The surviving descriptions of Ajivika life suggest a community whose primary “rituals” were embodied in rigorous ascetic discipline rather than in elaborate ceremony. Ajivika renunciants were known for severe austerities: prolonged fasting, exposure to heat and cold, and the adoption of taxing postures maintained for long periods. Many sources describe them as going naked or nearly naked, using the body itself as a sign of radical detachment from social convention and material comfort. These practices could rival, and at times even surpass, the austerities of other śramaṇa movements of the time. Such bodily disciplines were not undertaken to manipulate karma or bend destiny, but to inhabit, with unwavering resolve, a cosmos understood to be governed by an unalterable determinism.

Alongside these physical austerities, Ajivikas lived as wandering mendicants, moving from place to place and begging for alms. Their lifestyle was marked by homelessness, minimal possessions, and residence in caves or rock shelters, some of which were associated with organized communities under recognized teachers. Within these communities, a monastic-style discipline appears to have prevailed: rules concerning non-violence, restraint of speech and sexuality, and renunciation of property framed their daily conduct. Ethical restraint, however, was not interpreted as a means of purifying karma, but as a coherent way of living in harmony with an inexorable cosmic order.

Equally striking is what seems to be absent or minimized in their religious life. Ajivikas are not portrayed as cultivating elaborate sacrificial rites or complex fire rituals in the manner of Vedic orthodoxy, and there is no clear evidence of a developed devotional cult centered on deities or icons. Their religious energy appears to have been directed instead toward philosophical reflection, debate, and the transmission of teachings about fate, the soul, and vast cosmic cycles. In this sense, the central Ajivika “practice” was the disciplined acceptance of niyati—destiny—as the fundamental structure of reality, and the shaping of one’s ascetic, mendicant existence so that it mirrored that insight as faithfully as possible.