For my next trick, I'm going to turn water into...funk!

As I sat atop the rocking HSBC tower in canary wharf today, watching the tiny people below getting picked up and dropped by the gale force winds that shook the country today, I thought:

"My. that's some mighty strong wind out there"

If (according to Jainism) the wind has a soul, and the water has a soul, and the wind is blatantly upsetting the water; does the wind get bad karma? Ten people died today as a direct result of the wind. Does that mean that the soul of the wind will come back reincarnated as an even lesser single sense ajiva being?

As I had mentioned earlier, is it right that we should pay the penance of actions performed in our past lives through our current life? I can't tell if I had a past life, and if I did I can't remember it. Many may argue that they would not want to be punished for something they do not remember doing. Let's turn this around: if someone hurt me in my past life, and their soul was reborn as one of my friends (or for that sake, a stranger), I wouldn't want to see them hurt. I can't remember what they did. They can't remember what they did. They are of no threat to me now - why should they be punished?

I like the idea of reincarnation and karma to attain salvation - but sometimes bad things happen to you because of circumstance. If you walk around in rough neighbourhoods, you'll probably get mugged. If you smoke, you'll probably get cancer. If you steal, you'll get caught and adopt the title of 'girlfriend' for some burly (yet sensitive) in-mate. One may argue that it's karma that puts us in the compromised position in the first place. If this is the case, are we just part of the deterministic world-view of causality; embroiled in a neverending chain of events according to the laws of karma? Are we simply running through the pre-defined (brownian) motions?

At that point my thoughts were rudely interrupted by the call of work. For those who know me, I have a slight penchant to start ranting, and I promised myself I would say something interesting that did not involve religion (me! limit my religion rants! I got a bloomin' E for GCSE religion!?). Over the past weeks I've become very interested in a number of blogs - one of which is 'Enterprise Architecture: Thought Leadership'. The term thought leadership (always italics - it looks better that way!) has become an almost sacred scripture in my company (pardon the religious term, but one could say it's been canonified). The blogs author is James McGovern. He's a great author on enterprise architecture. Like a real author. Books and everthing! I came across this diagram on one of his posts - titled 'How to be an expert'





Having trouble? The number one route to becoming an expert in your field is to be passionate about it. Want more? Check out the home for creating passionate users: headrush.

Right - topical discussion? check. religion? check. work? check.

wonderful, this could be the most boring blog post ever created.

Me Tarzan, You Jain

Deeps' and I are attending a series of lectures on Jainism - one of the oldest surviving religions in the world, and Deepti's own religion. Very interesting; I'm sure I must have ended up taking a few things out of context - I had to surpress a number of questions, didn't want to get a reputation of being a troublemaker. I'll save that for the next lecture!

I'm sure none of you want to hear the details - read on for a brief summary of what we learnt:

1. Vardhamana Mahavira (Lord Mahavira) popularised Jainism. Many believe he was the founder of the religion, although Jains believe the religion goes further back - dating all the way through to antiquity - Lord Mahavira was the 24th teacher.

2. Mahavira and Siddhartha Guatama, the founder of Buddhism, lived at the same time. In fact, it's assumed that when Siddhartha Guatama left his family to renounce worldly possesions, he took refuge at a Jain monastery. Several Buddhist teachings refer to Jain teachings, and Mahavira himself - evidence that Jainism was in fact an established religion at the time of Mahavira.

3. The cycle of life and rebirth (samsara) and moksha (liberation from the cycle) are central beliefs in Jainism. There is no all powerful God as such - rather, every soul may reach a Godlike state, which allows the eternal soul to attain infinite wisdom.

4. Through lives of discipline, the soul can be reincarnated as a tirthankara - a 'teacher'. Each tirthankara, like the islamic rasul may form a new religion.

5. Jains believe the universe was not created, but has always existed, and will last for an eternity. The only quality that reality has is the fact for change. The concept of infinity and eternity are common in Jainism - after all, what could possibly exist outside of an finite universe, or before a non-eternal timeline?

Who knows, I may end up getting some certification points from Birkbeck (U of London) - my PhD in theology may not be a pipedream after all!