By Michael K. Pastore

Following are quotes from the interview. Read the full article here.

Michael Tobias is the author of more than 25 books, and the writer-director-producer of more than 100 films — including such productions as Ahimsa: NonViolence . . . Tobias has lived in India on and off for 25 years (he co-founded a major film studio in Mumbai devoted to socially conscious production and programming) and is currently involved in some 50 film projects around the world. Tobias has conducted extensive research in a dozen fields, lived and roamed with various tribes, stayed in monasteries in Tibet, Japan, Nepal, Bhutan, Greece and the Sinai Peninsula, climbed mountains (often first ascents) on every continent, and traveled to some 80 countries, usually with film teams. Throughout this personal and artistic odyssey, he has been a fearless advocate for vegetarianism and for the rights of all living things.

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MT: . . . a rather hotly debated topic in the Sierra Magazine some years ago, with regard to the question: Does a true environmentalist have to be a vegetarian?

MKP: You’ve argued convincingly that the answer to this question is yes.

MT: I don’t like to come down too heavy on people. I believe that everyone has to change in his or her own way, and that’s going to happen regardless. You can’t preach nonviolence with your left hand and kill with your right hand, and get away with it for very long. You can fool some people some of the time, but you can’t fool yourself, you can’t fool your own soul, which is the bottom line.

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MKP: The term “sustainable development” is cropping up more and more these days. What is sustainable development? Is it a solution to some of the problems that we’ve been talking about?

MT: The health of our children is a tremendous barometer for whether we’re doing things right or wrong. That health is measured according to their happiness, their educational opportunities, their physical health, their diet, their ability to be free — free of abuse, free of curtailment, free of drugs, free of crime, free of violence, free of tyranny. Our children are perhaps our best indicators for the kinds of choices we should be making.

MKP: It sounds as if you are saying that love and children sit at the foundations of the notion of sustainable development.

MT: Correct. Every community must confront principles of ecology, if they are to ensure a healthy environment for the kids. I mean, a healthy environment for everyone, but I signify this process by alluding to the children, who are the most vulnerable . . . we must urgently find ways . . . through wisdom, prudence and, above all else, the Jain model of nonviolence and compassion and tolerance. I am a passionate believer in Jainism. We must find ways — and there are Jain models aplenty — for discovering the middle ground of sustainable, interspecies harmony.

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MKP: Are we living in the most brutal era in history?

MT: It is without precedent in its brutality. This century has witnessed the most horrible wrongdoings in the annals of biology. And we’re living at the unspeakable zenith of that century. We’re living with the recent memories of the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Armenian massacres, and the Serbian massacres . . . It’s up to us to choose: violence or nonviolence. Total love, or total destruction.

MKP: It’s a choice.

MT: It is a choice.

Foreword By Michael Tobias

For all of our inventive elegance, remarkable dreams and undying capacity to share, to love, to learn from our mistakes, we humans continue to rain down upon one another and earth at large colossal burden which, tragically, is often the very sum of our existence.

This onus emerges in the very guises of much that is characterized by progress and development, not least of which are the consumption of fossil fuels, the desiccation of coral reefs, our collective decimation of tropical and temperate forests, and the cruel obliteration of 45 to 50 billion farm animals per year worldwide. At the same time, our species has consigned to oblivion and accelerating circle of victims, be they the ten-of-thousands of plant, animal and insect species we are driving extinct, the 800 million humans who are hungry, or the other two billion people who are below the poverty line.

Politically, we have witnessed countless forms of tyranny, prejudice, and the use of malevolent force against indigenous peoples, women, children, ethnic minorities, and whole nations. Since the time of the European Renaissance, it is estimated that some 250 million people have been murdered. Civil wars continue to erupt. And the recent terrorism and grievous hostilities in the Persian Gulf merely reflect long-time trends in the name of “just War” which must connote, surely, the most ambivalent of recommendations for our species.

Yet, there are other norms, deep-seated behavioral and spiritual paradigms which cry out for altogether different interpretations and conclusions, and which go to the heart of the human potential. One such tradition is Jainism, whose most recent sage, Mahavira, died in c 527 B.C.E., leaving a seminal legacy of ahimsa and anekanta.

That legacy is the subject of this remarkable collection of thirteen essays beautifully edited by Dr. Tara Sethia. These essays contain piercing and prescriptive approaches to grappling, according to Jain tradition, with current geopolitics, particularly in the wake of terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. How can traditions of nonviolence in any ethical community, find pathways that are likely to make a difference, soften human callousness, inspire an awareness of the spectacular possibilities of reconciliation, grace under pressure, and unconditional love? Countering seemingly impossible odds, what fonts of practical wisdom and spiritual ballast — what emotional anchors — might be gleaned from the limelight of non-violence and tolerance that are the core of perennial Jain emphasis?

In addressing a host of tantalizing Jain clues to human salvation and global amelioration of suffering, the contributors to this impressive volume have unearthed a continual appeal that has worked for the Jains for millennia and could work for others. Presenting from Sonya Quintanilla’s insights into the early Ardhaphalaka sect of Jains, a community that appears to have embraced all religious traditions and assimilated the best they had to offer, to Satish Kumar’s important message to politicians: “Wars start in our minds and in our speeches;” to Christopher Chapples ‘s reminder that Jains have long emphasized personal responsibility for other species and the environment, this is a groundbreaking volume that should be required reading for every course in political science, comparative religions, peace and nonviolence, and environmental studies.

Jain tradition never compromised never compromised with respect to its monks and nuns (approximately 7,000 today — they wander from village to village, speaking the gospel of nonviolence, refraining from all thoughts and actions that might carry even the slightest possibility of violence. Strict vegetarians, these mendicants obtain their food by passive begging. Possession-less, their goal is nothing more than a humble, personal contribution to a peace-loving world; the awakening in others of Jainism’s most universal calling, to use P.S. Jaini’s translation, “I ask pardon of all creatures, may all of them pardon me. May I have friendship with all beings and enmity with none.”

Meanwhile, the millions of lay followers of these mendicants are not expected to give up everything. Rather, they are exhorted by gentle example to set the daily pace of societal change, as Mahatma Gandhi did (he was greatly influenced by several Jains throughout his life). The transformation in the secular world involves the limiting of one’s possessions (parigraha-parimana), the stunting of occupational violence (arambhaja-himsa), and the adoption of vow (vrata) that would embrace the universal truth, starting one person at a time, of a Jain antidote, exquisitely expressed by the ancient Acarya Umasvati, which holds that “nonviolence is unlimited, tolerance unconditional, and reverence for life supreme” (Tattvartha Sutra). Moreover, this emblematic context for all Jainism is further underscored by its ecological anthem, a message that resonates today like never before namely, “parasparopagraho jivanam,” suggesting ecological interdependence among all living beings.

These are extraordinary challenges to life in modern times. But they are exactly what we need if all life is to survive in a sea of stormy volition and skewed evolution. This book is a most welcome addition to the literature of lie-support that can make a difference.

From an environmental activist’s point of view, how influential is religion? For many years debates have swirled around the Biblical position on alleged human superiority over other creatures; and upon the issue of whether Christ and Buddha each consumed the flesh of animals, exhorting their followers to do so, as well; or whether Judaism was originally a faith characterized by, among other things, vegetarianism, kosher habits (thought initially as a means of minimizing the inevitable suffering of animals) coming only later. Religious debate has haunted Hinduism as well, where, in India, the cow, though deemed sacred, continues to be slaughtered.

But what distinguishes Jainism, a religion that grew up in India many thousands of years ago, from any other religion, is its original and lasting emphasis upon principles that today would be best described as ecological, not least among them altilllsa, loosely translated as ‘nonviolence’. The question posed throughout this groundbreaking book is to what ends, and by what means, today’s Jains might adapt the code of ancient biological stewardship inherent in Jain traditions and make it work for the twenty-first century.

The Jains have managed to achieve a collective restraint that is, today, somewhat legendary, though not apocryphal. One of the oldest texts of Jain literature, the Acamnga Sutm, identifies the interdependency of all beings: “You are the one whom you intend to kill, you are the one you intend to tyrannize.”

Diet, physical movement, occupation, intention, willpower, possessiveness were comprehensively psychoanalyzed by Jain monks for the purpose of achieving that human state of salvation which, in the case of the Jains, equates with the salvation of others. The means by which one achieves such a state is fiercely restrictive, a set of great and small vows that are acutely responsive to the vulnerability and neurological sophistication of all other beings on this planet. Gandhi himself was greatly influenced by the Jains. His interpretation of ahimsa and the methods of nonviolence he adopted would liberate his nation from the British. But, in fact, the Jains had been utilizing their ethical traditions to transform the world around them for thousands of years. Environmental crisis is not a new thing. Mahavira himself (an elder contemporary of Buddha and the founder of the Jain tradition) was confronted by many of the same problems individuals in communities face today. India’s population was already relatively teeming 2,500 years ago. There were wars. Animals were slaughtered. Trees cut down. Streams polluted. People maltreated one another. Mahavira spent his adult life walking from village to village in northern India promoting peace, and detailing the biological heritage of the Indian sub-continent. But what especially marks the ancient Jain progressiveness is its insistence on tolerance for other viewpoints, as well as its plant- and animal-rights based vegetarianism. All creatures, down to the tiny atom, and the dewdrop, were considered sacred, inviolate, valuable unto themselves, irrespective of human feeling or perception of value. This was and remains a revolutionary perspective.

Ultimately, it is the Jain ideal of compassion that will challenge readers of Chapple’s elegant collection of assembled essays. Scholars, lay practitioners, monks and nuns are represented in this volume. Each addresses the incredible opportunity that Jain thinking provides all of us. A tradition of environmentalist sensitivity and commentary that continues uncannily to mirror many of today’s burning ecological issues, such as biodiversity hotspots and environmental justice. Not surprisingly, it is impossible to be a true Jain, in the sense that even the Jain Digambara monk, walking naked his whole life from village to village, essentially possession less, still harms – just by being alive. It is a contradiction, to be sure. Life is death, eventually. Our intestines, eyelashes, armpits, are battlefields. But such bacterial riddles – true though they be – do not impede the Jain ideal, which has played out in surprisingly effective ways. Jains, who number at least ten million, represent a vast wealth of ecological good sense. From political mediation to pension and profit-sharing plans; from reforestation programmes to animal sanctuaries, the Jains have got it right. It is certainly not surprising that the Editor of Resurgence was himself a Jain monk. Those who are unfamiliar with Jain tradition will be astonished by this book. Jains themselves will only be further fuelled and refreshed.

Michael Tobias is the President of the Dancing Star Foundation, which focuses upon animal welfare.