Chapter 3. The renunciant movement: Jainism, fatalism, materialism, and skepticism¶

The Upaniṣads in the previous chapter represent a change within the Brahmanical tradition. In the discourses, however, the people the Buddha most often confronts directly belong to another group, the renunciants (śramaṇa, Pali samaṇa). The chapter describes the renunciant movement in which the Buddha himself took part. To understand Buddhism's position, we must first identify the other participants and the views each defended.

A difficulty with the historical sources needs explaining first. Apart from Jainism, most of these schools left no scriptures of their own. What we now know comes mainly from Buddhist and Jain literature, which presents committed opponents' accounts. The book treats the records as secondhand accounts arranged by adversaries, who may have simplified or even disparaged the teachings they describe. Accounts with independent corroboration deserve more confidence, while isolated testimony remains uncertain.

1. Who were the renunciants?¶

Around the sixth century BCE, practitioners who left home and wandered appeared in the eastern Ganges basin, the region of the second urbanization described in 1.1. They were collectively called śramaṇas. They belonged to a different tradition from Brahmin priests, and contemporary literature often pairs "renunciants and Brahmins" as the two kinds of religious people in society.

The renunciant schools differed greatly, but shared several basic features:

• They rejected Vedic authority and denied that sacrifice could accomplish everything.
• They broadly accepted the questions of karma, rebirth, and liberation. As 1.2 explained, those questions may themselves have originated in the east.
• They left home to practice (pravrajyā, going forth), seeking liberation through personal cultivation rather than rites.

The fundamental disagreement between the renunciant movement and Brahmanical orthodoxy thus concerned whom and what liberation depended on. Buddhism and Jainism developed within the movement and were not merely branches of the Brahmanical sacrificial tradition.

The most conspicuous outward form of renunciant practice was bodily asceticism (tapas). Its severity varied by school, but it was widely shared in the culture of the time. Practices included prolonged fasting or extreme restriction of food, going naked, and holding difficult postures for long periods, such as standing on one leg or keeping both arms raised. They also included exposure to fierce sun or sitting motionless in bitter cold, leaving the body unwashed, and allowing mosquitoes and other insects to bite without driving them away. The rationale varied. Jains believed asceticism could exhaust accumulated old karma. Ājīvikas held that asceticism made no difference to anything, since liberation would arrive of itself at its appointed time. Other schools believed it could accumulate spiritual heat, the literal sense of tapas, powerful enough to affect cosmic processes.

After leaving home, the Buddha himself practiced extreme asceticism. According to the texts, he tried everything that could be tried before judging it ineffective and turning toward what later became known as the "middle way." The background must be understood before we can grasp the force of that phrase in its original setting.

2. The six teachers and the problem of sources¶

Buddhist literature groups several famous renunciant leaders contemporary with the Buddha as the "six non-Buddhist teachers." The main account occurs in the Sāmaññaphala Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya. King Ajātasattu visits all six but remains dissatisfied. Only then does he meet the Buddha.¹ The list is a Buddhist classification, arranged to display the opponents together before the Buddha surpasses them one by one. The book treats it as a useful lead, not a neutral record.

The following sections discuss the four schools named in the chapter title. The other two teachers, Pūraṇa and Pakudha, will be addressed along the way.

3. Jainism: an extreme theory of karma and non-harm¶

Of the traditions represented by the six teachers, only Jainism survives today. Buddhist texts call its leader Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta, the figure whom Jains honor as Mahāvīra, the "Great Hero." He was roughly contemporary with the Buddha.

Legend must first be distinguished from history. Jain tradition speaks of twenty-four "ford-makers" (tīrthaṅkara), with Mahāvīra the last. In the book's judgment, the succession of twenty-four masters is largely a sectarian construction. What the historical evidence supports is an existing nirgrantha community, the "unfettered," in the tradition of Pārśva about two centuries before Mahāvīra. Mahāvīra reformed and reorganized an older community rather than founding a school from nothing.²

Jain metaphysics rests on a set of definite commitments:³

• The world comprises two kinds, "life" (jīva, beings with souls) and "nonlife" (ajīva).
• Karma (karman) is extremely subtle matter, rather than abstract moral bookkeeping. Passions and actions allow karmic matter to "flow in" (āsrava) and adhere to the soul. The originally pure and luminous soul becomes polluted and heavy, sinks downward, and is trapped in rebirth.
• Liberation first requires "restraint" (saṃvara) to stop new karma from flowing in. Asceticism (tapas) then exhausts the accumulated old karma (nirjarā). Once completely purified, the soul escapes its bonds, rises to the top of the universe, attains perfection (kevala), and is no longer reborn.

The process can be shown as a sequence:

The consequences extend to both ethics and practice. First, because even unintended harm attaches karmic matter to the soul, ethics must tend toward extreme non-harm (ahiṃsā). Jain monks filter water, sweep the ground, and avoid farming. Monks of some sects even go naked and keep no possessions, all to minimize harm. Second, because old karma must be removed by asceticism, practice tends toward severe self-mortification, with fasting to death regarded as the highest form of a good death. Jainism also has a famous epistemology, the doctrine of many aspects (anekāntavāda) and the doctrine of "perhaps so" (syādvāda), which hold that a judgment is valid only from a particular standpoint. Its mature form probably postdates Mahāvīra, so it should not simply be attributed to him. Having mentioned it, the book will give a basic explanation.

According to anekāntavāda, every object has countless aspects (anta), while a single proposition can grasp only one perspective. Absolute assertions about any question are therefore one-sided (ekānta, "holding to one aspect"). The proper procedure is to qualify each proposition with syāt, "perhaps" or "from a certain standpoint," acknowledging its partial truth without excluding other perspectives. The classical form developed into "sevenfold predication" (saptabhaṅgī). It makes assertions about the same object in seven combinations, each qualified by "perhaps," such as "perhaps it is," "perhaps it is not," "perhaps it both is and is not," and "perhaps it is inexpressible."

The theory represents a distinctive position within the renunciant arena. It incorporates the schools' absolute assertions as partial truths and claims a higher standpoint from which to judge them. Critics reply that if every assertion is only partly true, the Jain proposition itself is also only partly true, producing a logical recursion. The Jain response is that syādvāda is a metaproposition about the limits of assertions and is not subject to the same restriction. The dispute continued for centuries without a clear winner.

Jainism provides the closest comparison with Buddhism. Both reject the Vedas, teach karma and rebirth, and pursue liberation through leaving home and practicing. Their disagreements concern whether karma is matter or something else, and whether liberation requires extreme asceticism. The Buddha answered both questions differently. Section 7 will consider them together.

4. Fatalism: Makkhali Gosāla and the Ājīvikas¶

The Ājīvika school founded by Makkhali Gosāla, formerly rendered in Chinese as "heretics of wrong livelihood," held that everything was determined by fate (niyati). In his view, effort, practice, and karmic results were illusions. No one's conduct could change anything. Beings were destined to undergo a fixed and immensely long total number of rebirths, after which liberation would occur automatically. The Sāmaññaphala Sutta attributes an image to him. A ball of thread, once thrown, keeps rolling until it has fully unwound. Human liberation comes in the same way, at its appointed time, regardless of whether one practices.¹

The Ājīvikas were a substantial movement. Their school once had a considerable following and royal support. Aśoka and his successors donated caves to Ājīvika ascetics, and the school survived in southern India for over a millennium before disappearing.⁴ We can infer that it was a significant opponent in the Buddha's time. The Buddha judged it very harshly. In the Aṅguttara Nikāya, he identifies Makkhali's fatalism as the most harmful view, because it entirely cancels the point of practice.

5. Materialism: Ajita and Lokāyata¶

Ajita Kesakambala, whose name means "wearer of a hair blanket," advocated thoroughgoing materialism. A person is only a temporary combination of earth, water, fire, and air. At death the four elements disperse, and the person passes into nothingness. There is no next life and no karmic result. Giving, sacrifice, and good conduct earn no later reward. It is a typical form of annihilationism (uccheda-vāda).¹

The school later became known as Lokāyata or Cārvāka. Systematic Lokāyata doctrine appears in later literature, while Ajita is its early representative in the Buddha's time.⁵ His example shows that as early as fifth-century BCE India, people openly advocated pure materialism, with neither soul nor afterlife. At one end of Indian thought stood the permanent brahman and ātman of the Upaniṣads, and at the other, annihilation at death. Ajita's teachings survive only through the reports of Jain and Buddhist opponents. The Sāmaññaphala Sutta's account may not be fully reliable, and scholars have suspected a composite of several materialist teachings. Even under the most cautious reading, however, he should still be classified as a proto-materialist, rather than a skeptic or nihilist.

Adjacent to Ajita stands Pakudha Kaccāyana's doctrine of "seven eternal substances." Earth, water, fire, air, pain, pleasure, and life are eternal and unmoving. A sword passing through merely travels between these elements. No one kills anyone, and no one is actually harmed. From the opposite direction, the claim that everything is eternal likewise abolishes moral responsibility. When the Buddha later pairs eternalism, in which everything endures, with annihilationism, in which death ends everything, these are the two extremes he seeks to avoid.

6. Skepticism: Sañjaya's refusal to take a position¶

Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta represents another approach, declining to take a position on any metaphysical question. Asked whether there is a next life or karmic retribution, he always answers along the lines of "I do not say yes, or no, or both yes and no…" He circles the issue without settling on either side. Buddhist literature calls the manner amarāvikkhepa, "eel-catching," as slippery as trying to grasp a loach.¹

A distinction prevents misunderstanding. Sañjaya's avoidance is skepticism that simply suspends judgment when faced with difficult questions. The Buddha also remains silent on some questions, the avyākata or unanswered questions discussed in Chapter 5, but his silence is selective. He sets aside questions that do not help liberation and merely multiply conceptual disputes, while saying what needs to be said. The two resemble each other in form but differ in substance. One historical connection is significant. Before their conversion, the Buddha's two chief disciples, Sāriputta and Moggallāna, were Sañjaya's followers. His school thus attracted serious seekers who were nevertheless dissatisfied with refusing to take a position.

7. Where the Buddha stood¶

A position is always relative to others. Comparison with the renunciant leaders discussed here clarifies the Buddha's position. He too was a renunciant, sharing the rejection of the Vedas, an account of karma and rebirth, and the pursuit of liberation through leaving home. At the same time, he distinguished himself from every neighboring position.

One distinction is particularly crucial. Jainism treats karma as matter adhering to the soul, to be burned away through asceticism. The Buddha locates karma's core in "mental action," making the intention behind conduct (cetanā, volition) decisive. The change moves the work of liberation from tormenting the body to training the mind.⁶ In the book's judgment, it is a key step distinguishing him from neighboring renunciants, especially the Jains who most resembled him.

The setting of the whole renunciant movement falls within the eastern culture of "Greater Magadha" introduced in Chapters 1 and 2. Understanding the Buddha therefore requires placing him among his contemporary renunciant schools, as well as considering the Brahmanical sacrificial tradition.

The first three chapters have now explained the Buddha's social world, the Brahmanical answers he had to address, and the renunciant intellectual setting in which he lived. The next chapter returns to the Buddha himself, removing the mythological covering as far as possible to consider what can be said historically.

References¶