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 260

246 Harmless Souls holding any other.) It should be abandoned as soon as possible.29
This feeling is expressed in more purely psychological terms at Samayasāra 12 [=14]:
The pure [viewpoint} which teaches about the pure (substance - i.e. the pure self] should be known by [those whose object it is to be] the seers of the supreme mental state; but the vyavahāra teaching is for / employed by those who stand in / employ inferior mental states.
Again the negative formulation indicates that the crucial liberating act is to abandon the vyavahāra view. The śuddhanaya, which should be adopted instead, is defined at Samayasāra 14 [=16):
He who sees the ātman as neither bound nor touched [by karmic matter), not other than itself, fixed, without differences, and not combined (with anything not self], know that he is one who holds the pure point of view.
On this reading, the difference between the two views is irreconcilable: one cancels out or denies the other.
This is quite a different interpretation of the 'two views' or 'two truths' doctrine from that expressed at, for instance, Samayasāra 345-348 (=JGM 357-360]:
From the point of view of modifications the self is destroyed; from another point of view it is not. Because of this, there is not the one-sided view that the soul acts or that something else acts. From the point of view of modifications the self is destroyed; from another point of view it is not. Because of this, there is not the one-sided view that the soul experiences or that something else experiences. . It should be known that whoever holds the doctrine that the self that acts is the self that experiences (the fruits of that action] is a
29 What this entails in terms of conduct will be considered below.