A section from the journey

Mahavira and the Jain Path

Another great seeker of this age was Vardhamana, called Mahavira, the great hero. A common mistake is to call him the founder of Jainism. He was not. He was its twenty-fourth Tirthankara, a ford-maker who renews an ancient path. Before him stood Parshvanatha and others. Mahavira renounced everything, even clothing, and taught five great vows. The first and deepest is ahimsa, non-harm, carried further here than almost anywhere.

In this same crowded age of seekers stood another great figure, the founder, as it were, of yet another living path. But that very word, founder, is where we must be careful. So let us go gently and get it right, for the truth here is easy to mistake.

He was born Vardhamana, a prince of a clan near Vaishali, in the heart of the river plain. The world remembers him by a title he earned: , which means the great hero. Like the Buddha, like so many in this age, he left his comfort and his rank to seek release from suffering.

Here is the thing most often gotten wrong. People say Mahavira founded the religion called Jainism. He did not. The path is far older than he is. Mahavira did not begin it. He renewed it, and gave it the shape it has carried ever since.

The Jains count a long line of great teachers, twenty-four in all, stretching back into deep time. Each is called a , which means a ford-maker. Picture a wide, dangerous river, the river of suffering and rebirth. A ford is a place shallow enough to cross. A ford-maker is one who finds that crossing and shows it to others. Mahavira is the twenty-fourth and last of them for this age.

Just before him came the twenty-third ford-maker, , remembered as a real teacher of an earlier time. So when Mahavira began to teach, he was not opening a new road. He was clearing and deepening one that seekers had walked long before him. Remember this whenever you meet the Jain path: it is ancient, and Mahavira is its renewer, not its inventor.

Mahavira's own renunciation was severe and complete. He gave up his home, his family, his wealth. In the end he gave up even his clothing, and wandered owning nothing whatever, bearing heat and cold and insult without complaint. For him, true freedom asked for letting go of all of it, down to the last thread.

At the centre of his teaching stand five great vows, the frame of the whole Jain life. They are: to harm no living thing, to speak truth, to take only what is given, to live in chastity, and to hold no possessions. Five clear lines, drawn around a life turned wholly toward release.

The first of these vows is the deepest, and it is the one the Jains carry further than almost anyone on earth. It is , non-harm to every living being, down to the smallest. A devout Jain monk will sweep the ground before each step, lest he crush an insect, and strain his water, and cover his mouth, so as not to harm even the tiniest life. We will sit with this great idea, ahimsa, on its own in a moment, for it becomes a thread woven through the whole later story.

So the Jain path, like the Buddha's, is its own. It is ancient, distinct, and living still. It is not a branch of any other tradition, and we will not treat it as one. We honour it as the Jains do: a hard, shining road of utter non-harm, with Mahavira as the great hero who renewed it for this age.

Mahavira is honoured not for inventing his path but for faithfully renewing one handed down to him. Where in your own life have you kept something alive by carrying it forward, rather than by making it new?