Ajivika designates an ancient Indian religious and philosophical movement, counted among the heterodox traditions that stood outside Vedic authority and developed alongside early Buddhism and Jainism. Traditionally associated with the teacher Makkhali Gosala, it emerged as a distinct ascetic community whose members lived as wandering renunciants and practiced severe austerities, including at times nudity and deliberate endurance of hardship. The movement flourished especially in eastern India, receiving some measure of royal support, and later maintained a presence in parts of South India before fading as a distinct community.

At the heart of Ajivika thought lies an uncompromising doctrine of determinism, articulated through the principle of niyati, or fate. According to this view, every event in the cosmos—human actions, moral choices, and spiritual attainments—is fixed in advance and unfolds according to an unalterable cosmic schedule. Free will, in any meaningful sense, is denied; effort, discipline, and ethical striving cannot change the course already laid down. Karma, though acknowledged as a concept, is stripped of its efficacy as a moral law capable of shaping future experience, since no present action can modify what fate has already decreed.

This deterministic vision extends to the understanding of rebirth and liberation. All beings are seen as moving through a vast, predetermined cycle of births and deaths, governed by inevitable cosmic rhythms rather than by personal merit or demerit. Liberation from this cycle is not something to be achieved through spiritual practice or moral purification, but rather something that will occur for each being only when its preordained moment arrives. Asceticism, therefore, does not function as a means to hasten release; it is instead a way of living out what has already been fated, a radical acceptance of the structure of existence itself.

From a contemplative standpoint, Ajivika thought presents a stark and challenging spiritual landscape. By insisting that even the impulse to seek truth or cultivate virtue is itself predetermined, it invites reflection on the limits of human agency and the depth of cosmic order. In contrast to traditions that place transformative power in intentional practice, Ajivika spirituality orients the seeker toward recognizing an all-encompassing inevitability, where endurance, clarity, and acceptance become the natural responses to a universe governed entirely by fate.