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Harmless Souls
3) sūksmakriya-anivartin - the 'meditation' of subtle activity, in which 'all gross and subtle activities of mind and speech, as well as the gross activities of the body, are absolutely stopped'. 53
4) vyuparatakriya-anivartin - absolute non-motion, in which even the subtle physical activities - breathing, heartbeat, etc.- are stopped. These two - designated anivartin, 'that from which there is no falling back'54 - occur in the final two gunasthānas, immediately preceding physical death and final liberation.
The discussion of śukla-dhyāna, in particular, is very limited in the Tattvārtha Sūtra and Sarvārthasiddhi. A number of problems attend the relevant passages, not least the assertion, at Tattvārtha Sūtra 9:37, that the first two types of śukla-dhyāna can be attained only by those who know the pūrvas (i.e. the original Jaina canon which, at the time of the Tattvārtha Sūtra's composition, was already considered to be 'lost'). These difficulties have been considered by a number of scholars and I shall not enter into a further discussion of them here.55 Enough, however, has been presented of this standard schema of tapas and dhyāna, and its relation to the jiva's progress towards liberation, to be able to ask where, if at all, Kundakunda's soteriology of liberation through jñāna and liberation fits into this pattern. In order to answer this, we must now look at Kundakunda's gāthās on liberation in greater detail.
cf. Yoga Sūtras 1:42-44 on savitarka, nirvitarka, savicāra, and nirvicāra.
33 JPP p. 269. 54 Ibid. p. 270.
55 On śukla-dhyāna see Bronkhorst p. 179; Schubring 1962, p. 315 fn. 3, p. 316. On the contradiction between the TS and Bhäsya concerning śukla-dhyāna, see Zydenbos pp. 34-35. On the later systematisation of dhyāna, especially by Haribhadra, see Tatia pp. 283291.
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