Jain doctrine treats karma as a physical substance, fine particles of matter that adhere to the soul in response to action driven by passion, and tapas is the discipline by which that accumulated matter is deliberately burned away rather than merely left to exhaust itself over future lives. Canonical and commentarial literature enumerates twelve distinct forms, split evenly between external austerities that discipline the body and internal austerities that discipline the mind.
The six external forms are fasting, eating less than one's fill, restricting the range or variety of food begged or accepted, renouncing tasty or stimulating foods, mortification of the body through postures and exposure, and controlling one's physical movement and posture, particularly in solitude. The six internal forms are expiation for faults committed, showing reverence and humility toward one's spiritual superiors, service rendered to fellow ascetics, study of scripture, meditation, and the abandonment of attachment to the body itself, up to and including, at the extreme end practiced by only a small number of advanced Jain ascetics, the ritual fast to death known as sallekhana or santhara, undertaken only when death is otherwise imminent and undertaken as the culmination of a lifetime of lesser austerities rather than as an isolated act.
Lay Jains practice restrained, time bound versions of several of these, most visibly periodic fasting during the Paryushana festival, while monks and nuns are expected to make austerity a continuous feature of daily life, with the precise regimen varying by sect and monastic lineage.