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Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 159 behaviour and ahimsā may be said to have been ritualised in the sense that it is now the mechanical performance of the prescribed action itself that counts, or is indicative, not the ahimsic content of the action.76 What is significant is the harm caused to oneself through aśuddhopayoga rather than any harm that might be caused to others, although this entails no particular change in practice since the monastic rules, adherence to which is now the expression of innerpurity, were originally formulated to prevent harm to others. (That is to say, while originally it was harm to others that caused harm (= bondage) to the self, it is now aśuddhopayoga, a state of consciousness, whose external expression is cheda, offence against the monastic rules, that does so.)
In other words, obedience to the rules leads automatically to the goal, but only in the sense that such obedience refers back to, or is a necessary consequence of, an internal state of suddhopayoga, which is what really counts for salvation. Thus total externalisation (the ritualisation of ahimsā) and total internalisation meet: one implies, or is a reflex of, the other. And although, theoretically, it is the internal (suddhopayoga), as the agent of the external (monastic practice), which is really instrumental in binding and liberating, in terms of the visible - of external practice - it is simple adherence to the letter of the law which is seen to bring about liberation. But, again, it is internalisation of himsā that allows it to do SO.
As we have seen, it is the commentary and not Kundakunda's text (3:16) which engendered the above analysis. However, the following gāthā is more directly relevant to at least part of that interpretation:
Whether the being dies or lives, injury is certain for the man who is unrestrained; there is no bondage simply by injury (i.e. 'by mere
76 On my use of the term 'ritualisation' (the meaning is close to routinisation or formalisation), see above p. 86.
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