Svetambara Monastic Order

Svetambara monastic life is built around a small set of practices meant to keep the vow of non violence, ahimsa, in view at every moment rather than only at moments of formal ritual. Monks and nuns wear a small cloth, the muhpatti, tied or held across the mouth, to reduce the risk of inhaling or swallowing minute airborne organisms, and many carry a soft broom, the rajoharana, to gently sweep the ground or a seat before sitting so as not to crush insects underfoot or beneath them. Hair is not cut with a blade but plucked out by hand in a periodic rite called keshalochana, understood as an act of endurance and detachment from bodily comfort rather than simple grooming.

Monastics own almost nothing beyond their robes, a water gourd and an alms bowl, walk barefoot from place to place for most of the year, and take food only once or twice daily from offerings given by lay households during a fixed begging round, never asking for food directly and refusing anything prepared specifically for them. The one exception to constant travel is chaturmas, the four month monsoon retreat, when monastics settle in one place, usually attached to a lay community, both because travel on flooded roads risks harming small creatures and because it allows sustained teaching to the laity who host them. Female ordination is fully open in the Svetambara order, and nuns considerably outnumber monks in most lineages today, a pattern the tradition attributes to its position that women are as capable of liberation as men, the same question the Digambara order answers differently.