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 155

Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 141 destroys the evil (literally, 'very difficult') knot of moha (khavedi so mohaduggamthim) [2.102]. And he who has overcome this knot of delusion, having destroyed rāga and dveşa (which, as the Tattvadīpikā points out, have moha as their root), being indifferent to pleasure and suffering, attains to undecaying happiness (sokkham akkhayam), i.e. liberation (2.103).
This whole passage is, of course, redolent of Vedānta. Here, I simply want to point out that liberation is seen to be attained not by the destruction of that karman which (very tenuously) has been said to bring about moha, but by the destruction of moha itself through meditation on the essential purity and complete separateness of the soul. In other words, it is lack of knowledge of the true nature of the self which really constitutes moha; consequently, it is the knowledge (gnosis) and realisation of the self's true nature which banishes moha (aśuddhopayoga) and, by revealing and realising the inherent purity of the soul, accomplishes liberation. The role of material karman in this mechanism of bondage and liberation has thus for all significant purposes been forgotten. And it can be forgotten because the logic of the system no longer requires it. I refer to 'material' karman because its function has actually been taken over by immaterial aśuddhopayoga / moha, caused, in the niścaya view, by the jiva's self-transformation. As the Tattvadīpikā on Pravacanasāra 2.91 puts it:
Therefore the instrumental cause of the soul's connection with other substance is merely the absence of an accurate distinction between what is self and what is other.35
In other words, given that the cause of the jīva's connection with other substance is the delusion that the soul
appagam, two separate words, but how this is translated makes no difference to the present argument.
35 ato jīvasya paradravyapravsttinimittam svaparaparicchedābhāvamātram eva - TD on Pravac. 2:91.