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142 Harmless Souls is involved with the non-soul (including material karman), then the implication is that, since in reality the jīva has no connection with anything material, it cannot in reality be bound by karman. To believe otherwise amounts to moha, and it is this which is the 'fact' of the soul's bondage. Consequently, the belief that material karman can bind the non-material soul takes over karmapudgala's binding (i.e. its only) function, and Kundakunda has, in effect, internalised or dematerialised karman; bondage is now a matter of delusion, a false attitude manifested in a feeling of possessiveness with regard to the material (everything that is ajīva).36
The emphasis on moha, defined as the delusion that the self and the 'other' have any connection with or influence on each other, renders any 'two-cause' system of bondage - whatever the material and instrumental causes - effectively redundant. For how can something which does not and cannot really have any connection with what it is supposed in part to act upon be cited as a cause, material or otherwise? Furthermore, since it is the self's contact with paradravya, including material karman, that is a delusion, then it is paradravya / material karman that becomes, from the soteriological perspective, an irrelevance: in the characterisation of the Tattvadipikā on Pravacanasāra 2.101, 'unreal' (asat).37 In short, the stress on moha points to a solution to the problem of bondage beyond that attempted through the standard use of the vyavahāra / niscaya distinction. (The way in which moha arises, whether it is self-generated and how, or whether it is, like the Vedāntic avidyā, inexplicable, is not dealt with in this text; and for practical purposes it is probably considered
36 In this context, we may recall gāthā 1.46 (quoted p. 121, above): 'There would be no samsāra for any embodied jīva if the ātman itself, through its own nature, did not become auspicious or inauspicious.' Again this puts the 'blame' for bondage squarely on the ātman itself; the process is self-contained and internal.
37 For comments on this, see below.
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