Ahimsa — one vow, four paths
How non-violence travels from Mahavira's Jain ascetics to the Buddha's middle way, through the Gita's battlefield, and into the modern age with Gandhi.
- 🦁Mahaviraमहावीर
In Jainism, ahimsa is the first and greatest vow. Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara, taught a non-violence so complete it extends to the smallest living being — Jain monks still sweep the path before them so no creature is harmed by a footstep.
- 🧘Gautama Buddhaगौतम बुद्ध
A near-contemporary of Mahavira, the Buddha placed non-harm at the root of his path: the first precept undertaken by every Buddhist is to abstain from taking life. His middle way carried the ethic of ahimsa across Asia.
- 🕊️Ahimsaअहिंसा
The word itself — a-himsa, "non-injury" — appears across the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutras and the Mahabharata, where it is famously called the highest dharma: ahimsa paramo dharmah.
- 📖Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita lists ahimsa among the divine qualities, even as it wrestles with duty on a battlefield — a tension readers have debated for two thousand years.
- 🕊️Mahatma Gandhi
In the twentieth century, Gandhi drew on this shared inheritance — Jain neighbours in Gujarat, the Gita he read daily — to forge satyagraha, and non-violence walked out of the monasteries and into world history.