Harmless Soul

SR No.: 001196
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: W J Johnson, Dayanand Bhargav
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas
Publication Year: 1995
Total Pages: 372
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Principle
File Size: 20 MB

Page 134

120 Harmless Souls here is that this journey to omniscience, to total purity, is seen as the recovery or realisation of the 'real' or 'true' self, i.e. of its essentially unbound nature.79
Svayambhū (self-existent) is a resonant term in Indian religious thought, and it is probably not coincidental that the text here uses an expression with a decidedly monistic and Vedāntic ring to it, one which is used in various contexts as an epithet for the highest principle.80
Returning to the condition of those who are still characterised by aśuddhopayoga, we read at 1.46 that:
There would be no samsāra for any embodied jiva if the atman by itself, through its own nature, did not become auspicious or inauspicious. 81
In other words, bondage - life in samsāra- is the direct result of particular states of consciousness which are selfgenerated. Thus the ātman does not find itself bound, its condition in the world is not existentially 'given'; it has bound itself. As the commentary (Tattvadīpikā) puts it:
79 That it has this meaning, despite the standard Jaina doctrine that the self has been bound in matter from beginningless time (see JPP p. 107), will be made clear below. As the commentary (TD) on this gāthā (1:16) remarks, from the niscaya point of view - i.e. the determined or higher, as opposed to the conventional (vyavahāra) view (see p. 126, fn. 5, below) - there is no causal or instrumental relation between the self and anything else, viz. the ajīva category, including material karman (na niscayataḥ pareņa sahātmanaḥ kärakatvasambandho 'sti). : 80 See, for example, Brhadāranyaka Upanişad 2.6.3.: brahma svayambhū brahmane namaḥ. I shall have much more to say about the condition of the śramana whose upayoga is suddha in the sections on the mechanisms of bondage and liberation.
81 It should not be thought that I am taking these gāthās out of context. Gāthā 1:46 provides a good example of the disjointed nature of parts of the Pravacanasāra, for it is sandwiched between a gāthā on the activities called ksāyiki (due to the destruction of karmas) and one on the knowledge called ksāyika (produced after the destruction of karmas).