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 221

Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 207
The Tattvadīpikā comments that the person doing this, who
lets go the non-self and, taking on the self as self, turns away from other substance and confines his thought to the single point, the self, such a one assuredly, confining his thought one-pointedly, will in that moment of confining his thought one-pointedly be pure
self.79
Here, Amrtacandra is probably writing under the influence of the synthesis of yoga traditions made by Patañjali in the Yoga Sūtras and by Vyāsa in his Yogabhāsya. Both these works predate Amộtacandra by at least several centuries. If Kundakunda himself knew the Yoga Sūtras it is not evident in his work, but since he is clearly drawing on the same ancient tradition of meditational and yogic techniques which are systematised by Patañjali, the chronology is not important. (It is interesting to note that Amộtacandra echoes not only the yogaś cittavrttinirodhaḥ of Yoga Sūtras 1:2 but with his stress on ekāgra, 'one-pointed thought' or 'concentration', recalls the technical use of this term in Vyāsa as the means by which pure samādhi is attained.) 80
On samādhi, the object of yoga, Mircea Eliade writes that, in the first place, it is 'the state in which thought grasps the object directly. Thus there is a real coincidence between knowledge of the object and the object o: knowledge'::81 According to Patañjali and his commentators, samādhi has a number of stages; by successively accomplishing these, the 'faculty of absolute knowledge' (rtambharāprajñā) is attained, and this
79 Faddegon's trans. (p.145) of: anātmānam utsrjyātmānam evātmatvenopādāya paradravyavyāvrttattvād ātmany evaikasminn agre cintăm nirūnaddhi sa khalv ekāgracintanirodhakas tasminn ekāgracintānirodhasamaye śuddhātmā syāt - TD on 2:99.
80 See Bhāsya on YS 1:1, etc. 81 Eliade p. 522.