Now onto Jainism

Buddha is believed to have died aged 80, near Banaras. He, along with his followers, worked to share their insights with as much of the world as possible. The faith grew and gained a lot of following. Although having key aspects of the Hindu religion and being born from it, it’s hardly seen today in the land of its birth despite it having grown into a global religion. The same cannot be said of its sibling, Jainism.

Born with the same intent of attaining nirvana, Jainism took a different path. Since desire is the cause of all suffering, the goal was to extinguish desire once and for all. And so, unlike the middle path of avoiding extremes, Jainism preaches the most extreme path: Severe self-denial. The most extreme of THAT is Sallekhana - to starve oneself to death.

Jainism means to conquer (samskrutha), to conquer the battle against our own human nature to gain enlightenment. The view is that the soul which has collected whatever sin through one’s karma has to be purged. And as one struggles, more and more toward getting rid of the sins from their souls, the souls get lighter and lighter hence kind of floating higher and higher through what we might call ‘the heavens’. When the soul got to the highest of those levels, it’s believed to attain nirvana.