saman

As part of his reforms to make the Jain tradition better able to address the challenges of 20th century life, the Terapanthi leader Acharya Tulsi has established a new, lower order of male and female ascetics, called samans and samanis. This order is specially charged with serving the Jain community abroad. Hence, unlike other Jain mendicants, they are granted a special dispensation to use mechanical means of transport and to eat food that was specially prepared for them. In their teaching, samans and samanis emphasis a new form of Jain meditation called Prekshadhyana.