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146 Harmless Souls - be viewed as immaterial.48 By stressing the niscaya view and the role of moha in the key passages on bondage in the Pravacanasāra, Kundakunda implicitly acknowledges the importance of a 'dematerialised' instrument of bondage for the development of his soteriology (a soteriology which, as we shall see, is taken to its logical conclusion in the Samayasāra). In this context, 'karman' as employed at Pravacanasāra 2.87 - 'Know this to be the niscaya description of the bondage of souls: the impassioned self binds karman, the self free from passion is free from karmas' - may therefore be taken to mean not material karman but the 'ātman's karman', i.e. the jiva's own manifestation of consciousness, (aśuddha-) upayoga.49
Again looking forward to the Samayasāra, and taking the niscaya view in the strictest sense of there being no contact at all between the omniscient (i.e. liberated) soul and matter, we read at Pravacanasāra 1.52 that:
Although knowing those objects, the soul does not transform itself ('under their influence' - Upadhye), does not grasp them, nor is it born among them; thus it is recognised as being without bondage.50
This gāthā describes the condition of the liberated or omniscient soul. However, as will become clear, in the Samayasāra, Kundakunda comes to view this kind of statement as the exclusive truth about the soul. In other words, it is not and has never been really bound, but has
48 See above, comments on Pravac. and TD 2:92, 2:97.
49 It should be noted that this reading also takes us closer to the way in which the naya doctrine is frequently used in the Samayasāra: there, the niscaya view is that the jiva has nothing whatsoever to do with paradravya, and both the elements - niscaya and vyavahāra - of the doctrine as it was introduced in the Pravacanasāra now fall into the vyavahāra camp.
50 Cf. Pravac. 1.32: 'The omniscient lord neither grasps, nor releases, nor transforms the other; he sees everything and knows everything completely.'
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