Buddhism
Buddhism is the only world religion that does without gods. In Buddhism, Buddhas are revered as role models and teachers, that is, people who have accomplished "perfect knowledge" through meditation and asceticism.
- Nudity as asceticism
Since the first Buddha Siddhartha Gautama (around 500 BC), Buddhism knows nudity as part of the ascetic life, which led the Buddha to his wisdom. Similar to the founder of the Hindu-Jain religion, Mahavira, Siddhartha Gautama, he walked in search of wisdom and perfection through the valley of the Ganges for six years in nude asceticism, where he met famous religious teachers, whose systems and methods he followed. However, since all this did not bring him closer to his goals, he gave up the traditional religions and their methods, sought his own way (the "middle way", which he later taught) and practiced especially in meditation.
Since then, many people followed his example and his teachings, and some of them were able to achieve the goal of »perfect awakening« themselves and thus become a Buddha themselves. Some of these Buddhas are firmly bound to nudity, such as the Adi-Buddha Samantabhadra, the All-Good, the Blessed One, or the Lord of Truth. He appears nude, without attributes, and symbolises the primordial enlightenment of the mind itself, as well as the practice and meditation of all Buddhas.
Hinduism
Hinduism includes nudity as a natural base element. The regularly held, cleansing bath in the Ganges river, which many millions of Hindus attend, originally took place in the nude for all and is now untertaken predominantly partly clothed due to meanwhile entered foreign influences..
- Nudity as asceticism
Regardless of that, today monks still live specifically in the Hindu form of the Jainism in complete or almost complete nudity. They are well-known as "clothed in air". In Sanskrit, they are called the "Digambaras", who run their monasteries primarily in the southern regions of the Indian subcontinent. These monks refer to the founder of the religion, Mahavira, who spent 12 years nude in asceticism, before spreading the insights of his meditations and asceticism as a new doctrine.
Already in the antiquity, the Greeks were very well known as the »nude ascetics of India«.
Jainism assumes, that there are two principles in the world: spiritual and non-spiritual. The spiritual is based on an infinite number of individual souls (jiva). The non-spiritual includes the five categories: movement, rest, space, matter, and time. Everything material has a soul, not only humans and animals, but also plants or water.
The original purity and omniscience of the soul (jiva), however, is impaired by subtle substances, that enter as a result of karma. The jiva can be categorised according to the respective degree of purity by color, olfactory, haptic and taste gradations, where i.e. the possible color spectrum of the jiva ranges from black, dark blue to dove gray, fire red, yellow to white. Thus, a yellow mental monad attests balanced characteristic traits of a person. Any karmic act, whether intentional or not, forces one to remain in the cycle of reincarnation (saṃsāra) until all karma is paid off.
Purification of the soul is achieved in Jainism through a moral way of life and strict asceticism. When a soul is freed from all impurities, it ascends to the highest heaven to remain there in peaceful bliss. However, not all souls reach this stage. The so-called abhavya jivas ("incompetent souls") can never be freed from saṃsāra because of their natural predisposition.
Read more: Further notions concerning nudity