Cogen Bohanec, MA, PhD - Assistant Professor in Sanskrit & Jain Stuies at Arihanta Institute / Faculty

Cogen Bohanec, MA, PhD

Assistant Professor in Sanskrit & Jain Stuies at Arihanta Institute

MA Faculty

Cogen Bohanec currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in Sanskrit and Jain Studies at Arihanta Institute where he teaches various courses on Jain philosophy and its applications. In addition, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Claremont School of Theology (CST) where he teaches Sanskrit and Gujarati, and he has taught numerous classes on South Asian Culture & Religions and Sanskrit language at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley. Dr. Bohanec specializes in the Jain and Hindu traditions, comparative dharma traditions, philosophy of religion, theo-ethics (virtue ethics, and environmental and animal ethics in particular), and Sanskrit language and literature, and has numerous publications in those areas, particularly in the fields of Jain and Hindu Studies amongst other disciplines. He has a PhD in “Historical and Cultural Studies of Religion” with an emphasis in Hindu Studies from GTU, where his research emphasized ancient Indian languages, literature, and philosophical systems. He also holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Institute of Buddhist Studies at GTU where his research primarily involved translations of Pāli Buddhist scriptures in conversation with the philology of the Hindu Upaniṣads. He is the author of “Bhakti Ethics, Emotions and Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Metaethics” (Lexington, 2024), an interdisciplinary study that frames traditional Hindu themes of ecotheology, ecofeminist theology, feminist care ethics, within a framework of virtue ethics in conversation with a bhakti-based psychology of emotions. Currently he is largely engaged in publication and research on various aspects of the Jain tradition, emphasizing translations and analyses of Jain Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Gujarati texts, but is also publishing academic works on various topics within the Hindu tradition.

Research

In general, Dr. Bohanec’s scholarship focuses on the comparative philosophies between major dharma traditions (Jain dharma, Buddhism, Hinduism), within these traditions, and in dialogue with Western theoretical frameworks. He specializes in Sanskrit and Indian literature but has engaged in textual research in a variety of languages such as Pāli, Gujarati, Hindi, Bengali and Ardhamāgadhī. By employing methods of textual hermeneutics, philology, literary criticism, and translation, Dr. Bohanec seeks to nuance the academic understanding of dharma traditions by employing the lexicon of Western philosophy in a way that is vigilant against the possibility of distorting these traditions yet renders them more accessible to the Western milieu. His research in Jain studies focuses on Jain philosophy of language and mantras, Jain ethics (particularly virtue ethics, and ecotheological and animal ethics), modern Jain ācāryas (Śrīmad Rājcandra, and Ācārya Suśīl Kumār in particular), Jain yoga texts, interfaith dialogue and peacebuilding, and comparative Jain and Gandhian studies, amongst other topics.

Dr. Bohanec’s published books include his monograph, “Bhakti Ethics, Emotions and Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Metaethics” (Lexington, 2024) which is a refurbished excerpt from his PhD dissertation (“Process and Dialectic in Hindu Thought: Gaudiya Vaiṣṇava Systematic Theology and Ethics”). He was the editor for “An Introduction to Jain Philosophy” (D.K. Printworld, 2019), a book by Dr. Parveen Jain (Arihanta Institute) based on the translations of Ācārya Suśīl Kumār, and was also Co-Editor in Chief (with Dr. Rita Sherma and Dr. Purushottama Bilimoria of the Graduate Theological Union) for “Contemplative Studies and Jainism: Meditation, Devotion, Prayer, and Worship” (Routledge, 2023). In addition, he has fourteen other academic publications of journal articles and book chapters, and several other non-academic publications, and several more academic in the works.

Current book publication projects include his work as a co-editor on an academic volume with Dr. Christopher Jain Miller (Arihanta Institute/Claremont School of Theology) entitled “Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Studies of Jain Social Engagement” (SUNY, 2025). He is also the co-author with Dr. Parveen Jain on an upcoming book, “The Philosophy Behind the Universal Jñāna Embedded in Mantras: Based on the Notes Dictated by Ācārya Suśīl Kumār” (D.K. Printworld, 2025) which investigates a Jain theory of mantra and philosophy of language. Dr. Bohanec is currently researching and writing three other books including “The Live and Teachings of Śrīmad Rājcandra: The Profound Bhakti of a Modern Jain Ācārya” which provides an overview of various themes in the life of Śrīmad Rājcandra (1867-1901) and shows how his writings underscore those themes, Jain Yoga Philosophy: Pragmatism as a Method for Interfaith Peacebuilding,” a philosophical engagement with various Jain yoga texts that proposes a yoga as a Jain model of interfaith dialogue, and an upcoming primer in “Research Gujarati” that he is co-authoring with Dr. Venu Mehta (Claremont School of Theology).

Publications

Courses

Yoga and Meditation for Daily Life – Stress Management

Introduction to Jain Philosophy

The Ātma-siddhi of Śrīmad Rājcandra: Jain Philosophy for Modern Times

Introduction to Jain Yoga

The Bhagavad Gītā: A Jain Perspective

Peacebuilding & Interfaith Dialogue in the Jain Tradition

Toward a Jain Ecotheology

Mokṣamāla and the Movement of Śrīmad Rājcandra: Part 1

Mokṣamāla and the Movement of Śrīmad Rājcandra: Part 2

Research Sanskrit: Level 1 (of 2)