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Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 143 irrelevant.)
In this way, Kundakunda has silently rid himself of an embarrassment, since, to make logical sense of bondage when karman and the jīva belong to two ontologically different categories (the material and the immaterial), he had two options: either to make the jīva material (and so revert to what may have been the very origins of Jaina doctrine) or to make karman immaterial. That he has, in effect, chosen the latter is borne out by evidence from both the Pravacanasāra itself and the Tattvadīpikā. Thus the Tattvadīpikā on Pravacanasāra 2.97,38 when it gives the niscaya view, actually refers to karman as though it were non-material: 'karman of/ for the ātman is modification into attachment'; 'it is duality of merit and demerit'. 39 In other words, karman - what binds - is, from this perspective, not something material (pudgala), but the modification of the immaterial self into states of consciousness (śubha- and aśubha-upayoga) such as rāga , which are meritorious or demeritorious. It is because the ātman is the agent (kartā), as it is also the appropriator (upādātā) and relinquisher (hātā), of modification into attachment, etc., that the latter is seen as its karman.40 This is stated explicitly by Kundakunda at Pravacanasāra 2.30, where it is said that:
The self itself is modification, and such modification is held to be action which consists of jīva; action is known as karman, therefore the self is not the agent (of material karman).
The Tattvadīpikā explains that, from the higher view, the ātman is the agent of that bhāva-karman which is in essence the modification of the self, but it is not the agent of dravya-karman which is in essence a modification of
38 Cf. Pravac. 2:29-30 and TD.
39 rāgapariņāma evātmanaḥ karma, sa eva punyapāpadvaitam - TD on Pravac. 2:97.
40 rāgādiparināmasyaivātmā kartā TD on Pravac. 2:97.
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