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Conclusions 87 incorporating two roles (that of the lay-person and that of the monk) which are mutually exclusive and which, in soteriological terms, inevitably have different outcomes.
Umāsvāti's introduction of a technical kaşāya doctine, linked to the īryāpatha-sāmparāyika distinction, would, however, seem at the very least to make room for a less mechanical and more attitude-dependent approach to ascetic conduct. For in theory, the kaṣāya doctrine bridges or blurs the institutional distinction between ascetic (iryāpatha) and lay or non-ascetic (sāmparāyika ) activity, since greater or lesser degrees of bondage now depend on the degree of passion accompanying or motivating an action, not on who performs it. Indeed, taken to its logical conclusion the kasāya doctrine would seem to undercut the rationale for ascetic behaviour altogether. (Clearly, internalisation can only go so far before it threatens the whole basis of a monastic system grounded in severe physical restraint, and with it any specific 'Jaina' identity.)17 But as we have remarked, it has no such effect, and it is probably not intended that it should have. What then is its purpose?
I suggest that the real importance of Umāsvāti's kaṣāya doctrine is for the ordinary lay person (i.e. the majority of the Jaina community), in that it provides a rationale for ordinary lay conduct. That is to say, once the principle that bondage is the ineluctable result of physical harm done to jīvas has been modified, and the principle that only actions motivated or actuated by passion are binding has been accepted, then it becomes possible for one to lead a good life, with good soteriological prospects, without necessarily abandoning one's position as a householder. Thus by controlling one's passions or attitude while performing a particular action, one can reduce or avoid the karmic effect associated with it. Or, to put it in the overlapping but not entirely integrated terminology, one can accrue punya as
17 See Kundakunda sections below, passim, for a full discussion of this.
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