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Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 109 reached its 'final' form with Kundakunda.64
The consequences of seeing kevalajñāna and kevaladarśana combined - the latter being subsumed in the former - as a form of (pure) consciousness, as Kundakunda does in the Pravacanasāra, are extensive, as I shall make clear. Here I shall restrict myself to the comment that, if it is the quality of consciousness that is instrumental in bondage and freedom (and the role of yoga [activity] has, via the two tier system of the Tattvārtha Sūtra and its precursors, become largely irrelevant to the actual mechanism of bondage), then it is only a relatively small step to saying that material karman's association with the jīva (i.e. bondage) is 'unreal'. For if the true nature of the soul is pure consciousness, then how can this be touched in reality by karman, which is material? And as will be seen, Kundakunda comes to assert that it is only from the vyavahāra-naya that the jīva is characterised by bhāvas, or śubha and aśubha upayoga (i.e. bondage through karmic matter); from the niscaya view, which in the Samayasāra, at least, he takes to be the 'real' view, the jīva has no connection with these. Soteriology thus becomes a matter of knowing and realising the true nature of the self, by means of jñāna and meditation. Tapas, on the other hand, has.- at least in theory - been down-graded. 65 Emphasis is switched from an obsession with the minutiae of the karma theory, where potentially every action has soteriological repercussions and interaction with the material world is crucial, to ways of achieving soteriological autonomy and
64 Three stages are suggested: 1) upayoga is used in the strict sense of 'manifestation of
consciousness', so the state of the kevalin is not included among the
jñānas and darśanas, the component parts of upayoga, 2) kevalajñāna and kevaladarśana are added to the list of upayogas, 3) kevalajñāna = suddhopayoga = the self, consciousness in its
'original', pure state, which is not a manifestation or application at
all.
65 For a general discussion of these strands in Indian religions, see Gombrich 1988, p. 44f.
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