Jaina Teacher, in Humble Garb

Summary

Leona Smith Kremser’s piece is a meditative poem that uses the humble earthworm as a metaphor for spiritual teaching. The speaker begins in mourning for a fallen pillar that had sustained her life and imagines her soul supported not by worldly structures but by the everlasting pillar of Jain truth. She reflects on change and suffering—an earthworm floundering in a mudhole becomes an emblem of the helpless creatures that Jain ethics seeks to protect. Despite the creature’s lowliness, the speaker sees divinity in its striving for life. Chanting the Jaina Mahāmantra, she feels compassion and dedicates herself to service. The poem moves through vivid imagery—amethyst clouds, chanting worms, the empty day passing into evening—and concludes with a direct appeal to the earthworm as a teacher. Addressing the creature as a Jaina guru in humble garb, the poet extols the principle of ahiṃsā (non‑injury) and the equality of all souls. She vows to learn from the earthworm’s tenacity and to serve living beings, so that emptiness need not fill an empty heart. In a final blessing, she urges all mourners to rise from their grief into the revelation that righteous thought, word and deed give life meaning. The poem thus intertwines personal loss with the Jain commitment to compassion, non‑violence and spiritual discipline.