On the life and philosophy of Kundakunda, 2nd century exponent of Jainism.

Although Indic perspectives toward nature are now well documented, climate engineering discussions seem to still lack the views from Indic or other non‐Western sources. In this article, I will apply some of the Hindu and Jain concepts such as karma, nonviolence (Ahiṃsā ), humility (Vinaya ), and renunciation (Saṃnyāsa ) to analyze the two primary climate geoengineering strategies of solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). I suggest that Indic philosophical and religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, (...) and Jainism offer ethical concepts to call for humility in all acts of climate engineering leading to a favoring of CDR over SRM and a favoring of lifestyle changes (particularly vegetarianism) over both. I demonstrate these concepts by introducing the five great elements from the Hindu philosophy, two Hindu legends from Hindu mythology, the Indic ethical ideas of karma, renunciation, and humility, and the moral authority of Gandhi. (shrink)

This essay is conceived as a contribution to the academic debate on the ethical status of mystical traditions with regard to Jain asceticism in particular and—through comparison of Jain with Advaita Vedanta asceticism—to ideologies of radical quietism more generally. For both Jain and Advaita Vedantic ascetic traditions, the material world, and particularly the body, are the primary obstacles to spiritual development. We deal with the social, physical, and environmental implications of such a worldview, rather than with the (...) practice or the phenomenology or the doctrine of mysticism, which we grant to be an accurate reflection of a particular kind of cosmic experience. We address ethical issues, not metaphysical ones. In our discussion of Jain asceticism, we demonstrate that the basic problem (and promise) of quietism, in almost any cultural form, is the shocking realization it can occasion that the Real has absolutely nothing to do with the social or with any sort of ethical action. We argue that Jain asceticism cannot function as an adequate resource for contemporary ethics. Our normative concerns lie exclusively with the adequacy of Jain quietism in supporting a stable global community and a sustainable natural environment. One can be mystical without being ethical, and ethical without being a mystic. We conclude that the truths of quietism are both very profound and profoundly nonethical. (shrink)

This Is A Concise Narrative Of The Beginnings, History, Schisms, Social Organization And Cosmology Of The Living Jain Tradition. The Study Is Covered In 7 Chapters - Atheistic Jainism? - Textual Sources And Ethnographic Literature - The Grand Transition In Jainism: Digambar And Shvetambar As Continuity And Change - The Shvetambar `Church` - The Digambar Case Reconsidered: Contemporary Period - The Digambar Jains Of North India: Society And Religion In Baraut, Uttar Pradesh - The Kanji Swami Panth: Contestation, Cosmology (...) And Confrontation. Condition Good. (shrink)

“The women here in Los Terreros are worried,” Don Alonzo says. “Last year, one of them died from invasive cervical cancer. Thirty-eight years old. Never had a pap in her life.” He leans back in his chair and sighs. “Her husband wouldn’t let her, said he didn’t see the point.” A tabby cat rubs against his legs. “So now the women, they keep worrying. They’ve had the day your group is coming memorized for weeks, maybe months.”Don Alonzo is the local (...) health officer, a thin man in his late sixties, never without his cowboy hat and tattered backpack. We sit in front of his house atop a steep hill in Los Terreros, a small Honduran community about a hundred miles northeast of the country’s capital. Around us, dense green... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Time Together and Time ApartNeha Choksi (bio)The drawings to scale on the following pages depict multiple views I outlined while holding in my hand a single, small particolored stone. The silhouette leaves a hole for the stone to inhabit, were it still to exist. The colored pigment that shapes the absence of the stone is made by pulverizing this same stone.I pushed the pigment aside on the recto to (...) create the evacuated silhouette. Imagining the hole bored through to the other side, I colored the verso, too. All the pigment from the stone was used up in painting these multiple views.________The Crete Senesi area in Tuscany, where I found the stone, is formed from tiny fragments of small shells and sea organisms compacted with sediments of clays and sands from a sea that covered it millions of years ago. I fancy the stone contains evidence of the missing sea.I dislocated this stone during one of my multiple walks on a local strada bianchi near my temporary residence in a tiny village in Tuscany. I shared a summer there with six other artists and the coordinator as part of the Amant Residency Siena. I painted one stone view per member of our group. I made these drawings as a gift for them, for us, for our time together, and our time apart.October 11, 2023 Mumbai7 cotton paper sheets with stone pigment paint on recto and verso Each 7 ¾ x 5 inches [End Page 64] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 65] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 66] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 67] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 68] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 69] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 70] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 71] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 72] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 73] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 74] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 75] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 76] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 77] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 78]Neha Choksi Neha Choksi, in her work across performance, moving image, sculpture, and installation, probes lived experiences that negotiate relationships in unconventional settings. Harnessing stone to plant, animal to friends, publics to philosophy, her materially bound art engages the terms of our existence in ways personal and planetary. Choksi’s work has been widely exhibited, screened, or performed in the United States, Asia, the Middle East, Australia, the UK, and Europe; and is in notable public collections worldwide. Recent honors include the Amant Siena Studio & Research Residency, the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship, the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, and the India Today Best New Media Artist of the Year Award. A monograph on a single artwork, Dismantling, was published in 2018. She currently co-edits Mimesis: Film as Performance Magazine. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Bombay.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc... (shrink)

America now is home to approximately three million Hindus and Jains. Their contribution to the economic and intellectual growth of the country is unquestionable. Dharma in America aims to explore the role of Hindu and Jain Americans in diverse fields such as: education and civic engagements medicine and healthcare music. Providing a concise history of Hindus and Jains in the Americas over the last two centuries, Dharma in America also gives some insights into the ongoing issues and challenges these (...) important ethnic and religious groups face in the America today. (shrink)

Working from home (WFH) is a new reality and norm in today’s work culture. COVID-induced lockdown introduced the concept of WFH for many people. Blurring home and workplace boundaries was a prominent cause of disorientation in people’s lives. Hence, WFH becomes a significant phenomenon to explore as it raises the fundamental question of body and space in shaping people’s experiences. To study this, the researchers designed a phenomenological inquiry and examined the lived phenomenon of WFH during the COVID lockdown. Borrowing (...) theoretical concepts from philosophers Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, they aimed to understand human experiences from an embodied perspective. They interviewed a few adults (age group 27–50) in three urban Indian cities during the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown. The participants’ experiences were transcribed, and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was conducted. The IPA themes highlighted their varied lived experiences and lifeworld, such as distractions in working from home, their changed routines, habits, and social interaction. The findings are discussed through phenomenological psychology concepts such as embodied cognition, body memory, extended self, shared empathy, intersubjectivity and pre-reflective bodily intelligence in coping. The study’s contribution is that it advances a methodological understanding by interpreting people’s experiences from a phenomenological view of being-in-the-world in which the individual is not an isolated entity but is in the world/placed in the world with other people and the environment. (shrink)

This study provides an innovative approach to neutrosophic algebraic structures by introducing a new structure called Neutrosophic Soft Cubic T-ideal (NSCTID), which combines T-ideal (TID) and neutrosophic Soft Cubic Sets (NSCSs) within the framework of PS-Algebra. Within the already-existing neutrosophic cubic structures, the addition of soft sets with the characteristics of TID makes this structure more desirable. The theoretical development of the proposed structure includes the application of fundamental ideas as union, intersection, the Cartesian product, and homomorphism. We also introduce (...) the notions of NSCTID-translation and NSCTID-multiplication to further enhance the structure of NSCTID. By applying the idea of translation and multiplication, we offer improved algorithm for neutrosophic cubic sets to deal with different parameters that are satisying the TID’s distinctive characteristics. Through this thorough research, we offer an elementary understanding of NSCTID and its capabilities, providing the way to new algebraic structures. (shrink)

On the life and works of ancient Jaina philosophers.

The current paper offers a unique perspective of looking at oblique effects in cognition, language and aesthetics in a language where geometrical horizontal and vertical orientations are not considered cardinal and primary in nature. These oblique effects are termed as atypical in nature, offering a contrast to the other languages. In this attempt, a holistic framework is provided that is couched in terms of a single theory and explains effects from two separate fields in a similar manner. The proposed holistic (...) framework provides special place for the influence of language on cognition (?class-3? theory). The paper closes with directions for future research that could potentially work towards providing further empirical evidence for strengthening the framework. (shrink)

Schematic, propositional, analogical and associative representational Systems (SPAARS) is the integrated cognitive model of emotion proposed by Power and Dalgleish (Cognition and Emotion: from order to disorder. The Psychology Press, England, 1997). It is multi-level in nature and includes four different levels of representation. In SPAARS, emotions are described as appraisal-based according to an individual’s goals, thus making the theory functional in nature. Basic emotions possess an innate component and hence can be elicited automatically, since these emotions might already have (...) been appraised in an individual’s evolutionary past. Thus, the theory proposes two routes for the generation of emotions. It provides an useful approach within which both basic and complex emotions can readily be understood. The theory can also be applied in order to explain emotional disorders as well as to generate novel therapeutic interventions for them. In the current review the SPAARS approach has been used to understand psychopathy, also called the disorder of empathy (a complex emotion). The theory provides a new perspective for looking at psychopaths. It suggests that psychopathy may arise either due to a problem generating the basic emotion of sadness, the complex emotion of empathy or a combination of the two. The interventions suggested would also vary depending upon the underlying nature of the problem. (shrink)

Modern Jainism: A Historical Approach (Springer, 2023) presents a substantive yet accessible introduction to the modern thought of Jainism. It examines the life and thought of some of the most influential 19th- and 20th-century Jain ascetic leaders that remain little known in the Western world. The book's first part provides a detailed philosophical overview of Jain thought based on the translation of a seminal Hindi text, Jain Darshan. The second part introduces eight Jain saints from the (...) major Jain sects, including their biographies, philosophical perspectives, and related contemporary movements flourishing in various places across India and beyond. (shrink)

Scholars have long noticed a discrepancy in the way non-Western and Western peoples conceptualize the scientific and religious worlds. Non-Western traditions and communities, such as of India, are better positioned to provide an alternative to the Western dualistic thinking of separating science and religion. The Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization was founded by Dr. Anil Joshi in the 1970s as a new movement looking at the economic and development needs of rural villages in the Indian Himalayas, and encouraging them (...) to use local resources in order to open up new avenues to self-reliance. This book argues that the concept of dharma, the law that supports the regulatory order of the universe in Indian culture, can be applied as an overarching term for HESCO s socio-economic work. This book presents the social-environmental work in contemporary India by Dr. Anil Joshi in the Himalayas and by Baba Seechewal in Punjab, combining the ideas of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge systems. Based on these two examples, the book presents the holistic model transcending the dichotomies of nature vs. culture and science vs. religion, especially as practiced and utilized in the non-Western society such as India. Using the example of HESCO, the book highlights that the very categories of religion and science are problematic when applied to non-Western traditions but that Western technologies can be radically transformed through integration with regional legacies to enable the flourishing of a multiplicity of knowledge-traditions and the societies that depend upon them. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Studies, Religion, Environmental Studies, Himalayan Studies, and Development Studies. ". (shrink)

Corporate governance (CG) is a key area of management with important implications for business ethics. The interface of CG and business ethics is populated with rich intellectual debates on the role of ethics in governance from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Within these debates, the relationship between CG and outcomes for business and society, and the role of CG structures and processes and their comparative aspects across institutional settings are discussed. Despite a proliferation of research at the interface of CG and ethics, (...) we observe that an engagement with topics, methodologies, and expected outcomes drawing on established frames and theories of CG tends to the ignoring or even the preclusion of an explicit engagement with debates in business ethics. Through this VSI, we as section editors showcase previously published papers in the Journal that proactively explore the explicit linkages and interfaces between CG and ethical societal challenges, with the aim of inspiring further such CG research. (shrink)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is not an unknown name. The writer, actor, and producer has been a part of various comedy TV series and films. However, she has a pattern in her comedy writing and character creation that is obvious in the TV series – Fleabag (2016–2019) and Crashing (2016). In both these series, one cannot miss the obvious similarity between the characters she wrote and played – characters who knew what they wanted and did not hesitate to make attempts to achieve (...) it, even when it meant defying the conventional rules of social relationships and breaking out of the gender identities set by society for women. In fact, other characters created around these female characters seem to lack the same courage, which leads to the creation of comical situations but also often results in these characters facing emotional obstacles that they eventually overcome. The women in both shows not only choose to reject predefined gender identities, but also make choices and take risks while being aware of the consequences. Throughout their journeys of embracing their free consciousnesses, these characters illustrate Jean Paul Sartre’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s process of transcending their facticity, thus avoiding bad faith. Implicit in Waller-Bridge’s work is the argument that we could do better to be – and encourage other women to be – the types of women that her protagonists are. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a comprehensive concept that aims at the promotion of responsible business practices closely linked to the strategy of enterprises. Although there is no single accepted definition of CSR, it remains an inspiring, challenging and strategic development that is becoming an increasingly important priority for companies of all sizes and types, particularly in Europe. Promotion of well-being at work is an essential component of CSR; however, the link between CSR, working conditions and work organisation is still (...) found to be unfamiliar to stakeholders. As CSR is strategic and is regarded by many companies and corporate leaders as an important development, it offers opportunities for psychosocial risk management, an area that is currently among the top priorities in working environment and well-being at work debates. However, the link between CSR and psychosocial risk management has not been addressed clearly before. This paper aims to explore the potential role of CSR in promoting well-being at work through the development of a framework for the management of psychosocial risks. As part of the research, key stakeholders [including the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), the European Commission (EC), employers’ associations, trade unions and other policy experts] across Europe participated in a survey, interviews and focus groups to assess and clarify the link between CSR and psychosocial risk management. On the basis of the findings, a CSR-inspired approach to the management of psychosocial issues at work is proposed. Such an approach can be a useful tool in contexts where, up until now, expertise and tradition in dealing with psychosocial issues have been lacking. (shrink)

Classifying spatial frames of references have placed egocentric/body-based representations on muddy grounds. The traditional taxonomy places it under the deictic distinction while the Levinson’s terminology does not provide a special status for it but classifies it along with the relative frame of reference. Research from other areas of cognition has come up with other implied classifications that are motivated by the special role played by these egocentric representation(s). Tangled among such issues is the fuzzy distinction between egocentric and body based (...) representations. The current paper takes up exactly this issue and proposes to sub classify egocentric representations into two different subtypes namely the first- and the second-order representations. The proposed distinction serves an essential purpose for understanding important cognitive processes like spatial transformation, mental perspective taking, and so on. (shrink)

Limiting identification of r.e. indexes for r.e. languages (from a presentation of elements of the language) and limiting identification of programs for computable functions (from a graph of the function) have served as models for investigating the boundaries of learnability. Recently, a new approach to the study of "intrinsic" complexity of identification in the limit has been proposed. This approach, instead of dealing with the resource requirements of the learning algorithm, uses the notion of reducibility from recursion theory to compare (...) and to capture the intuitive difficulty of learning various classes of concepts. Freivalds, Kinber, and Smith have studied this approach for function identification and Jain and Sharma have studied it for language identification. The present paper explores the structure of these reducibilities in the context of language identification. It is shown that there is an infinite hierarchy of language classes that represent learning problems of increasing difficulty. It is also shown that the language classes in this hierarchy are incomparable, under the reductions introduced, to the collection of pattern languages. Richness of the structure of intrinsic complexity is demonstrated by proving that any finite, acyclic, directed graph can be embedded in the reducibility structure. However, it is also established that this structure is not dense. The question of embedding any infinite, acyclic, directed graph is open. (shrink)