Experiencing Vipassana as a Jain

24 Oct, 2026

I was born into a Jain family. We were not kattar (strict) Jains, but I now realise how much Jainism shaped my values.

As a child I listened to sermons by Jain monks, went to residential shivirs for children, and learned the names of the Tirthankaras along with chants and songs. Monks and nuns came to our home for bhiksha. Vegetarianism, nonviolence, truthfulness, fasting, self-restraint and aparigraha (non-possessiveness) were part of everyday life. So were practices such as sāmāyika, kāyotsarga and Prekṣā Dhyāna. We were constantly reminded to remain balanced in happiness and sorrow, not to hurt others, and not to create new karmic bondage.

My parents also worshipped deities now commonly associated with Hinduism - Ganesha, Lakshmi, Shiva, Hanuman and others. This was perfectly normal in our household. We didn't experience Jain and Hindu traditions as mutually exclusive identities.

Much of this was simply the way we lived. But I didn't necessarily understand the deeper philosophy behind it.

Decades later, when I was introduced to Vipassana meditation through S. N. Goenka's ten-day courses, I found much of it surprisingly familiar. Even the Pali chant Dhammaṃ saraṇaṃ gacchāmi (I take refuge in Dhamma) reminded me of the Jain Prakrit prayer Kevalī-paṇṇattaṃ dhammaṃ saraṇaṃ pavajjāmi (I take refuge in the Dharma taught by the omniscient).

And I remembered my aunts warning us about karma bandhana - that certain actions create new karmic bondage, or knots, which we should avoid. In Vipassana, I encountered a remarkably similar explanation of how craving and aversion generate new saṅkhāras, reinforcing the habitual patterns of the mind.

Vipassana gave me an experiential understanding of the Jain philosophy I had absorbed throughout childhood.

Sīla, Samādhi and Paññā - what I already knew

Goenka teaches Vipassana through three interrelated disciplines: sīla (ethical conduct), samādhi (concentration or mastery of the mind) and paññā (wisdom developed through direct experience). As I began practising, I recognized how much of this was already present in my Jain upbringing.

Close in practice, different in theory

The practices are very close: observe, don't react, don't bind yourself further. The underlying theory differs in two main areas:

• The self. Mahāvīra teaches that each being has a real, eternal soul (jīva), and practice makes it clean. The Buddha teaches anattā: there is no fixed self to be made clean.
• Karma. In Jain teaching, karma is subtle matter that binds to the soul. In the Buddha's teaching, karma is intention (cetanā). IMHO, you can practise without settling these questions.

Shared roots in India's spiritual traditions

Before the names Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism took on their modern meanings, Indian thought already held a long inquiry into existence, suffering, action, consciousness, rebirth and liberation. Sorting these traditions into rigid, competing religions happened in the colonial period. It misses how fluid India's spiritual landscape was. My own upbringing certainly didn't reflect rigid boundaries across spiritual philosophies.

Teachers did debate each other, on the self, on karma, on austerity. But debate between teachers is not the same as competing religions with fixed membership.

Mahāvīra and the Buddha were contemporaries. Both taught in the Ganges plain, roughly today's Bihar and eastern UP, as part of the śramaṇa tradition of wandering ascetics. It was a shared sādhanā environment, where different teachers offered their understanding of liberation. The Jain lineage is older. Mahāvīra is the 24th Tīrthaṅkara (liberated soul). Neither teacher set out to found a religion. Each built a monastic community and taught a path (mārga) to liberation, within a shared dharmic world view.

So the overlap goes beyond shared words, or general ideas like karma, rebirth, moksha, non-violence and detachment. Both paths ask us to observe reality as it is, stay equanimous, and end suffering through our own effort rather than divine intervention.

An interesting contrast

Jainism stayed in India and has continued without a break. Buddhism spread across Asia but faded from most of India, until its revival in the modern period, partly through Vipassana.

Because Jainism never spread far beyond India, it never had to adapt to very different cultures, the way Buddhism did in China, Korea and Japan. So its philosophical framework and practices are still lived, largely intact, in the Jain community today. Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand also stayed close to its early texts, and that is the line Vipassana comes from.

What was passed down well were the practices. The understanding behind them, less so.

If you are a Jain reading this

You don't need to abandon your Jain upbringing to appreciate Vipassana. Infact it will help you understand Jain customs and practices better, how they are intended to change our relationship with craving, aversion, attachment and karma. A few examples below:

Take sāmāyika, for instance. A person can wear the mumti, complete the prescribed duration and recite everything as instructed. But the deeper question is: has their equanimity actually increased?

Or take fasting. Has it weakened attachment and desire, or merely become a demonstration of endurance?

Or kāyotsarga. Is the point simply to remain physically still, or to learn through experience that sensations can arise without the mind becoming enslaved by them?

These questions will help you connect with the inner purpose of Jain practices.

Footnotes