9.11 — Jainism and Sikhism

Two complete traditions, separated by two thousand years, and both begin by refusing something.

Jainism

The tradition holds a line of twenty-four tirthankaras — "ford-makers," those who make a crossing possible. The twenty-third, Parshvanatha, is probably historical, around the ninth or eighth century BCE. **The twenty-fourth is Mahavira, a contemporary of the Buddha, in the same region, in the same intellectual ferment (6.1).

He was born into a clan republic family, left at thirty, practised extreme austerity for twelve years, and taught for thirty. The parallels with the Buddha are exact except for one thing: where the Buddha rejected austerity and found the middle way (6.3), Mahavira went further into it.

The core claims

Every living thing has a soul — jiva — and the souls are countless and eternal. **Not only animals: plants, and — distinctively — beings in earth, water, fire and air.

Karma is physical. This is Jainism's most distinctive doctrine. Karma is not a moral accounting; it is a subtle material substance that adheres to the soul as a result of action and weighs it down.

Which produces a very specific practice. You must stop new karma sticking, and burn off what has already stuck. Stopping is done by restraint; burning off is done by austerity.

And liberation is the soul, freed of all accumulated matter, rising to the top of the universe and remaining there in omniscient bliss.

Ahimsa, taken all the way

Every tradition in this volume teaches non-harm. Jainism is the one that did not stop.

Strict vegetarianism, and beyond it: no root vegetables, because uprooting a plant kills it and disturbs the organisms in the soil.

Monks sweep the path in front of them so as not to tread on insects. They filter water. Some wear a cloth over the mouth to avoid inhaling small creatures.

Occupations involving harm are prohibited, which is why Jain communities historically concentrated in trade, finance and later in professions — a whole community's economic profile shaped by an ethical rule.

And the practice of sallekhana — voluntary fasting to death, undertaken by the very old or terminally ill under strict conditions, as a final act of non-attachment. It remains legally and ethically contested in India and the tradition defends it as distinct from suicide, on grounds of the state of mind involved.

Anekantavada — the doctrine that deserves to be famous

And Jainism's real philosophical contribution, which is under-known and excellent.

Anekantavada — "the doctrine of non-one-sidedness." Reality is complex, and any single statement about it captures only one aspect.

The image is the blind men and the elephant, which is a Jain teaching story before it was anything else. One touches the trunk and says snake; one the ear and says fan; one the leg and says pillar. Each is reporting accurately. Each is wrong to think it is the whole.

And it is developed into a formal system — syadvada, the doctrine of "in some respect." Every assertion is prefixed with syat, "in a certain sense," and seven combinations of assertion, denial and inexpressibility are worked out.

The consequence is a built-in intellectual humility that is unique among these systems. Jain philosophers did not say the other schools were wrong; they said each had captured an aspect and mistaken it for the whole.

Which is a genuinely better intellectual posture than anything else in this Part, and it is worth adopting independently of everything else Jainism holds.

Sikhism

Founded by Guru Nanak, born 1469 in what is now Pakistan, in a region where Hindu and Islamic traditions had been in contact — and conflict — for centuries.

The founding statement, after a formative experience in his thirties, is reported as: there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.

Not that both are the same. That neither category is what matters.

The core

Ik Onkar — "one reality." The opening words of the scripture and the tradition's central affirmation. One God, without form, not incarnate, not represented by images.

Three practices, stated as a formula that has held for five centuries.

Naam japna — remembrance of the divine name. A continuous inward practice, available while working.

Kirat karni — honest labour. You work. There is no monastic option and no renunciation — this is a distinctive position, and it is a deliberate rejection of the ascetic route.

Vand chakna — sharing what you earn.

And the institution that embodies all three: langar, the free community kitchen, in which everybody sits on the floor in rows and eats the same food, regardless of caste, religion, wealth or gender.

Nanak established this at the founding, explicitly to break caste commensality rules — the rules about who may eat with whom, which were the practical machinery of the caste system. It is still run, daily, at every gurdwara in the world, and the one at Amritsar feeds tens of thousands of people a day.

An institution designed in the sixteenth century to attack a social structure, still operating at scale, and open to anybody who walks in.

The ten Gurus and the scripture

Nine successors, and each added something.

The third established the langar as compulsory before an audience with the Guru — including, tradition says, for the Mughal emperor Akbar.

The fifth, Arjan, compiled the scripture and was executed by the Mughal state in 1606.

The ninth, Tegh Bahadur, was executed in 1675 — and the tradition records that he died defending the right of Kashmiri Hindus to practise their own religion, which is an unusual thing to be martyred for.

The tenth, Gobind Singh, founded the Khalsa in 1699, a community with a distinct identity and discipline, and then ended the line of human Gurus — declaring the scripture itself the eternal Guru.

The Guru Granth Sahib is therefore not a book about the Guru; it is the Guru, and it is treated accordingly.

And its contents are the point: it includes verses by Hindu and Muslim devotional poets — Kabir, Ravidas the leatherworker, Namdev, and the Sufi Farid — alongside the Gurus' own. A scripture that includes voices from outside its own tradition, including from the lowest castes, by design.

What these two share

And it is worth naming, because they look nothing alike.

Both begin by refusing a category. Jainism refuses the idea that some living things do not count. Sikhism refuses the idea that the religious categories are what matter.

Both put the refusal into a daily physical practice rather than a doctrine. Sweeping the path; sitting on the floor to eat. In both cases a bodily habit that makes the principle unavoidable, which is far more effective than any amount of assent.

And both took a cost for it. The Jain economic profile was shaped by an ethical rule accepted over centuries. Two Sikh Gurus were executed.

What to carry from this page

Anekantavada: every statement captures an aspect, and the error is mistaking the aspect for the whole. The best intellectual posture in this Part and it can be adopted on its own.

Karma treated as physical produces a completely different practice — and it is a reminder that a doctrine's practical consequences follow from its exact form, not from its general shape.

Honest labour, remembrance, and sharing — with no monastic option. A tradition that deliberately closed the escape route to renunciation.

And an institution designed to break a social rule, still operating five hundred years later, feeding anybody who walks in. The langar is the most successful piece of applied ethics in this volume, and it works because it is a physical arrangement rather than a principle.

Next: Part 10 crosses to the other tradition — the one that started by asking what things are made of, and got to the same questions from the opposite end.