Charvaka, or Lokayata, is remembered less for prescribing a new set of rituals and more for dismantling the ritual edifice of its time. It explicitly rejected Vedic sacrifices, priestly ceremonies, mantra-recitation, and all rites aimed at heaven, karma, or liberation, regarding them as grounded in unverifiable claims and serving primarily the interests of priests. In the surviving reports, there is no indication of an alternative sacred ritual system—no puja, meditation regimen, yoga discipline, or ascetic code unique to this school. Its stance is not a reform of ritual, but a principled refusal to grant ritual any salvific or metaphysical significance.

What emerges instead is a distinctive orientation toward life rather than a codified lifestyle manual. Charvaka sources, mostly preserved through the writings of opponents, portray an ethic centered on this-worldly well-being and the enjoyment of sensory pleasures, since only this life is held to be real. Scriptural prohibitions that cannot be grounded in direct perception are treated with indifference, while conduct is guided by common sense, social convention, and immediate utility rather than religious duty or hope for future lives. Although polemical texts caricature this as unrestrained hedonism, the core emphasis lies in denying the efficacy of afterlife-oriented practices, not in elaborating a detailed program of indulgence.

From a spiritual-philosophical perspective, Charvaka can be seen as shifting the axis of “practice” from temple and altar to the ordinary fabric of daily existence. The recommended way of living is pragmatic: pursue pleasure and material prosperity, yet do so with an eye to consequences, avoiding obvious harm and unnecessary suffering. Knowledge is to be sought through direct perception and, where accepted, inference, rather than through scriptural authority or mystical revelation. In this sense, the lifestyle it implicitly commends is one of rational materialism and present-centered living, without the scaffolding of ritual or the horizon of an afterlife.