Ajivika thought placed an uncompromising doctrine of niyati, or fate, at the very center of its vision, and this radically shaped its understanding of ethics. All events, including every action and every stage of spiritual development, were held to be absolutely predetermined. Moral behavior, whether praised as virtuous or condemned as evil, was regarded not as the result of free choice but as the inevitable unfolding of destiny. Ethical distinctions could still be recognized on a conventional level, yet they lacked the power to redirect the course of rebirth or hasten liberation. In this framework, moral conduct did not function as a causal instrument for spiritual progress but as one more expression of an unalterable cosmic order.

Because of this determinism, the usual link between ethics and karmic responsibility was effectively severed. Ajivika teachers denied that good or bad deeds could generate new karmic consequences that would change one’s future condition, and even karmic effects themselves were seen as predetermined. Liberation was viewed as “fatalistic”: every soul would attain it only at the destined time, independent of individual striving or moral reform. Praise and blame, therefore, lost ultimate spiritual weight and became, at most, matters of social convention rather than forces shaping destiny. The ethical life was not a ladder to climb but a pattern already woven into the fabric of existence.

Within such a worldview, the recommended inner attitude leaned toward acceptance and equanimity rather than strenuous moral self-cultivation. Ascetic practices and ways of life associated with the Ajivikas were not interpreted as techniques to purify karma or accelerate awakening, but as roles that fate had assigned and that simply manifested one’s destined nature. The spiritual task lay less in changing oneself and more in understanding and yielding to the inevitability of niyati. Compared with the action-oriented paths of neighboring traditions, this produced an ethic that was contemplative and resigned, emphasizing insight into the powerlessness of human effort before destiny rather than the transformative efficacy of deliberate moral choice.