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 266

252 Harmless Souls
The anekāntavāda-compatible vyavahāra view points to a state of liberation where the self still has some kind of relation with the not-self (there is a 'knower' and something 'known'), whereas the niscaya view envisages a liberated self, totally isolated from the not-self, whose omniscience is identical with self-knowledge.
In other words, even when the Samayasāra is apparently rejecting all views (as at 141-144), and so both anekānta and vyavahāra-niscaya distinctions, it is clear that it is the niscaya view, taken as truth, which leads one to the point where views can be abandoned and liberation achieved, i.e. to self-realization. The niścaya view indeed characterizes - albeit from an inevitably intellectual rather than experiential perspective - the essence of self. Transcending all viewpoints (the intellectual), one goes on to experience the reality of that state. Here, in the Samayasāra, in contrast with the Mādhyamika where the abandonment of views is the chief instrument in the achievement of the goal, it is the espousal of the niścaya view which is clearly of prime importance.39 The idea that the latter should be abandoned too seems to have been added, probably under Mädhyamika influence and perhaps because it was supposed (erroneously) that this was a way of shepherding the absolute, hierarchical distinction of two truths' back into the anekāntavāda fold.40 It may also be the case that what was intended merely as a 'description of 'samayasāra' ('the realized self) in the text itself was extrapolated by the commentators into a technique for achieving that state.
Furthermore, we can see the fundamental incompatibility between syādvāda and the absolute
39 See, for instance, gāthās 11-12, 156, 272, etc., quoted above.
40 The meaning attributed to 'samayasāra' ('the essence of self) in Samayasära 141-144, and the fact that these verses conclude a discrete section of the work, point to the likelihood that they were indeed added after the bulk of the text had already been compiled.