Life All Around: Soul in Jainism

A panentheistic connectivity flourishes in a Jain conception of cosmology even as this chapter demonstrates that Jainism has no place for the theistic component of panentheism. It elucidates the possibilities and interactions of panentheism within a religious tradition that identifies as atheistic. Here again, as we see in other forms of panentheism across the spectrum of the world's religious traditions, the glue of connectivity generates a moral and vivifying sentiment within religious reflection. Within the radically pluralistic vision of Jainism, the chapter points towards connectivity, a panentheistic recognition of the life within all things, even to the level of minute one-sensed, cellular beings, living in rocks, wood, even cowdung, which generates a sentiment of compassion for others, even without the specter of a divine force ruling over all.