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 153

Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 139 We now come to a crucial gāthā [2.91]:
Who does not know thus the paramātman, encountered in their own natures, conceives through delusion the idea 'I am (this), this is mine'.
This gāthā has a number of ambiguities; for instance, paramappāņam apparently refers to the Paramātman - a neo-Vedāntic term possibly used by Kundakunda at 2.102 (see below), and frequently employed in the Tattvadīpikā, especially on Book 1 - rather than to the ajīva and the jiva (which is the way Upadhye takes it). However, the general meaning is clear: whoever does not know the essential nature of the ātman - its difference from its embodiments - comes to have the delusive idea that what is in reality not himself - the ajīva or para - is himself; he confuses two totally separate categories. This cognitive or epistemological confusion about the true nature of the self is, as we have seen (2.88), a self-transformation of the jīva (aśubhopayoga), said to have been 'set off by contiguity with material karman, although the mechanism of the latter cannot be explained (and, as I shall suggest, is not really needed according to the logic of the internalised system).
In short, delusion (moha) is at the beginning of the causal chain of bondage; for if the soul is not really connected with ajīva (including karman) then only moha can 'persuade it to think that it is. However, moha itself, in the standard explanation, is a result of material karman. If this is how Kundakunda views moha - i.e. if material karman is still playing an instrumental or catalytic role in bondage because of the inexplicable reaction of the jīva to its contiguity - then one would expect freedom from moha, etc., and thus from bondage, to result from the destruction or obstruction of material karman. However, according to the Pravacanasāra, it is meditation on the fact of the
dravyam - TD on 2:90. Note the typically Vedāntic distinction here between jīva, embodied soul, and ātman, pure or essential soul.