Jainism has employed the word “yoga” for more than two millennia and has been in constant dialogue with yoga as a spiritual discipline. Its greatest teachers are known as Jinas (victors), humans who conquered the difficulties inherent in the cycle of rebirth and ascended to an eternal abode of blissful consciousness. Perfectly still yet completely alert, this luminous Jina meditates in lotus posture (padmasana) with each foot folded onto the opposite thigh. The warmly radiant marble evokes the luminosity that imbues the realized body of a Jina; its whiteness signifies a soul unfettered by karma.

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Jina
India, Rajasthan, probably vicinity of Mount Abu
1160 (Samvat 1217)
Marble
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund, 2000.98