It is easily 90 degrees with near 100 percent humidity in the late afternoon heat of tropical peat swamps in Borneo. In the company of Dr. Biruté Galdikas, we move between research camps across the 960,000 acres of protected orangutan habitat within Tanjung Puting National Park, a sanctuary established by the Indonesian authorities in 1988 and co-managed by Dr. Galdikas, the park’s preeminent advocate and designer. President of Orangutan Foundation International and a scientist/animal rights activist steeped in Gandhian non-violence, Dr. Galdikas has spent more than 35 years in the field committed to helping the remarkable orangutans – whose individual lives and populations are at great risk. There are simply not enough people in Indonesia who care about these astonishing beings. Fortunately, for the remaining 6,000 orangutans here in Tanjung Puting, Dr. Galdikas and her staff of over 200 people are devoting their lives to provide a lifeline that has saved the orangutan from near extinction.

Dr. Galdikas herself has been surrogate mother to hundreds of orphaned orangutans. Many of these innocents have seen their parents chased down and shot out of trees for food or captured for the zoo trade.

Like so many of those in the sanctuary movement worldwide, Dr. Galdikas is a profoundly spiritual and generous ambassador for individuals of other species. This renaissance of compassion demonstrated by her example is what which we endeavor to portray in the new Dancing Star Foundation book, Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence.

In twenty countries we strived to document and shed light on those ecological and animal rights luminaries who are working assiduously to save fellow creatures and their habitat: from cheetahs in South Africa; wild dogs in Namibia; a vegetarian tribe in Southern Indian and all the wondrous creatures with whom they cohabit the Niligiri Blue Mountains (tigers, Asian elephants, Nilgiri Black Langurs, rare orchids and impatience flowers); to remarkable seabirds from Alaska to the Farallon Islands off the coast of California; Iberian wolves and donkeys in Portugal; French geese whose salvation has long been championed by Brigitte Bardot; jaguars in Suriname; brown bears in Holland; farm animals and wild forest creatures in Austria; Arabian oryx in the Emirates; Egyptian vultures breeding on the “Galapagos of the Indian Ocean”; endangered moss species in the temple courtyards of Kyoto; butterflies in Malaysia and domesticated cows, pigs, horses, sheep, goats and chickens at Farm Sanctuary in the U.S. under the enlightened stewardship of Gene Baur and team.

Some of the sanctuaries featured in our book are national parks and internationally contiguous preserves, such as Wrangell-St.Elias/Kluane National Park, the largest such park in North America, encompassing both the U.S. and Canada. Elsewhere, as with Central Park in Manhattan, a sanctuary that sees at least 25 million visitors each year, the 270-odd bird species and 172 known insect species that call the park home are supported by no more than 843 acres. In the case of the Island of Socotra, in southern Yemen, all her 3,625 square miles are currently under consideration as a Natural World Heritage Site. For thousands of years, the Socotri mountain people have embraced ecological sustainability which has proven key to their survival.

In Austria, the remarkable Michael Aufhauser created Gut Aiderbichl, a true oasis of compassion for cows, foxes, dogs, cats, chickens, horses, pigs, cows, donkeys…and people. Gut Aiderbichl has since expanded throughout Austria and Germany. Michael’s original sanctuary – near the heart of Salzburg – is home to over a thousand rescued animals. When Michael negotiated the purchase of all the beagles from a chemical company after their use for product testing, there was concern among some European animal rights groups that negotiation was not appropriate. But Michael Aufhauser is a pragmatist who feels differently, as does Snoopy, one of his rescued beagles, who now runs and plays excitedly in confirmation of the fact that he has been given a second chance. Michael Aufhauser, looking at Snoopy as living proof of the positive outcome of his methodology, says “I am not concerned about my image. We cannot afford egos.”

In Suriname, Dr. Russell Mittermeier, President of Conservation International and a man who has probably saved more precious biodiversity worldwide than any single individual, led us into the heart of the greatest intact tropical rainforest left on earth: the Central Suriname Nature Reserve where he did his field research on primates for his Ph.D. while at Harvard. Mittermeier’s long-term commitment to this remarkable country has resulted in one of the most outstanding examples of global conservation anywhere. Chief Ashonko Alalparoe, head of the 800 member Trio tribe living just south of the Nature Reserve, told us “Russell is a man who helps others.”

Such biophilia-in-action, the compassion born of deep empathy we believe is hardwired into humanity, has been active in our species for thousands of years.

Emblematic of this compassion and the sanctuary movement, is Farm Sanctuary in Upstate New York and Northern California. When we visited during the Summer of 2007 to profile Gene Baur’s and his colleagues’ superb work for our book Sanctuary, we were not adequately prepared for the intense outpouring of emotions we experienced in the presence of some of Farm Sanctuary’s most charismatic residents. Among others, we met Charlotte (the all time pleasure-seeking pig), Phyllis (a wise, softly-spoken chicken), Grace (a brilliantly inquisitive sheep), Snowflake (the movie star hen), Hannah, Gideon, Isaiah, and Chickey (the totality of turkeys), Linda (an understated, contemplative cow) and Dagwood (the genius among rabbits). Our memories are rich with Farm Sanctuary’s pastures of great spirits. They remind us of what’s biologically at stake in the 21st century and incite a kind of sacred riot in our hearts that bids us to do everything we can, every waking moment, to alleviate suffering in this world and join forces with others to help re-establish the preeminence and inviolability of life on earth. That is the core value inherent to the sanctuary movement.

Michael Tobias is Present and Jane Gray Morrison is Executive Vice President of Dancing Star Foundation. Both visited Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York in June of 2007.

The tragic death of a 39 year old bear trainer in Southern California on Earth Day underscores the broader fate of a magnificent mammal that once ranged across most of North America. First described in 1509, at a time when there might have been millions of grizzlies, based upon various estimates of their needed food range, American culture has subsequently done much to ensure the doom of this long-lived largely vegetarian, engagingly maternal, non-territorial creature. Today the grizzly bear has been reduced to fewer than 2 per cent of its original domain. By the early 1900s, it is estimated there were no more than 50,000 grizzly bears remaining in the United States (the current population of Brown Bears, a different sub-species, throughout all of Europe and Russia). By 1924, California lost its last grizzly. Elsewhere, attrition has continued with great rapidity: Mexico’s grizzly went extinct in 1960; the Canadian Prairie grizzly was deemed extinct as recently as 2002. Fewer than 1200 grizzly now remain in the lower 48 US states. If an equivalent attrition occurred amongst the 300 million U.S. citizens, today’s human population would all be confined to one small city.

Throughout this ongoing massacre, grizzlies are known to have killed approximately 50 humans in that last 100 years.

A large number of captive grizzly bears is certainly no substitute for bears in the wild. Wrote John Muir, “In my first interview with a Sierra bear we were frightened and embarrassed, both of us, but the bear’s behavior was better than mine.” And as behaviorists have learned, a captive bear is totally unpredictable, because of her (not surprisingly high) potential for boredom, frustration and — we must assume — misery and anger at her plight. Add to these the bear’s potent memory, and all the cumulative instincts which tell her that her situation is dire, and a seven hundred pound mammal with paws the size of a medium pizza, becomes the last creature on earth one would want to attempt to manipulate and “train”.

Listed as Threatened by the Federal Government and, under rubrics of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, “likely to become an endangered species” this protective web has seen some success in Yellowstone, where the resident grizzly population was allowed to rebound from a very few dozen to approximately 500-to-600, but nowhere else. One way to ascertain the extreme plight of the grizzly is to see the bear’s huge population fertility pulse — between 4-and-7 per cent annually — when given a chance to make a comeback.

But short of large ecosystem protection for one of North America’s most impressive and — by all accounts, eccentric and normally gentle and shy creatures — these great beings need, at the very least, quality sanctuary. The Bear Center at Washington State University is one such locale where orphaned cubs can be treated with the respect they deserve and demand. And where non-invasive research can humbly remind us that we do not own other species; they are not our’s to exploit; and that we must take every possible stride to reconcile our needs and their’s, ensuring blueprints for co-habitation, re-wilding, and re-enchantment. We are an interdependent family of beings.

© 2008 by Michael Tobias

By Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison

Several of the 17 species of penguin worldwide are in trouble: they face the very real possibility of extinction in this century. Most people love penguins. Therefore, most people are in trouble, goes the logic.

It may seem a reach to suggest that what happens in the deep icy southern hemisphere should really matter at the moment to Americans worried about paying their mortgages, or having a job tomorrow morning. And even if it does matter, goes the thinking, there is not a whole lot an individual can do to rescue the very rare Yellow-Eyed Penguins found in a few parts of New Zealand from potential oblivion, especially given the long-term trends and fall-out from global warming, a critical factor imperiling the birds. However, this is not entirely so. The same factors influencing penguins, will also, according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, mean the possible demise of all agriculture in the State of California by century’s end which, he added, could mean the collapse of California’s major cities.

There is no escaping the fact the economic story of all nations mirrors precisely the greater ecological tapestry and imperatives that govern all money-related matters, namely, the biosphere and all of its biological parts. With as much as 50% or more of all life hanging in the balance depending upon what people do, or fail to do in coming years, we must get it right. That means factoring conservation into everything we tackle and think about; conservation of fresh water, clean air, the soil, wetlands and forests, oceans and streams.

We know many, though by no means all, of the vital connections to our health that nature implicitly provides. Frogs, for example, consume insects that transmit malaria. Malaria appears to be again mutating and killing millions of our kind, while we serve up hundreds of millions of frog legs every year on dinner plates, while at the same time destroying the habitat for those frogs that don’t get eaten. A recent discovery of several new healthy frog species in Columbia’s mostly remote Darien region shows that a vast amount of biodiversity is still out there – possibly 100 million species. There may be enough time to make this all work, to do our part to ensure the continuity of life on the planet. But it won’t happen unless we are deliberate, swift and conscientious about it.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, roughly 62% of all drugs approved for cancer treatments come from a natural origin. What is keeping us alive is nature. But of the more than 400,000 known plant species, at least half are in danger of disappearing because of our actions. Well then, it should be obvious what we need to do: Save the plants, and much more. There are plenty of immediate financial incentives for doing so, if fundamental self-preservation of our species seems too vague an incentive.

A recent report entitled “Building Biodiversity Business” (*1) suggests profound opportunities for sustainable ecologically-based enterprises that are profitable: $120 billion for wildlife-related recreational activities in the U.S.; $30 million acres under sustainable organic agriculture in Australia; $620 billion accruing from global environmental goods and services worldwide in 2005; $3.6 trillion in annual tourism revenues, employing some 200 million people where the largest gains appear to be happening specifically in the eco-tourism sectors; $50 billion per year from the Kyoto Protocol carbon markets and growing; and, to top it all, probably the most profitable enterprise of all now fast emerging: alternative energy, formidably detailed in the new McKinsey Report (*2). Witness California’s rapid ascendancy in the realm of new hybrids. While the state’s budget is in dire trouble, don’t forget that some $45 billion in payroll in that state comes from policies mandating higher energy efficiency and environmentally clean technologies, the same amount of money needed each year as projected by scientists to stabilize global ecosystems and prevent a raft of unprecedented extinctions. Moreover, the same offsets that are being utilized to understand and pave the way for carbon markets, are now being embraced by several countries as well as banks – from the U.S. to South Africa to Switzerland – with respect to actual biodiversity offsets. A single acre of saved wetland can be worth as much as several hundred thousand dollars of mitigation value. Biodiversity business is just now in its infancy.

Recent discussion of a renewed Conservation Corps to help the National Parks, which first occurred under President Theodore Roosevelt with the mobilizing of a massive workforce of hundreds-of-thousands of recruits during the Great Depression to places like Yosemite, is one terrific idea. Billions of trees were planted across the U.S. as a result of that. Many other great notions are staring us in the face, from windows on every house and building that can be made to generate electricity, to opportunities in the classroom to convert every student into an ardent defender of wildlife, whether plants, mountain lions, or the very penguins who co-habit American bases in the Antarctic, like McMurdo and Palmer. The lives of those penguins depend upon the variation of a few degrees Celcius that affect the survival of the marine food sources that also support all creatures, great and small throughout the oceans.

Where serious gaps remain across America’s biological landscape, particularly wildlands earmarked for road access and resource extraction, monoculture, suburban sprawl and countless other forms of biological fragmentation, there is by now a clear consensus that Americans overwhelmingly care about these issues as witnessed in the wilderness bill S.22 just passed by the Senate. People want their children to have a deeper connection to nature than merely experiencing it as stuffed in museums, caged in zoos or digitized on television. The economic opportunities all point to a renaissance in nature appreciation, park visits, and new protected areas that can help Americans, and people everywhere, get through depressing times. As New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman writes, “Green is the new Red, White and Blue.”

(*1) Joshua Bishop, Sachin Kapila, Frank Hicks, Paul Mitchell and Francis Vorhies, Copyright 2008 by Shell Intl. Ltd., the IUCN, and the authors.
(*2) The McKinsey report, Pathways to a Low Carbon Economy, available online

By Dr. Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison

Following are excerpts from the article. Read the full article here.

The non-violence corollaries of Bhutan’s Buddhist legacy at first glance would appear unambiguous. The very founder of Bhutan’s dominant Drupka Kagyupa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism was the Venerable Jigten Sumgon (1143 -1217) a vegetarian like so many of the great teachers from Tibet, including Marpa, Milarepa and Padmasambhava. Buddhism commends complete abstinence from the consumption of flesh, or from being party to any form of harm to other life forms. In the Buddha’sMahaparinirvana Sutra, the Shakyamuni Buddha conveys to his Bodhisattva disciple, Kasyapa, “Oh Kasyapa! From now on, tell my disciples to refrain from eating any kind of meat.”⁴ Tibetan Buddhists largely refrain from any non-vegetarian consumption during the month of Buddha’s Birth and of his Enlightenment.5 In Bhutan, contemporary monastic tradition has, in some instances, also translated into a highly pro-active, if discrete stance with respect to saving animals from slaughter.

Ahimsa, the Jain principle of non-violence that was embraced by Mahatma Gandhi himself, derived from Buddha’s elder contemporary, Lord Mahavira, the 24th Jain Tirthankara. Gandhi recognized that while non-violence was one of the most important ideals worthy of human aspiration, he also believed that absolute nonviolence was not easily achieved. Nonetheless, one of Gandhi’s most powerful thoughts is encapsulated in his decree, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.⁶ In a similar vein, Albert Einstein wrote, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” Leonardo da Vinci had weighed in with the thought, “I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”

. . .

Just as Tibetan Buddhists try to refrain from any involvement in the destruction of animals during Holy periods, so too, do the Bhutanese. Discussions as to whether the consumption of meat is “un-Buddhist” constitute a very serious, ongoing debate within the country, but there is no escaping the reality that Bhutan, by conservative estimates, is no more than 15% vegetarian.

. . .

Bhutan, as with some other nations, including Suriname, Germany, New Zealand and Canada, has engendered large amounts of protected area proportionate to their land base. Bhutan has also inspired other nations to institute their own versions of Gross National Happiness. For example, Mongolia, Costa Rica, Iceland and the Netherlands have each established “well-being indicators.” But, no country other than Bhutan has enshrined such an all-encompassing primary forest canopy policy in terms of constitutionally protecting a sizeable portion of its in situ forest biodiversity. That, in and of itself, places Bhutan in an animal rights league of its own considering the suite of taxa, compounded by the global average of 3 million individuals per species, dwelling within such a canopy. That, most assuredly, represents animal protection at a spectacular level. Suriname and Canada each have more hectares of “avoided deforestation” to date. And, the nearly 100 million vegetarians in India (or roughly 9% of the entire nation, Hindu, Buddhist and Jain) obviously constitute the world’s largest non-violent footprint. But Bhutan’s Buddhist values and conservation moral compass are suggestive, at the policy and judicial levels, of a powerful combination of sophisticated understatement, restraint, and pragmatic, heartfelt strategy.

4. See “Nirvana Sutra”, Chapter 7, in Lord Buddha’s On the Four Aspects.
6. See Mahatma Gandhi’s speech, “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism”, The London Vegetarian Society, November 20, 1931.

By Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison

In this essay Tobias and Morrison provide a very brief overview of the Jain environmental orientation in terms of its relevancy to current global ecological issues. This contains excerpts; you’ll find the full article here.

Reigning doctrines of Jain tradition focus upon that which is most ecological of all: a light human footprint in the guise of the all-encompassing ahimsa, non-intervention or non-violence; aparigraha, non-possession; moksha marg, the path of purification to enlightenment; anekant, tolerance and non-absolutism; and satya, truth in all dealings.The collective energies of these callings have harbored stunning revelations, evident not only in Jain art and architecture but — most importantly — in the driving forces of an ancient vegetarian community that is global, vibrant and dedicated to peace. Peace itself might well be equated with non-violence and, hence, ecological integrity.

. . .

In 2008, India ranked 13th on the aforementioned Environmental Protection Index, the U.S. 7th. Sweden ranked number one. These rankings are ambiguous, to be sure. But were an equivalent index of environmental impact to examine communities specifically, I suspect the Jain aggregate might well be number one in the world, given their traditional aversions to industries that destroy nature and their refusal to engage in practices of animal agriculture or personal consumption of animal products. Even Mahayana Buddhist Bhutan, with its population of 630,000, is only 15% vegetarian, according to recent data, although that country’s Gross National Happiness Index has injected a fantastic ingredient of environmental conservation, personal satisfaction, ethical jurisprudence, good governance and indigenous spirituality into the formulas for extrapolating what a successful country really means in the modern world.

. . .

Conditions for farm animals in India are dreadful, but no more so than in most nations of the world, where approximately 50 billion (in addition to another 30 billion or more fish) are slaughtered annually for human consumption. The Jain model of non-violence could not strike a more powerful and iconic antidote to this crisis which is sweeping the planet. Indeed, by scientific consensus as much as 60% of all life forms on earth may well go extinct by mid-century if current consumption trends continue. That’s 60% of as many as a 100 million species, each harboring millions of individuals. While the average American is consuming 125 kilograms of meat per year – with many of those animals reared on cleared rainforest – a vegetarian diet actually saves at least one acre of rain forest each year. Data from the Eastern Ecuadorian Amazon in the late 1990s showed that as many as 30,000 to 60,000 species may be native to any one acre of rain forest. A single South American termite nest has been shown to contain approximately 3million individuals and in Pennsylvania, one acre of land was found to host 425 million creatures.1 After all the math is computed, it turns out that one individual who refrains from eating other creatures and pursues a path of deliberate non-violence may actually save billions upon billions of life forms.

Written by Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison
A Dancing Star Foundation Book for 2011
Published by Zorba Press

This robust consideration of 21st century conservation and animal protection utilizes New Zealand as a primary case study in conflict resolution. With New Zealand history, economics, art, conservation biology and contemporary industry, technology and environmentalism as the working sweep of metaphors, the book examines numerous instances of success and failure throughout the world, where the goal is non-violence, as well as the fruitful reconciliation of human life with the rest of the biological creation. Issues involving animal rights, animal liberation, ecological islands, new advances in immuno-contraception for controlling non-native invasive species and the evolution of a paradigm that can embrace large ecosystem protection, as well as that of individuals, are just some of the issues discussed in the book.

Other areas of focus concern the conversion of one way of life, one industrial or cottage industry paradigm to another based upon compassion, prudent long-term thinking and a salient recognition of what the authors describe as “destruction in increments” (or, in traditional terms, the “tragedy of the commons”). Choices, patterns and precedents are examined in detail which collectively define the challenges and moral tensions inherent to achieving ecological peace on earth for all concerned – from New Zealand to Bhutan; from Greenland to the United States; throughout the European Union, South America, Russia, China, India; and in extraordinary instances gleaned from past and present anthropological and ethological record

The book outlines, in sum, a new revolutionary vision for human collectives based upon compassion and pragmatic idealism. It argues that New Zealand is one of those extraordinarily complex, and inspired nations that can lead the way.

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.

—-

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.

—-

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.

—-

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.

DSF is proud to re-release this historic documentary, produced during the mid‐1980s. “Ahimsa” (which means non-violence or non-interference in Sanskrit) was the first major documentary to explore the spiritual/ecological world of the Jains. It premiered on Public Broadcasting throughout the U.S. in 1987 on Christmas Day. Subsequently, it was viewed in many other countries, at festivals and museums throughout the world, but has been unavailable for many years, until now. Produced by Ms. Marion Hunt, and released as a DVD with Direct Cinema Ltd., and the kind collaborative assistance of Rocky Mountain PBS (formerly KRMA-Channel 6/PBS‐Denver). Dancing Star Foundation wishes to convey a Special thanks to Ms. Donna Sanford, Director of Programming and Production at Rocky Mountain Public Television, and Mitchell Block, head of Direct Cinema, Ltd.

Ahimsa: Non-Violence is the first documentary to explore the traditions and practices of Jainism, an extraordinary religion whose adherents put into action their deep belief in nonviolence toward all living things. This commitment to ahimsa in all thought and deed leads the Jains not only to be strict vegetarians, but to take an active humanitarian role in caring for all animals. Mahatma Gandhi adopted ahimsa as a fundamental principle, as did Buddhism itself.

Ahimsa: Nonviolence examines this ancient and extremely subtle religion from the inside, providing a rare and intimate look at the people, the customs and the religious practices of the Jains. Featuring a fascinating panorama of both ritual and daily life shot throughout India, the film’s poignant interviews and thoughtful commentary make this an indispensable introduction for anyone interested in the Jain way of life. It is a magnificent overview of a comprehensive philosophy that offers hope and peace for the world.

Running time: 59 minutes, Year released: 2009
Close captioned?: N, Color?: Y
Avail. formats: dvd
ISBN: 9781559748209
Language: English, Subtitled?: N
For classroom?: Y, Study Guide?: N
Grade level: 10th and up

Other Credits:

Written, Directed and Executive Produced by Michael Tobias
Produced by Marion Hunt