A theme that is once again explored in Laidlaw's article is the very intimate connection between the body and spirit. He states that "dietary austerities are ways of cleaning, purifying and strengthening the body, making it more resilient and therefore a better instrument for the purification of the soul". (185)
Laidlaw gives many of the benefits of reducing the body's bulk from fasting which includes: being less prone to illness, less needful of sleep, less prone to the distractions of sexual desires. They continue to fast and improve their bodies until death. The Jain people fast and live a successful religious life in order to have "samadhi-maran" or a good death. A good life is a life worth leaving, and fasting and austere living points them in that direction.
I thought this was very interesting because the author brings up suicide in the Christian world view and compares the practice of fasting till death practiced in the Jain religion. He considers the ethics in both cases. However, the Jain people honor this bodily connection to their spirits and their wish for a good death, but this does seem controversial to me because fasting until death lead to situations where you give up more than your body and life. The article begins with an account of Amarchand-ji, who fasted until death, but he had a family and was relatively young when he died. How did he justify this act when he leave behind connections to people and his family that were not only his to take?
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