Mahavira

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Mahavira (Sanskrit: great hero) lived around 540-468 BCE who is said to have lived 26 previous lives before becoming fully enlightened and incarnating for the final time to hammer down the central tenets of Jainism.

Born a prince of the Kshatriya caste, Mahavira’s parents were followers of a previous Jain teacher, Parshva.

Mahavira created a specific Jain community and, as with today’s practicing Jains, he believed in karma, reincarnation and asceticism and took five main vows:

• Nonviolence (Ahimsa) – to cause no harm to any living being;
• Truthfulness (Satya) – to speak the harmless truth only;
• Non-stealing (Asteya) – to take nothing not properly given;
• Chastity (Brahmacharya) – to indulge in no sensual pleasure;
• Non-possession/Non-attachment (Aparigraha) – to detach completely from people, places, and material things.¹

Like his contemporary, the Buddha, Mahavira is said to have married and sired a daughter, abandoning both wife and child at age 30. Apparently after teaching for thirty years he, unlike the Buddha, followed his parents’ example of extreme asceticism and starved himself to death.

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¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahavira#Philosophy

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