Ahimsa in the extreme

Jains affirm ahimsa, non-violence, as the supreme ethical principle, held more radically than in any other tradition. Because Jain cosmology sees life everywhere, in beings of one to five senses pervading earth, water, fire, air, and plants, the Jain seeks to reduce harm to all of them in thought, word, and deed. Ascetics sweep the ground before them, wear a mouth-cloth, filter drinking water, and confine their movements to spare life; laypeople follow the principle in food, occupation, and conduct. Even unintended and subtle harm is weighed, and the intention behind an act is decisive, so that accidental harm carries far less karmic weight than harm willingly caused or wished.

This extreme extension of non-harm shaped Jain communities socially and economically over many centuries: because agriculture necessarily kills soil-dwelling organisms with every plough, and because many crafts and trades involve killing animals directly or indirectly, Jain communities historically concentrated instead in commerce, banking, and trade, occupations compatible with the vow, a pattern that left a lasting mark on the community's social profile in the regions of India where Jainism has been strongest. The principle also had influence beyond Jainism itself; the reformer Shrimad Rajchandra, a Jain scholar and poet, corresponded with and influenced the young Mohandas Gandhi, whose later philosophy of non-violent resistance drew in part on ideas he encountered through that friendship.

Ahimsa is the first and governing vow from which the others flow, and it shapes the whole of Jain life, from vegetarian discipline to the deliberate avoidance of violent livelihoods. The principle underlies the five great vows (mahavratas) taken in full by ascetics and the corresponding lesser vows (anuvratas) taken in a moderated form by the laity, who remain embedded in ordinary economic and family life and cannot practice non-harm with an ascetic's completeness.

The two major Jain sects, Digambara and Svetambara, agree entirely on ahimsa's supremacy but differ on some of its practical and doctrinal implications; Digambara ascetics, whose name means sky-clad, renounce clothing altogether as the fullest expression of non-attachment, while Svetambara ascetics wear white robes, and the sects have historically disagreed over related questions, including whether a soul in a female body can attain liberation in that same lifetime. Ahimsa's thoroughgoing extension to the smallest lives, tied to the physical conception of karma as fine matter that acts of harm draw onto the soul, marks it as distinctively and characteristically Jain, and it made Jainism a historic wellspring of the wider Indian ethic of non-violence that would later influence figures and movements well outside the Jain community itself.