About Jainism
Jainism is an Indian tradition centred on non-violence, self-restraint, and the belief that every living thing has a soul capable of liberation. It recognises no creator god: the universe is uncreated and eternal, and each soul is responsible for its own release.
That last sentence is doing more work than it looks. With no creator there is nobody to petition and no grace to receive, so the entire account of how a soul gets free has to sit inside the soul and what has attached to it. Everything below follows from that, and the pages go into each of them properly.
The teaching, one idea at a time
- Ahimsa अहिंसा
Non-violence, drawn more widely than in any other tradition: not only killing, but harm in thought, speech and inattention, extended to forms of life most systems do not count.
- Anekantavada अनेकान्तवाद
The doctrine that reality has many aspects and that any single account of it is partial — an epistemology that works as an ethic of argument.
- Karma कर्म
Not a ledger kept elsewhere but a subtle physical substance that adheres to the soul through action, obscuring qualities the soul already has.
- The three jewels रत्नत्रय
Right faith, right knowledge and right conduct — held together rather than in sequence, because any one of them alone is incomplete.
- The five vows पंच व्रत
Ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya and aparigraha — taken absolutely by ascetics and proportionately by householders. The difference is degree, not kind.
- Jiva and ajiva जीव और अजीव
Everything that exists is either soul or non-soul. Souls are innumerable and individual, and are found in beings most systems do not count as alive.
- The seven tattvas सात तत्त्व
The whole of the doctrine compressed into seven categories, from soul to liberation. Learning them is where a Jain education traditionally begins.
- The fourteen stages गुणस्थान
The ladder from complete delusion to liberation, in fourteen stages — including the one the tradition insists most souls fall back down from.
- The universe लोक
Uncreated, eternal, finite in extent and shaped like a standing figure — with the liberated at the very top and no one governing any of it.
- Digambara and Svetambara दिगंबर और श्वेतांबर
One teaching, two traditions, separated over monastic possession, the survival of the canon, and whether a woman can attain liberation in that life.
- The mendicant path श्रमण
Monks and nuns who own almost nothing, walk everywhere, beg their food, and stop for the monsoon — the discipline the lay community is organised around supporting.
Glossary
Every term defined across those pages, in one place. It is derived from them rather than maintained separately — a second list of the same words would be out of date within a month, and the one that got missed would be the one you came for.
- Agama आगम
- the Svetambara canon, redacted at Valabhi
- ajiva अजीव
- non-soul
- aloka
- the infinite empty space beyond it, in which motion is impossible
- anuvrata अणुव्रत
- the lesser vows, the same five scaled to householder life
- aparigraha अपरिग्रह
- non-attachment; in practice, a limit set on possessions
- arambha
- the unavoidable harm of ordinary occupation and household life
- asrava आस्रव
- the inflow of karmic matter towards the soul
- avasarpini अवसर्पिणी
- the descending half-cycle of time; we are in its fifth age
- bandha बंध
- bondage: the binding of karma to the soul
- chaturmas चातुर्मास
- the four-month rainy-season retreat in one place
- dharma / adharma
- here the media of motion and of rest, not ethics
- Digambara दिगंबर
- sky-clad: the tradition whose advanced monks possess nothing
- ekendriya
- one-sensed beings — earth, water, fire, air and plant bodies
- gochari
- the alms round, taking a little from many households
- gunasthana गुणस्थान
- a stage of spiritual quality; there are fourteen
- himsa हिंसा
- harm or injury — ahimsa is its negation
- jayana
- careful conduct: doing what must be done with the least harm possible
- jiva जीव
- soul; that which has consciousness
- kashaya कषाय
- the passions — anger, pride, deceit, greed — that make karma adhere
- kevala jnana केवल ज्ञान
- omniscience — the thirteenth stage
- loka लोक
- the inhabited universe, finite in extent
- mahavrata महाव्रत
- the great vows, taken by ascetics without qualification
- mithyatva मिथ्यात्व
- the first stage: wrong belief, or delusion
- moksha मोक्ष
- liberation: the soul freed of all karma
- naya नय
- a standpoint; the analysis of the viewpoints a claim can be made from
- nikshepa
- the analysis of the senses in which a word is being used
- nirjara निर्जरा
- shedding karma already bound, chiefly through austerity
- pudgala पुद्गल
- matter, in the sense of that which combines and divides
- punya / papa
- merit and demerit; counted separately in some enumerations
- ratnatraya रत्नत्रय
- the three jewels together
- sallekhana सल्लेखना
- the vow of fasting to death, undertaken only when death is already near
- samiti
- the five carefulnesses — in walking, speech, alms, handling and disposal
- samvara संवर
- stopping the inflow
- samyak charitra सम्यक् चारित्र
- right conduct
- samyak darshana सम्यक् दर्शन
- right faith: seeing reality as it is
- samyak jnana सम्यक् ज्ञान
- right knowledge
- saptabhangi
- the sevenfold predication that syadvada is formalised as
- Shatkhandagama
- the Scripture in Six Parts, the earliest surviving Digambara text
- shramana श्रमण
- one who strives; a mendicant
- siddha सिद्ध
- a liberated soul
- siddhashila सिद्धशिला
- the place at the summit where liberated souls remain
- Svetambara श्वेतांबर
- white-clad: the tradition whose mendicants wear white robes
- syadvada स्याद्वाद
- qualified assertion — marking a claim with the respect in which it holds
- tattva तत्त्व
- a fundamental category or truth
Written to be read by someone outside the tradition as well as inside it. Where the Digambara and Svetambara traditions differ, the page says so and gives both — see Digambara and Svetambara — and where a claim is what tradition holds rather than what history can evidence, it says that too.