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 207

Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 193 restraint or indifference towards the world - an attitude which in turn entails physical restraint. This reading looks, as it were, over its shoulder at that bodily control which is the ultimate factor in liberation. However, the kind of concentration of and on the self, described by Pūjyapāda, looks forward to the self-realisation or jñāna of Kundakunda.30
When we turn to Kundakunda himself, we find that the only sustained use of the term sāmāyika, as such, is in the Niyamasāra (although, as we have already seen, in the Pravacanasāra there is the crucial equation of śama with cāritra and dharma). There, in the section on pratyākhyāna (renunciation), we find the following verses:
Whatever wrong conduct is in me, I give it all up together with threefold activity and practise threefold equanimity (sāmāyika) which is everything and formless, [Niyamasāra 103131
and
I am impartial (sāmya) towards all living creatures and I have no animosity towards any of them. Having given up all desires, deep meditation (samādhi) is attained.[Niyamasāra 104]32
30 It is possible, of course, that Pūjyapāda had read Kundakunda; certainly, he must have been aware of some of the latter's source material.
31 Niy. 103 trans. by Uggar Sain (Kundakunda (1)], with alterations. The surrounding verses are ślokas, but 103 is metrically defective.
32 Niy. 104. It is worth noting that commentators generally take verses 77-139 of the Niyamasāra to be Kundakunda's version of the six āvaśyaka. As Bhargava (pp. 166-167) points out, this particular list of āvaśyaka is slightly different from all other versions, before and after Kundakunda. If it is really supposed to be a list of āvaśyaka then it is a radically internalised one, in which pratikramaņa (confession), prāyaścitta (repentance), etc. are all done by the self to the self through inner discipline, and have no external indicators or emblems; that is to say, they are de-ritualised.