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Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 145 gāthās (2.94-96) reiterate that sometimes and somehow (either because its space-points are stained by moha, rāga and dveşa [2.96], or because its association with rāga and dveşa brings about a self-modification into śubha and aśubha (-upayoga) [2.95]), it is clung to by karmic dust. As we have already seen, there is no satisfactory explanation of this conjunction, and the Tattvadīpikā on these passages comes no closer to providing one. For it states that the self, being its own agent, modifies itself, and the modifications of everything not self are only the occasioning causes of self-modification. How these modifications which are not self cause self-modification when the two have no contact is not explained. It is simply claimed that matter treats the soul's self-modification as an efficient cause to modify itself into karman,45 and that this karman then enters the self through the latter's (vibratory) activity. 46 (The perfunctory introduction of yoga here seems to be a sudden recourse to an earlier strand of doctrine.) Similarly, the soul treats matter as an efficient cause (nimitta) to transform itself into various states of consciousness.47 How this transformation takes place and how karman is actually bound remain unexplained features of this circular doctrine in which matter uses its proximity to the self-modifications of the soul to transform itself, and the soul uses its proximity to the self-modifications of matter to do likewise,
If I have laboured these problems, it is simply to make the point that it is the very attempt to preserve the soul's immaterial autonomy, and yet at the same time explain the fact of its bondage, which opens the door to a radically different emphasis in the theory of bondage and liberation. For it is precisely this struggle which gives rise to a perspective from which karman can - at least in some lights
45 tasya svapariņāmam nimittamātrīkstya - TD on 2:94. 46 yogadvārena, TD on Pravac. 2:95. 47 See TD on 2:97, and JPP p. 117ff.
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