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Kundakunda: The Pravacanasāra 163 that the śramana should perform his prescribed role to the letter, and 3) an internalised hiņsā doctrine, linked to Kundakunda's upayoga theory, whereby the external is merely a reflex of the internal state, and it is the latter which carries the soteriological weight.
In other words, the physical model of the killing of the six classes of embodied beings is retained, but the original doctrine is now interpreted in terms of 1) ritualised action, and 2) internalised doctrine. Perhaps that is why the gāthā says vadhakaro tti mado, 'he is regarded as a murderer', i.e. this is just a way of talking about the person who is internally careless (which is what really counts), using the old imagery, the old physical connection of carelessness and jivas, in a new context. (Here, as elsewhere, ritualisation and internalisation complement each other.)
To expand on this, originally the five samiti can only have been formulated as rules for the avoidance of himsā to the various kinds of jivas.85 The emphasis of the discipline is to avoid doing harm because such harm would automatically cause one to be bound by a new influx of karman. Yet here the discipline of samiti has been ritualised; it is adherence to the letter of monastic discipline that is crucial; if a monk follows the rules then, even if he does harm 'accidentally' - which would count as 'carelessness' in the original reading -, he is not bound by karman. Emphasis is switched from the results of actions to the actions themselves, and thus to the underlying attitude or volition accompanying them. This combination of ritualisation and internalisation disposes of the worry that even someone who is careful and observes the five samiti can be open to 'accident'. In other words, it removes the fortuitous from monastic life, for now it is attitude, externalised in particular ritualised actions, that really counts. Yet, once that shift of emphasis has been made, the doctrine that himsā to jīvas (including nigoda) is what causes karmic bondage is undermined, for gāthās such as
85 See Part I, above.
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