Jainism is one of the oldest religious traditions of India, yet it is far less familiar in the West than Hinduism or Buddhism. That is somewhat surprising because Jain ideas have influenced Indian culture for centuries, particularly its emphasis on nonviolence, vegetarianism, self-discipline, and detachment from material possessions. Jainism shares concepts such as karma, reincarnation, and liberation with other Indian religions, but it develops those ideas in some distinctive—and sometimes remarkably rigorous—ways. At the center of Jainism is the belief that living beings possess souls and that liberation comes as the soul is freed from the karma that binds it to the continuing cycle of death and rebirth.
Mahavira and the Tirthankaras
Jainism has no founder in quite the same sense that Christianity has Jesus or Islam has Muhammad. Jains believe their religion has been taught repeatedly throughout an eternal history by enlightened teachers called Tirthankaras, literally “ford-makers”—people who have found a way across the river of rebirth and shown others how to cross it. There are twenty-four Tirthankaras in the present cosmic age, with Mahavira being the twenty-fourth and most recent. Historically, Mahavira lived in ancient India and became the great organizer and teacher of the tradition that developed into Jainism.
Mahavira renounced ordinary life and pursued an extremely demanding ascetic path. After attaining enlightenment, he taught a way of liberation based upon right faith or vision, right knowledge, and right conduct. These became known as the Three Jewels of Jainism. Unlike Christianity, Jainism doesn’t teach that humanity needs to be reconciled to a Creator who has been offended by sin. In fact, Jainism doesn’t teach that the universe was created by God at all. The cosmos is understood as eternal, without a beginning or a creator, and liberation ultimately depends upon freeing one’s own soul from karmic bondage.
Karma That Sticks to You
Most Westerners have heard someone say, “That’s karma,” usually meaning that what goes around comes around. Jainism means something considerably more specific by the term. Karma isn’t merely a divine scorecard keeping track of good and bad behavior. Jain thought describes karma as a kind of subtle material substance that becomes attached to the soul as a consequence of actions and passions. The soul is naturally capable of perfect knowledge and bliss, but accumulated karma obscures and weighs it down, keeping it trapped in the cycle of rebirth.
The goal is therefore not simply to accumulate enough good karma to outweigh the bad. Even favorable karma remains part of the system that binds the soul to rebirth. The ultimate objective is to stop attracting new karma and eliminate what has already accumulated. When the soul is completely freed from karmic matter, it attains moksha—liberation from the cycle of birth and death. This helps explain why Jain ethics can appear extraordinarily demanding. Every action matters because actions affect the condition of the soul.
Ahimsa: Do No Harm
Perhaps no principle is more closely associated with Jainism than ahimsa, or nonviolence. Many religions teach compassion, but Jainism carries the principle unusually far because it regards life as extending well beyond human beings. Animals, insects and plants are treated as living beings deserving moral consideration. For that reason, vegetarianism has historically been closely associated with Jain practice, and many contemporary Jains also avoid products they believe involve unnecessary harm to animals.
The strictest Jain ascetics take precautions that can seem astonishing to outsiders. The objective isn’t merely to avoid murder or cruelty but to minimize injury to living creatures wherever reasonably possible. That concern explains practices associated with Jain monks and nuns such as carefully watching where they walk and taking extraordinary care not to destroy small forms of life. The point isn’t that an insect has the same practical role in society as a human being. It is that life itself deserves reverence and that harming another living being has spiritual consequences for the person doing the harm.
The Five Vows
Ahimsa stands at the head of five major ethical vows: nonviolence, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, and non-possession or nonattachment. Jain monks and nuns undertake these as the Mahavratas, or Great Vows, in an exceptionally strict form. Lay Jains aren’t ordinarily expected to live with the same degree of renunciation; Jain ethics provides limited forms of the vows that can be practiced while maintaining a family, occupation, and ordinary responsibilities.
The final vow, aparigraha, is particularly interesting in a consumer society. It means considerably more than giving away a few things you no longer need. Possessions encourage attachment, and attachment feeds desires that keep the soul entangled with the material world. Jain teachers therefore emphasize limiting possessions and learning to distinguish between genuine needs and endlessly expanding wants. Jain organizations today frequently connect this ancient principle with environmental responsibility and reduced consumption.
The Elephant in the Room
Another distinctive Jain idea is anekantavada, usually translated as “many-sidedness” or non-absolutism. Human beings see reality from limited perspectives, so a statement may express one genuine aspect of reality without exhausting everything that can truthfully be said about it. This doesn’t simply mean that nothing is true. Rather, it encourages humility about the limitations of one’s perspective.
A famous Indian illustration—found in different forms outside Jainism as well—is the story of several blind men encountering an elephant. One touches its trunk and describes the elephant one way; another touches its leg and describes something quite different; another encounters the ear. They appear to contradict one another because each has encountered only part of the animal. Jain philosophy developed a sophisticated approach to knowledge around the recognition that reality may be more complex than the perspective from which an individual happens to observe it.
There is something attractive about the humility behind that idea. Christians can certainly agree that human knowledge is limited. But Christianity also claims that God has revealed truths about Himself and the world that aren’t merely one perspective among several. The question isn’t simply whether our knowledge is limited—it obviously is—but whether God has spoken clearly enough for some things to be known with confidence.
Digambaras and Svetambaras
Jainism isn’t completely uniform. Its two principal traditions are the Digambara and Svetambara branches. Their differences involve scripture, monastic practice, the lives of important religious figures, and questions concerning liberation. The names themselves reveal one of their most visible historical differences. Svetambara means “white-clad,” referring to ascetics who wear white garments, while Digambara means “sky-clad,” reflecting the ideal of complete renunciation traditionally associated with male Digambara monks.
These differences shouldn’t obscure how much the traditions share. Both are recognizably Jain, honoring the Tirthankaras and emphasizing liberation through purification of the soul, nonviolence, self-control, and detachment. As with Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and most other long-lived religions, Jainism has developed internal traditions rather than remaining a completely uniform movement.
Monks, Nuns, and Ordinary Jains
It would be easy to read about extreme Jain asceticism and assume that every Jain lives like a monk. They don’t. Jainism has long distinguished between ascetics and householders. Monks and nuns pursue renunciation much more completely, while laypeople marry, raise families, work, own property, and participate in society while attempting to apply Jain principles within ordinary life. The household vows are deliberately less demanding than the Great Vows undertaken by ascetics.
This distinction is important because Jainism isn’t merely an abstract philosophy about avoiding harm. It has produced communities, temples, festivals, devotional practices, pilgrimage traditions, charitable institutions, and family customs. Jains may worship before images of the Tirthankaras, but this shouldn’t automatically be interpreted through the Christian idea of worshiping a creator God. The Tirthankaras aren’t creators who intervene in the world to answer prayers. They are liberated beings and models of the path the worshiper hopes to follow.
Jainism and Christianity
Jainism and Christianity share several ethical concerns that can make the two appear surprisingly close at first glance. Both can praise self-control, honesty, generosity, compassion, freedom from greed, and concern for others. A Christian reading the Jain warnings about material attachment may even be reminded of Jesus’ warnings about storing up treasures on earth. But underneath those similarities are profoundly different understandings of God, humanity, sin, salvation, and the universe.
Christianity begins with a personal Creator: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Jainism has no corresponding Creator. Christianity understands humanity’s fundamental problem in terms of sin and broken relationship with God; Jainism understands the soul as bound by karma and rebirth. Christianity offers reconciliation with God through Christ and ultimately resurrection; Jainism seeks liberation of the soul from karmic matter and the cycle of reincarnation. Christianity therefore places salvation decisively in the work and grace of God, while the Jain path places enormous emphasis upon purification, knowledge, discipline, and the individual’s progress toward liberation.
Those differences make Jainism particularly interesting for Christian study. It isn’t simply another version of Hinduism, nor is it Buddhism with a different vocabulary. It presents its own highly developed understanding of reality and one of the world’s most demanding applications of nonviolence. Even where Christians ultimately disagree with its view of God and salvation, Jainism poses questions worth considering: How seriously should we take violence? How tightly should we hold our possessions? How much of our behavior is driven by appetite and attachment? And how willing are we to recognize the limits of our own perspective?
Understanding another religion doesn’t require believing it. Sometimes understanding it well simply helps us see more clearly both what our neighbor believes and what we believe ourselves.