What can be said with some confidence is that the Ajivika tradition centered on an uncompromising doctrine of niyati, or absolute determinism: everything that happens, from birth to liberation, was held to be fixed by fate. Within this view, no amount of moral effort, spiritual striving, or deliberate practice could alter the destined course of events; even liberation was regarded as something that would occur automatically after a vast, predetermined sequence of rebirths. This did not produce a program of techniques to change destiny, but rather a radical stance of understanding and accepting that destiny as inescapable.

Historically, Ajivika teaching seems to have been embodied primarily in a renunciate, ascetic lifestyle rather than in a codified set of spiritual exercises. Practitioners are described as wandering mendicants, often going naked or with minimal clothing, and engaging in severe austerities such as fasting, exposure to heat and cold, and extremely simple living. Although they denied that such conduct could generate karmic merit or alter fate, their way of life appears to have been disciplined, restrained, and largely harmless, marked by non-possession and the curbing of desires. The outer form, then, was one of rigorous renunciation; the inner meaning lay in living out a destiny that was already fixed.

From the available evidence, there is no preserved Ajivika manual of meditation, ritual, or yoga, and no detailed system of graded practices survives. The distinctive “practice” was more attitudinal than technical: cultivating unwavering acceptance that all events, pleasant or painful, are predetermined, and sustaining equanimity in the face of them. This perspective dissolves anxiety about spiritual progress, since progress itself is understood as fated rather than earned. Because the historical lineage has vanished and its own texts are lost, any attempt to follow Ajivika today can only approximate its spirit: a simple, austere way of life grounded in the conviction that everything unfolds according to an unalterable destiny.