The Frame of Jain Conduct

The five vows organise Jain ethics into a complete program of self-restraint aimed at halting the influx of karma and freeing the soul. They are shared by both the Digambara and Svetambara traditions and rest on the foundational principle of ahimsa, from which the others are understood to follow. Their graduated form, great vows for ascetics, lesser vows for the laity, integrates monk and householder into one moral order, and the culminating discipline of non-possession expresses the Jain ideal of progressive detachment from the material world.

The vow of non-possession lies at the heart of the historic split between the Digambara and Svetambara traditions: Digambara monks read aparigraha as requiring the renunciation of clothing itself, since owning even a single garment is, on their reading, still a form of possession incompatible with the vow's full completion, while Svetambara monks and nuns hold that white robes are compatible with genuine non-attachment so long as the wearer holds no inner clinging to them. The disagreement is not merely about dress but about how literally and completely a vow taken as absolute must be embodied, and it has never been resolved between the two communities, which have maintained separate monastic lineages over the question for many centuries.