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 136

122 Harmless Souls of view samsāra is self-generated by the ātman through its manifestations of consciousness, this not only implies that the ātman is prior to samsāra but also that it 'creates' samsāra through its own states of consciousness (i.e. 'creates' it in the only significant sense - for itself). Taken in this way, samsāra would thus be the creation of impure or 'false' states of consciousness. Given the essential purity of the soul, however, this false consciousness can only take one form, namely, delusion regarding the ātman's true nature. This is indeed the case in the Pravacanasāra, where moha comes to be seen as the chief agent in bondage, and is directly linked to aśuddhopayoga (śubhaand aśubha-upayoga).84 This, as will be made clear, has radical implications for the prescribed methods of liberation, entailing release through inner transformation of consciousness and knowledge (gnosis). But before considering these, I shall now discuss the mechanism of bondage as portrayed in the Pravacanasāra in greater detail.85
84 For a full discussion of this, see p. 124ff., below.
85 Whether it is possible logically to hold a view that the world - samsāra - is a product of false consciousness, and that false consciousness is produced by various obscuring karmas which are themselves the material constituents of samsāra, is not a problem directly confronted in these texts. However, the implication of Kundakunda's niscaya view is that false consciousness is entirely selfgenerated and thus really has nothing to do with karman at all. The vyavahāra view, of course, is different; and that is enough, according to the orthodox Jaina philosophical position, to neutralise the difficulty. For a historian, however, the fact that contradiction is built into the system explains nothing; rather it is necessary to explain why such a system, with its deliberate imperviousness to argument, should have been erected in the first place. Kundakunda's 'logical' (niscaya) view, by demonstrating the position Jaina scholastics would have found themselves in without the safety-curtain of the various nayas, helps us to formulate such an explanation. For, as we shall see when we examine the Samayasāra, he remained largely true to the logic of his own argument by employing the niscaya / vyavahāra distinction in a