The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1795 page)

 
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(Yid., ‘neutral’). Food which is classified by the Jewish authorities as neutral. It is neither milk nor meat and therefore under the rules of
kashrut
can be eaten with either. See
DIETARY LAWS (JUDAISM)
.

 
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Pary
sana
.

Jain
festival
of repentance, fasting, self-discipline, and universal goodwill, held over an eight (
vet
mbara
) or ten (
Digambara
) day period in the months of Shr
vana/Bh
drapada (Aug./Sept.) when Jain monks and nuns are in retreat for the monsoon season. It is the most distinctive and important of Jain festivals, when the laity seek forgiveness for any misdeeds of the previous year and spend time with their ascetic leaders performing
s
m
yikas
, listening to regular sermons and attending rituals in the temple.

 
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(1623–62)
. French mathematician and philosopher. From 1646 he was closely involved with the
Jansenists
and the convent of Port-Royal. On 23 Nov. 1654 he experienced a conversion, recorded in his
Mémorial
(but found stitched into his coat, known as Pascal's amulet), in which he discovered ‘the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the men of science’. When the Jansenist, Arnauld, was condemned in 1655, he wrote his
Lettres provinciales
in which he satirized the laxity implicit in
Jesuit
theories of grace and moral theology. In his
Pensées
, published posthumously from his notes, Pascal saw Christianity as lying beyond exact reason and apprehended by the heart which dares to risk. He is associated also with his ‘wager’: if we believe God exists and he does, the reward is eternal happiness; if he does not exist, we lose nothing; and the same is true if we disbelieve and he does not exist; whereas if we disbelieve and he does exist, we have lost eternal life. On the mathematics of probability (see further, G. Schlesinger,
Religion and Scientific Method
, 1977), the wager should be taken up
unless
the existence of God can be conclusively disproved—which it cannot.