Jain Center of Southern California hosts interfaith climate action event

Sara Tiersma
January 14, 2025

I ask pardon of all creatures.
May all creatures pardon me.
May I have friendship with all beings.
And hostility with none.

UC Irvine Professor of Religious Studies Brianne Donaldson led participants in this Jain recitation as part of her welcome to an evening of reflections on the element of air in science and religion.

Co-sponsored by UC Irvine’s Program in Religious Studies, the Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies, and WUICAN, Air: An Interfaith Exchange focused on air not only as a necessity for life, but also as an element that connects all beings on the Earth with special attention on Jainism and its teaching of Ahimsa, or non-violence. Hosted at the Jain Center of Southern California, attendees were asked to remove their shoes when entering the sacred space before being invited to join together over a collection of vegetarian snacks served in the Jain style.

After the light meal and welcome, high school student Shrey Mehta recited the Iriyavahiyam Sutra while Professor Donaldson translated. The sutra encourages Jains to ask for forgiveness and be vigilant against violence to any living being.

Christopher Key Chapple, Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University, led attendees through a series of breathing exercises.

UC Irvine student Trista Lara, winner of the 2024 Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies New Approach (Non-Animal) Methodologies in Research Grant, shared her experience learning about alternatives to toxicological animal testing in scientific research. She now plans on doing an additional project on cultivating pathos in scientific research.

Aylin Camacho, Program Manager at GREEN-MPNA (Getting Residents Engaged in Empowering Neighborhoods; Madison Park Neighborhood Association) and Andrea De Vizcaya Ruiz, Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at UC Irvine’s Wen School of Population and Public Health, shared their work fighting for climate justice in Santa Ana. Their bi-lingual community-based research provides environmental data to the City Council.

Images from Air: An Interfaith Exchange, from left to right: Andrea De Vizcaya Ruiz, Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at UC Irvine’s Wen School of Population and Public Health, and Aylin Camacho, Program Manager at GREEN-MPNA, speak about air quality from an environmental justice and public health perspective; Dr. Nitin Shah stands in front of the Wooden Temple at the Jain Center (according to the Jain community, this 35-foot teakwood structure is an architectural replica of a well-known Jain temple in Palitana, India, that was featured in the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, MO) while leading a tour of the space; Lamont Hartman, Pastor of Reconcile Church, offers a breathing prayer on racial and environmental justice. Photo credit: Munyao Kilolo and Matthew Hartman, UCHRI

Lamont Hartman, Pastor at Reconcile Church, and Janak Kaur, volunteer at United Sikh Mission, delivered reflections on air from their unique faith practices. Hartman asked the group to breathe in the injustices that disproportionately restrict air to communities of color and to breathe out the hope for justice.

Kaur shared how in Sikhism air is the guru, the teacher and connector of all, a shared lifeline that needs to be protected.

Thirteen-year old Pragya Jain performed an interpretive dance in the classical tradition based on the Iriyavahiyam Sutra.

To close, Professor Donaldson led the group in a final recitation, or exhale:

One who knows the inner self
knows the outer world.
One who knows the outer world
knows the inner self.

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Sara Tiersma is a senior at the University of California, Irvine, where she is majoring in Literary Journalism. She is a 2024-2025 WUICAN Climate Communications Fellow with the UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI).

Air: An Interfaith Exchange was hosted by the Interfaith Working Group of the Wildland-Urban Interface Climate Action Network (WUICAN, pronounced “we can”). Housed at UC Irvine, WUICAN is a consortium of community-based organizations, California Native American Tribes, land managers and universities in Southern California working together to address the climate crisis. This Air event followed the initial Elemental Climate Conversation on Water in May. Two additional events, highlighting Fire and Earth, will take place in 2025, followed by a Climate Action Festival on October 11-12, 2025 featuring the work of WUICAN partners and interfaith groups.

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WUICAN acknowledges our presence on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Acjachemen and Tongva Peoples, who still hold strong cultural, spiritual and physical ties to this region.