Jainism: core beliefs

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The twenty-fourth tirthankara or "ford-maker". Jains do not describe him as founding the tradition, but as the most recent teacher of something without beginning.

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Jiva is the soul, held to be pure and knowing by nature; ajiva is the world of matter, the non-living, in which the jiva becomes entangled.

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Jains describe it as a fine material substance drawn to the soul by action, which weighs the jiva down within ajiva — not only as a law connecting action to consequence.

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That humans are caught in samsara — the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth — characterised by ignorance and suffering, with the jiva weighed down within ajiva by collected karma.

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Liberation of the jiva from the ajiva: the soul freed of karmic matter and remaining in its own nature.

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A pure, omniscient consciousness, attained when the karma obscuring knowledge is destroyed. One who attains it is a kevalin.

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Ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truthfulness), asteya (not taking what is not given), brahmacharya (chastity), aparigraha (non-attachment to possessions).

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The five mahavratas are taken in full by ascetics; lay Jains take them in limited form, the anuvratas, within a set of twelve vows. The guide phrases this the other way round.

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Vegetarianism and for many the avoidance of root vegetables; avoiding occupations that involve harm; among some monastics, sweeping the path ahead or wearing a cloth over the mouth.

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Because if karma is a substance weighing the soul down, ahimsa and the vows can only stop new karma arriving. Fasting and bodily austerity shed what is already there.

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Digambara ("sky-clad") monks renounce clothing, hold that a woman must be reborn as a man to attain liberation, and hold the original scriptures lost. Svetambara ("white-clad") monastics wear white, hold that women can attain liberation, and preserve a canon.