Renunciation

At a Glance

• Central figures: Vardhamana, later known as Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara; his elder brother Nandivardhana; his mother Trishala and father Siddhartha of the Kshatriya clan.
• Setting: The city of Kundagrama (in the region of Vaishali, northeast India), and the surrounding countryside, during the sixth century BCE.
• The turn: At the age of thirty, having waited for both parents to die so as not to cause them grief, Vardhamana asks his brother’s permission and renounces all possessions, clothing, and speech.
• The outcome: Vardhamana walks out of Kundagrama alone and naked, beginning twelve years of silence, wandering, fasting, and meditation that will end in Kevala Jnana - omniscient knowledge.
• The legacy: The Diksha ceremony, in which Jain monks and nuns formally renounce worldly life, follows the pattern Vardhamana set - the removal of hair, the shedding of possessions, the vow of silence and non-harm.

When Vardhamana turned thirty his parents were already dead - his father Siddhartha first, then his mother Trishala - and now neither of them could be hurt by what he intended to do. He had promised them, while they lived, that he would not leave. They were gone. The promise was fulfilled.

He went to his elder brother Nandivardhana and stood before him. Nandivardhana already knew. There was a quality to his younger brother that had always made the household seem temporary around him, as if the walls and courtyards and storerooms full of grain were painted on silk. Vardhamana asked permission. Nandivardhana wept, asked him to stay two more years, then one more year, then two more months. Vardhamana agreed to the two months. He spent them in the palace at Kundagrama, giving away everything he owned.

The Giving

For those final two months Vardhamana opened the storehouses. He distributed gold, silver, cattle, grain, cloth, and jewels to the people of Kundagrama and the surrounding villages. The Jain texts are specific about this: he gave for an entire year, according to some accounts, though the Shvetambara tradition holds it at two months after Nandivardhana’s request. The giving was not symbolic. He emptied the treasury. He gave away his horses. He gave away the ornaments from his own body, ring by ring.

People came from across Vaishali. They lined the roads into Kundagrama, and Vardhamana walked among them distributing what remained. There is a particular detail in the texts: he gave without preference. He did not favor Brahmins over laborers, or the old over the young. He gave to whoever stood before him, and when there was nothing left to give, he stopped.

The palace felt lighter. Servants swept empty rooms. Nandivardhana watched from the upper terrace and said nothing.

Five Handfuls

On the appointed day, Vardhamana bathed and dressed one last time. He put on his finest clothes and his remaining ornaments - one set, kept back for this. He was carried through the streets of Kundagrama in a palanquin, accompanied by a procession of gods and men. The Jain tradition holds that the devas themselves attended the renunciation, descending from the heavens to witness what a mortal body could do.

At the foot of an ashoka tree, Vardhamana stepped down from the palanquin. He removed his garments. He removed the gold from his wrists and throat. He stood barefoot on the earth.

Then he pulled out his hair.

He did it in five handfuls. This is the canonical number - pancha-loch, the fivefold plucking. Two handfuls from the sides, two from the front and back, one from the crown. He did not flinch. The hair fell to the ground, and Indra, lord of the devas, caught it in a divine cloth so that it would not touch the dirt.

Vardhamana stood bald and naked under the ashoka tree. He spoke the words of renunciation: I abandon all ties to mother, father, brother, wife, daughter, and son. I abandon all attachments. I take the great vow.

Then he was silent.

Twelve Years Walking

He walked out of Kundagrama heading north and did not turn around. He carried nothing. He wore nothing. The Digambara tradition insists on this point - Mahavira was digambara, sky-clad, naked for the rest of his practice. The Shvetambara tradition says he wore a single white garment for thirteen months before discarding it when it caught on a thorn bush. Either way, he was soon bare to the world.

The first months were spent near Kundagrama and in the forests of Vaishali. People stared. Some threw stones. Children followed him, shouting. Village dogs bit at his ankles. He did not strike them, did not raise his voice, did not quicken his pace. The vow of ahimsa was total. He would not harm an insect. He swept the ground before him with a small broom of peacock feathers - or, in the Digambara account, he simply watched where he placed his feet.

He ate rarely. When he ate, he accepted only food that had been prepared for someone else and offered freely, not cooked for him. He would not eat after sunset, because in the dark he might swallow an insect without seeing it. He went days, then weeks, then months without food. The texts record that in certain periods he fasted for five months and fifteen days at a stretch, drinking nothing, eating nothing, standing or sitting in meditation while the seasons turned around him.

People struck him. In the town of Shvetambhi, villagers set dogs on him. In another place, a cowherd drove nails into his ears while he meditated, and Vardhamana did not move. He accepted the pain without resistance, without anger, without even the internal motion of resentment. The karma that clung to his soul was burning away. Each act of endurance, each moment of non-reaction, freed another layer.

Chandkaushik

In the eleventh year, he came to a forest where a great cobra named Chandkaushik lived. The cobra was feared across the region. It had killed travelers, farmers, entire caravans. Its venom could kill from a distance - the texts say its glance alone was lethal.

Vardhamana walked into the forest. People on the road called after him, warning him. He continued. He came to the place where Chandkaushik lay coiled in the path, enormous, hood spread.

The cobra struck. It bit Vardhamana on the foot. Instead of blood, white milk flowed from the wound. Vardhamana looked down at the cobra and spoke - one of the very few times he broke silence during the twelve years.

Pratikraman, he said. Recognize what you are doing. Wake up.

Chandkaushik looked into Vardhamana’s eyes. The rage went out of the cobra like water from a cracked pot. It lowered its hood, coiled quietly, and began to fast. The cobra would not eat again. Villagers, discovering the change, brought offerings of milk and flowers. Chandkaushik died in meditation, and the Jain tradition holds that the serpent was reborn in a higher realm.

The Sal Tree at Jrimbhikagrama

In the thirteenth year of his wandering - twelve years and six and a half months after his renunciation - Vardhamana sat beneath a sal tree on the northern bank of the river Rijupalika, near the town of Jrimbhikagrama. He had been fasting for two and a half days, squatting in the open air, his hands resting on his knees.

On the tenth day of the bright half of the month of Vaishakha, in the early hours before dawn, the last particle of destructive karma burned away. Vardhamana attained Kevala Jnana. He knew everything - past, present, future, every being in every realm, every atom of matter, every motion of every soul across infinite time.

He was forty-two years old. He had not spoken in twelve years. He had owned nothing, worn nothing, harmed nothing. He rose from beneath the sal tree and walked south toward the town, and the silence he carried was no longer the silence of a man enduring. It was the silence of a man who had nothing left to burn.