AJIVIKA PAGE

You may already be an Ajivika without realizing it. If you like our screed, adopt our creed! (You need not relinquish your current religious affiliation.)

Ajivika is an ancient religion that originated in a group of naked mendicant monks in ancient India. Although Ajivika fell into obscurity for several centuries, the history was maintained by Jains, to whom we are indebted.

Ajivika was founded by Maskarin Gosala over 2,500 years ago, about the time that Gautama Buddha founded Buddhism. In a custom of religious figures, Gosala was born in a cow barn. (A gosala is a cow barn. Maskarin has been translated as "of the pilgrim staff".) Other notable historical figures are being recorded at our religious calendar.

Ideally, Ajivikas are atheists, determinists, pacifists and vegetarians. In the tradition of our founder, Maskarin Gosala, we favor truth and insincerity. We condemn all of the following:

• violence;
• ownership of scarce resources, including land, gems, and precious metals;
• waste;
• derivation of profit from private monopolistic enerprises;
• derivation of profit from the service performed by others in relieving misfortune;
• participation in involuntary labor;
• destruction of healthy trees, which have spirits recognized by various religions;
• marriage, between people of different sexes;
• creation of opportunities for undetectable fraud, such as computerized voting;
• closed or tacit processes of excluding from consideration candidates for office; and
• any doctrinal exclusionary principle, by which a religion pretends it knows everything and can gain no insight from contrasting views.

We recognize the subordination of oppressor to victim, of master to slave, of male to female, of heterosexual to homosexual, and of believer to skeptic.

In the ancient tradition, we seek to develop an encyclopedic theory of nature.

As with most Eastern creeds, Ajivikas are free to join other religions, as long as they live in accordance with Gosala's example. (Monotheists tend to slight gods other than their own, which is their loss.)

LIVING THE PRINCIPLES

• Ajivikas are obligated to expose meaningful truth where the exposure will not be destructive of personal privacy.
• Ajivikas are obligated to maintain nominal integrity, by stripping away inaccurate names.

Non-violence

• Ajivikas are morally compelled to protect life and limb, whether or not it is legal to do so.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to consume the flesh of animals (or surface water, which may contain animal flesh).
• Ajivikas are forbidden to consume unhealthy or stale food.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to consume genetically altered food.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to consume food that has been irradiated to the point of generating toxins and carcinogens.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to consume food while in captivity.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to poison themselves or others with food or medicine containing toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and manganese.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to suffer by denial of the necessities of life.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to die by means of electrocution, injection, exposure to poison gas, hanging, gunfire, decapitation, or vehicular trauma.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to support or particpate in athletic activities that involve or promote violence, such as professional knock-out boxing, American-style football, and brutal ice hockey.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to contribute to the punishment of people for acts that harm only themselves, such as criminal prosecution for drug addiction. (As biometric data are often shared among government agencies and worldwide enterprises, this may prohibit participation in fingerprinting or genetic testing.)
• Ajivikas are forbidden to participate in the marketing of involuntary labor, either as a manager, laborer, owner, agent, user, or consumer.

• Ajivikas are forbidden to own materials of limited supply or objects that cannot be produced through labor. Hoarding scarce resources denies them to others, creating poverty elsewhere. Thus, Ajivikas are not permitted to own land, rare gems, or idle precious metals. Gem-quality diamonds are subject to extreme prohibition, as their consumption creates demand for conflict diamonds.
• Gosala saw marriage as a form of ownership, which violated the principle of poverty. Some have interpreted our opposition to heterosexual marriage as limiting us to homosexual relations. However, Gosala appears to have allowed heterosexual activity, as long as it took place without marriage. It is unclear whether either was preferred. Pregnancy and its consequences should be avoided.
• Of course, ajivikas are not allowed to own animals. However, ownership by an animal (an arrangement preferred by cats) is tolerated.

Avoiding waste

• Ajivikas are compelled to disobey unjust, unwise, or destructive laws and rules.
• If unjustly imprisoned, Ajivikas are compelled to escape by nonviolent means.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to eat produce that contains seeds that cannot grow.
• Ajivikas are discouraged from wearing clothing when it is unnecessary to do so. (Acceptable reasons include protection of body cells from injury, disease, electromagnetic radiation, and adverse temperature.) Swimming, running, and volleyball are among the sacred activities that Orthodox Ajivikas normally perform in the nude. The spirit must be free to travel through the pores of the skin. As we were created, so shall we be recreated.
• Ajivikas are forbidden to participate in the involuntary exclusion from participation in society of beings who pose no danger to others.
• Ajivikas are discouraged from proliferating excessive human life, which has a tendency to strain natural resources. Toward this ideal, fertile Ajivikas are compelled to use healthy forms of birth control.

Ajivikas are forbidden to participate in health insurance schemes run for the profit of non-practitioners.

Ban on immoral holding of power

• To assure that power is distributed as widely as possible, Ajivikas are required to vote to displace incumbents from office at every opportunity.
• To assure open processes, Ajivikas are prohibited from assisting any closed, tacit, or clandestine exclusion of a candidate for office. Clandestine methods include naming of a candidate by a political officer or by another candidate, without the opportunity to consider other candidates.

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Scripture from other religions

Having little extant scripture of its own, Ajivikas look elsewhere for guidance.

Rather than reject all scripture from other religions, Ajivikas interpret much of it according to Ajivika belief.

Here is how Ajivikas interpret the Judeo-Christian Bible.

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SHRINES

All venues of efficient transportation are shrines, including bicycle racks and railroad and bus stations.

All venues of prayer are shrines, including polling places, courthouses, hearing rooms, and government offices where applications are made or processed.

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YOU CAN HELP!

Organic agriculture.

• Ajivika encourages practices of food and fiber production that minimize impact of deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, climate destabilization, global warming, and disease.
• Ajivikas favor the use of more renewable fiber, such as hemp, over less renewable fiber, such as wood and cotton.
• The sacred texts of Ajivika must not be printed on wood pulp, which requires the destruction of trees. Renewable hemp fiber is acceptable. (Warning: Do not print this page on virgin paper from wood pulp.)
• Reflecting our commitment to the value of all life, we are now attempting to develop standards for organic agriculture. We hope to develop an inspection system similar to the Kosher certification of Judaism, so that Ajivikas and others who uphold our principles can be assured of upholding somatic purity and of not contributing to the ruination of life.
• Suggestions for the development and administration of our standards are welcomed at by e-mail at aloe@rev.net.

Join us in promoting freedom of religion around the world.

We are attempting to convert people in Russia who are being deprived of their religious rights. We are also trying to reach nudists in Arkansas. If you e-mail to Russia, Arkansas, any totalitarian society, or imprisoned populations, please mention this page.

If you have a website with an international or prison audience, please link it to this page.

Contact aloe@rev.net for more information.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AUTHOR	TITLE	JOURNAL/PUBLISHER	YEAR	PAGE
	Adherents.com		2006	16
	"Ajivika"	Encyclopedia Britannica	1987	1:183
	"Ajivika"	Wikipedia
Banerji-Sastri, A.	"The Ajivikas"	Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society (Patna)	1926	12:53-62
Barua, B.	"The Ajivikas"	Journal of the Department of Letters, University of Calcutta	1920	2:1-80
Barua, B. M.	"Ajivika--what it means"	Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (Poona)	1926-27	8:183-188
Bhandarkar, D. R.	"Ajivikas"	Indian Antiquity	1912	41:286-290
Basham, A. L.	History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, a Vanished Indian Religion	Luzac	1951
Basham, A. L.	"Ajivikas"	Encyclopedia of Buddhism (Colombo)	1963	1.2:331-333
Basham, A. L.	"Ajivikism: a vanished Indian religion"	Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture (Calcutta)	1971	22:107-117
Chakraborti, Haripada	Asceticism in Ancient India in Brahmanical, Buddhist, Jaina, and Ajivika societies: from the Earliest Times to the Period of *Sankaracharya	Punthi Pustak	1973
Charpentier, Jarl	"Ajivika"	Journal of the Royal Asiatic of Great Britain and Ireland (London)	1913	669-674
Eliade, Mircea	"Ajivikas"	The Encyclopedia of Religion	1986	163-165
Hastings, James	Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics	Scribner	1951	I:259-268
Hoernle, A. F. Rudolf	"Ajivikas"	Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics	1926	1:259-268
Jaini, Padmanabh S.	The Jaina Path of Purification	Univ. of California Press	1979
McGrath, J. I.	"Ajivikas"	Overview of World Religions
Pathak, K. B.	"The Ajivikas, a sect of Buddhist bhiksus"	Indian Antiquity	1912	41:88-90
Sastri, N. Aiyasvami	"Ajivikas (from Tamil sources)"	Journal of the Sri Venkatesvara Rao Institute (Tirupati)	1941	2.2:403-422
Schumann, Hans Wolfgang	The Historical Buddha: The times, life, and teachings of the founder of Buddhism	Arkana	1989
Zimmer, Heinrich	Philosophies of India	Princeton Univ. Press	1974	262-268

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