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236 Harmless Souls with a clear instance of this. The verse reads:
The true meaning, indeed, the samaya, pure, sheer, the seer, the knower - the mendicants who are absorbed in this, their own nature, attain nirvāņa.
These epithets obviously all refer to the pure self, so samaya here has become a synonym for the 'unified' or 'realised self'. (Amrtacandra glosses it in terms of 'entering into the knowledge which is produced from the state of oneness'. Jayasena says he is called samaya because 'he attains / transforms (himself) into pure qualities and modes'.): There is also a self-conscious yet ambiguous attempt within the text to define what is meant by 'samayasāra' itself. Gāthā 142 states:
Karma is bound or not bound to the self - know these to be points of view. But whatever is said when these alternatives have been transcended, that is samayasāra (the true definition of jiva).
Is Samayasāra therefore a teaching - a 'view' which transcends views? Or is it a condition of the self which reflects its true, transcendental relation to karma?9 The Ātmakhyāti is almost equally ambiguous, stating that he who goes beyond both views and their combination acquires or finds samayasāra. And 'if that is the case, then who, indeed, would not activate the alternative-renouncing state of mind?'10 The fact that alternatives are being definitively discarded lends some weight to the idea that samayasāra (essential definition) cannot be another view,
8 ekibhāvapravsttajñānagamana - Ātmakhyāti JGM ed. on Samayasāra 161 (= Chakra. 151). śuddhagunaparyāyān pariņamati - Tātparyavrtti on ibid.
9 I shall deal with this question from a different perspective when I consider Kundakunda's use of the vyavahāra-niscaya doctrine. See below, pp. 239ff.
10 yady evam tarhi ko hi nāma pakşasamnyāsabhāvanām na nātayati - Ātmakhyāti on Samayasära 142 (152 JGM ed.).
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