultimately determines moral value and soteriological progress is the condition of the soul itself. Liberation, described as śuddha-bhāva (pure state of being), emerges through this gradual refinement rather than through mere realization or ritual performance alone. By tracing discussions of intention, conduct, meditation, and the self, I show that bhāvanā functions as the process through which ethical practice produces enduring dispositions, linking ethical cultivation to transformation at the level of being.
This paper examines bhakti (devotion) to the Jina as a practice of ethical cultivation, mapping how Jain literature in Sanskrit may work to engender in its reader a devotional attitude toward the figure of the Jina. I focus on a the 33rd canto of Jinasena’s Book of Beginnings, a ninth century-CE hagiography of the first Jina, Adinatha. This canto follows Bharata, one of Adinatha’s sons, as he ascends Mount Kailasa to pay homage to his father. During this ascent, I track how Jinasena prepares his reader to ethically meditate upon the Jina’s good qualities once the Jina is met at the mountaintop. I demonstrate that it is not only Bharata who follows a path up Mount Kailasa, and not just Bharata who is meant to offer devotional bhakti to the Jina. The reader also traverses a path aimed to set their mind towards offering ethically formative devotion to the Jina.
I will discuss how selected narratives related by medieval Jain authors aim to contribute to ethical cultivation by promoting Jain virtues in the (especially non-ascetic) reader. Jain society is traditionally divided into four groups (monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen), on each of whom specific societal expectations are imposed. I will show how the stories of the laymen Amarasīha (in Somaprabhasūri’s Kumārapālapratibodha) and Agaḍadatta (in Devendra’s Uttarādhyayanaṭīkā) and the laywomen Rohiṇī (in Āmradevasūri’s commentary on the Ākhyānamaṇikośa) and Ārāmasohā (in Devacandrasūri’s commentary on Pradyumnasūri’s Mūlaśuddhiprakaraṇa) aim to form virtuous subjects by presenting models for different groups in engaging and memorable narrative contexts and illustrating the rewards of good behavior, while characters like Amarasīha’s violent brother Samarasīha and Agaḍadatta’s unfaithful wife, Mayaṇamañjarī, act as negative role models discouraging undesired characteristics/behavior.