Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism,
and
The Questions That Shape a Human Life
Thousands of years ago, people living across the Indian subcontinent were asking questions that remain remarkably familiar today.
What is the nature of existence? Who are we beneath our changing thoughts, emotions, and circumstances? Why do human beings suffer? How should we live? What responsibilities do we have toward other living beings?
Different traditions developed different answers. Some understood liberation through knowledge of an enduring self, while others questioned the very existence of such a self. Some placed extraordinary emphasis on the consequences of harming even the smallest living creature.
These questions gave rise to some of humanity's most influential philosophical and religious traditions.
Hinduism encompasses diverse approaches to existence, consciousness, duty, and liberation.
Buddhism examines suffering, impermanence, attachment, and the possibility of freedom from them.
Jainism places the soul, ethical discipline, nonviolence, and the complexity of reality at the center of its teachings.
My own curiosity about India began long before I traveled there. As a teenager growing up in Romania, I discovered the writings of Mircea Eliade, whose studies of religion and Indian thought introduced me to an unfamiliar intellectual world. Decades later, I traveled through India and Nepal, visiting temples, sacred sites, and places where these traditions remain part of everyday life.
Now, returning to those experiences through philosophy, I find myself asking questions that have occupied human beings for centuries.
The Intellectual World of Ancient India
The philosophical traditions of ancient India did not emerge from a single moment, teacher, or system of beliefs.
The earliest Vedic texts developed within ancient Indo-Aryan religious culture, beginning roughly in the second millennium BCE. They contain hymns, rituals, and reflections on cosmic order.
Over time, the Upanishads, composed across several centuries beginning around the first millennium BCE, explored questions about consciousness, ultimate reality, and the self.
These texts became foundational for many Hindu philosophical traditions, although Hinduism eventually developed into a remarkably diverse family of beliefs and practices.
Around the middle of the first millennium BCE, northern India also became a center of intense intellectual questioning. Teachers, ascetics, and wandering seekers debated the nature of suffering, karma, rebirth, ethical conduct, and liberation.
This broader environment included the shramana movements, which often questioned the religious authority of the Vedas and the importance of established rituals.
Buddhism and Jainism emerged within this world of debate and spiritual experimentation. They developed independently, with their own teachers, communities, teachings, and practices.
The geographical setting is important. The Buddha was born in Lumbini, in present day Nepal, and attained enlightenment at Bodh Gaya, in present day India. Modern national borders did not exist when these ideas were taking shape.
What fascinates me about this period is the intellectual energy it represents. People were not simply inheriting explanations of existence; they were examining them, challenging them, and developing different ways of understanding the human condition.
The disagreements that followed became an essential part of their philosophical legacy.
Hinduism: Existence, the Self, and Liberation
Unlike traditions associated with a particular founder, Hinduism developed over many centuries, encompassing a diversity of philosophical interpretations. It includes devotional traditions, schools of reasoning, ritual practices, contemplative disciplines, and different understandings of the divine.
Several concepts, however, help us enter its philosophical world.
Brahman, in many Hindu schools, refers to ultimate reality, the fundamental principle underlying existence.
Atman refers to the self, often understood as an enduring spiritual reality.
Their relationship has been debated for centuries.
In Advaita Vedanta, a major school of Hindu philosophy, the deepest self is ultimately understood as identical with Brahman.
Other schools maintain a distinction between the individual self and the divine.
These differences matter because Hinduism cannot be reduced to one statement about God, consciousness, or the soul.
Dharma is another central concept, a term with several meanings, including ethical duty, right conduct, and the principles that sustain an ordered life. Dharma asks us to consider how we should act within the circumstances and relationships of our lives.
Karma concerns the moral consequences of intentional action. Within traditions that accept rebirth, karma helps explain how actions influence future experience.
Moksha is liberation from the cycle of rebirth, known as samsara. Different Hindu schools offer distinct interpretations of the nature of that liberation and the paths toward achieving it.
These ideas become particularly meaningful when we encounter them within lived religious practice.
During my journey through Nepal, I visited Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu, one of Hinduism's most sacred sites dedicated to Shiva.
Along the Bagmati River, I witnessed a cremation ceremony.
I watched a family gather around someone they had lost. I observed the preparations, the washing of the deceased person's feet, and the moment when the fire was lit.
I remember the grief, the solemnity, and the extraordinary intimacy of witnessing a family's final farewell. The experience affected me so deeply that I remained quiet for many hours afterward.
In many Hindu traditions, the body is understood as temporary while the self continues beyond physical death. Cremation rituals are connected to religious understandings of mortality, transition, and the relationship between the body and the enduring self.
Standing there, I realized that I was witnessing more than a ceremony. I was observing how a community's understanding of existence shapes one of life's most difficult human experiences.
I did not need to share every belief to recognize the significance of what I was seeing.
The experience left me thinking about how our understanding of death influences the way we live.
Buddhism: Understanding Suffering
Buddhism developed from the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, who lived in ancient northern India, probably during the fifth century BCE, although scholars continue to debate the precise dates.
According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha grew up in privileged circumstances largely sheltered from the realities of human suffering.
When he encountered aging, illness, and death, he began questioning the nature of human existence and searching for a way beyond suffering. He eventually abandoned his privileged life and spent years practicing severe fasting and other forms of physical deprivation, believing that overcoming the body’s needs might lead to spiritual liberation.
When these practices failed to provide the understanding he sought, he rejected both extreme deprivation and a life devoted to pleasure, developing what became known as the Middle Way.
The central focus of his teaching was suffering and the possibility of liberation.
At the heart of Buddhist philosophy are the Four Noble Truths, which summarize the Buddha’s understanding of suffering and the path toward freedom from it. They follow a clear progression: recognizing suffering, understanding its origin in craving, discovering that liberation is possible, and following a path toward it through wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental discipline.
Three fundamental Buddhist teachings help us understand this philosophy:
Dukkha: Suffering and dissatisfaction are part of human existence.
Anicca (impermanence): Everything in our physical and mental experience is subject to change. Our bodies age, emotions come and go, relationships evolve, and circumstances shift. Nothing we experience remains exactly as it is forever.
Anatta (non-self): What we consider our identity is not a permanent, unchanging essence. Our thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and experiences continually change, and there is no fixed, independent self behind them.
During my travels in Kathmandu, I visited Boudhanath Stupa, one of Nepal's most important Buddhist sacred sites.
I walked clockwise around the enormous white stupa (circumambulation), alongside people turning prayer wheels and repeating mantras. Prayer flags moved overhead, and the sounds of everyday life continued around the sacred space.
As I walked, I became increasingly aware of my own pace, breathing, and thoughts.
Buddhist practice takes many forms, and circumambulation is only one expression of devotion. Still, that experience helped me appreciate how a philosophical tradition can enter the rhythms of daily life.
Centuries after the Buddha's teachings began spreading across Asia, people continue to express their understanding through movement, attention, ritual, study, and meditation.
The question Buddhism raises remains deeply relevant.
How much of our suffering comes from the difficulties we encounter, and how much comes from our insistence that life should remain as we wish it to be?
Jainism: Nonviolence and the Nature of Reality
Jainism is an ancient Indian religious and philosophical tradition whose teachings developed within the same broad intellectual environment as Buddhism. It teaches that living beings possess souls and that liberation requires ethical discipline, self-restraint, and freedom from the consequences of harmful actions.
Four fundamental concepts help us understand this philosophy:
Jiva (soul): Every living being possesses a soul. Unlike Buddhism, which rejects the idea of a permanent, unchanging self, Jainism teaches that individual souls endure beyond physical existence.
Karma: In Jainism, karma is understood as a subtle form of matter that attaches to the soul through actions and passions, keeping it bound to the cycle of rebirth. Liberation requires freeing the soul from this accumulated karma.
Ahimsa (nonviolence): All living beings deserve respect and protection from harm, including humans, animals, insects, and even the smallest forms of life. This principle encourages us to consider how our thoughts, words, and actions may cause harm to others.
Anekantavada (many sidedness of reality): Reality is complex, and no single perspective captures every aspect of it. Understanding requires recognizing that different viewpoints may reveal different parts of the truth.
During my journey through Rajasthan, I visited Ranakpur Jain Temple, renowned for its extraordinary white marble architecture.
I remember the intricately carved pillars and the changing patterns of light within the temple.
The craftsmanship invited attention to details that might otherwise have passed unnoticed.
Learning more about Jainism now gives that memory another dimension. A tradition that places such importance on restraint and respect for life also asks us to examine how casually we move through the world without considering the effects of our actions.
I find the Jain teaching of anekantavada particularly valuable in a world where certainty often arrives faster than understanding.
It does not suggest that every belief is equally correct. Instead, it encourages intellectual humility and an awareness that our own understanding may be incomplete.
What might change in our conversations if we approached disagreement with greater curiosity about what another person sees that we may have overlooked?
Three Traditions in Conversation
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism emerged from the rich philosophical environment of ancient India. Although they developed different understandings of human existence, they share several fundamental ideas.
What they have in common:
All three traditions examine the relationship between human actions and their consequences through the concept of karma. They recognize the cycle of rebirth and consider liberation from that cycle a central spiritual goal. Each also emphasizes ethical conduct, self-discipline, and the possibility of transforming how we live through greater understanding.
Where they differ:
One of their most significant philosophical disagreements concerns the nature of the self.
Hinduism: Many Hindu philosophical schools affirm the existence of an enduring self, known as atman, and explore its relationship with ultimate reality.
Buddhism: Rejects the idea of a permanent, unchanging self and teaches that our identity arises through constantly changing physical and mental processes.
Jainism: Affirms that every living being possesses an individual, enduring soul, which remains bound by karma until liberation.
Their approaches to liberation also differ. Hindu traditions describe several paths, including knowledge, devotion, disciplined action, and meditation.
Buddhism teaches the Noble Eightfold Path, emphasizing wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental discipline.
Jainism places particular importance on nonviolence, self-restraint, and freeing the soul from karma.
Despite these differences, all three traditions developed in response to questions that remain deeply relevant to human life.
How should we understand suffering, change, and the consequences of our choices? What does it mean to know ourselves, and how might that understanding influence the way we live?
What makes these traditions intellectually valuable is not that they agree on every answer, but that they demonstrate how seriously human beings have examined these questions.
Questions Worth Carrying Forward
When I think about my journey through India and Nepal, I remember the people as much as the sacred places.
I remember the family gathered beside the Bagmati River, the quiet movement of people around Boudhanath Stupa, and the extraordinary craftsmanship of Ranakpur Jain Temple.
At the time, I was learning from local guides, observing unfamiliar practices, and trying to understand the civilizations I had traveled so far to encounter.
Today, studying the philosophies behind those experiences, I recognize how much more there is to discover.
That is one of the gifts of learning. An experience does not end when we leave a place. Sometimes, years later, new knowledge allows us to return to it with a deeper understanding.
I think the same is true of the beliefs through which we interpret our own lives.
We inherit ideas from our families, cultures, education, and experiences. Some serve us well, while others remain largely unexamined. Over time, they become so familiar that we may no longer recognize them as interpretations rather than unquestionable truths.
Ancient Indian philosophers approached the human condition from different directions, and their disagreements remain unresolved in any universal sense.
We do not have to choose among their teachings to appreciate the seriousness of their inquiry.
We can begin by examining our own assumptions.
What do I believe about who I am? How do I respond when life changes in ways I cannot control? What consequences do my choices have for other people and living beings? Am I willing to question an idea that has become part of my identity?
These questions do not belong exclusively to ancient India; they belong to anyone willing to examine life with curiosity and care.
Thousands of years separate us from many of the thinkers who developed these traditions, but the work of understanding ourselves, living responsibly, and deciding what gives life meaning remains unfinished.
It is a pursuit that continues from one generation to the next, as each of us confronts the questions of human existence.
That is why these ancient conversations are still worth joining.
This essay is part of a three-part series exploring the philosophical traditions of Asia, their development, and their influence across cultures.
Learn by Design, Not by Default.
Until the next horizon,
Coach • Traveler • Believer in Intentional Living
