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130 Harmless Souls
'coloured' (the leśya doctrine) which strongly suggest that the soul was once viewed in material terms, while on the other hand, the very idea of bondage seems to have been lifted out of the sphere of material karman altogether: the soul now binds itself through modification of its manifestation of consciousness. 12 Such modifications are said to be brought about by contact with or proximity to material objects; yet the mechanism of this is not explained; at the level of contact the problematical gap between the material and the immaterial remains. However, it looks very much as though bondage has in effect been dematerialised. For if it is the particular manifestation of the immaterial soul's own consciousness which is instrumental in bondage, what place is there for the original karman theory?13 The only answer is that it is the particular upayoga which 'causes' the karmic particles to adhere to the jīva (i.e. upayoga has the same role as kaṣāya does in the classical theory), but this only returns us to the original problem: how can what is immaterial - a state of consciousness characterising an immaterial soul - be instrumental in its own bondage by matter? A close reading of Kundakunda and Amṛtacandra suggests that they were aware of these problems. In particular, the epistemological divide between the vyavahāra and the niscaya views, with Kundakunda's peculiar interpretation of this division (which becomes so evident in the Samayasāra), provide them with a possible route out of this impasse. But as we shall see later, this way offers such a threat to the whole tradition of Jaina doctrine and practice that, with the exception of the Samayasāra, it cannot be
12
On lesya see, for instance, Utt. XXXIV and Jacobi's footnote on Utt. XXXIV.1 (1895, p. 196) which quotes the same metaphor of the crystal (sphatika) from the Avacuri with regard to the lesya's influence on the soul. See also Schubring (1962) para. 97-98.
13 Although, as we shall see below, Kundakunda and Amṛtacandra are reluctant to admit this: according to the niścaya view, jīva is the instrumental cause of material karman, and the material cause of its own modifications.
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