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Kundakunda: The Samayasāra
291
If as much as an atom of desire / attachment (rāga), etc., is found in someone, he does not know the self even if he knows all the scriptures.
Absence of desire (rāga) is the indicator of selfknowledge because only someone who knows the self, and thus the real relation of self to not self, knows that to desire is pointless, since in reality it is impossible to possess anything at all. In fact this works both ways: desire obstructs omniscience and liberation, but (partial) knowledge leads to the abandonment of desire and thus ultimately to liberation (total knowledge).
How does this treatment of desire (rāga) relate to the standard kaşāya doctrine as found in the Tattvārtha Sūtra ? According to the kaşāya doctrine, it is the negative emotions or passions underlying action which cause karmic particles to adhere to and thus bind the soul. And this seems to be precisely the meaning of a simile employed by Kundakunda at Samayasāra 237-241 (= JGM 255-264). There, it is said of a man with an oil-smeared body, who is performing martial exercises in a dusty place and doing damage to the surrounding foliage, that the real (niscayataḥ) cause of the dust sticking to his body is the oil, not his bodily activity. In the same way, a wrong believer engaged in activity, who has rāga, etc., as his upayoga, is smeared by karmic dust (rajasā) [241 = JGM 259]. On the other hand, when a man performs exercises with a body which is oil-free, whatever the physical destruction he causes, no dust sticks to him. Similarly, a right-believer, even though he is engaged in various activities, is not smeared by karmic dust because of the absence of rāga, etc., as his upayoga [246 = JGM 264].
Chronologically, however, this passage evidently belongs to an early layer of the Samayasāra, given its emphasis on the suppression of passion rather than on jñāna as the means to liberation. And considering the broader context, it becomes clear that Kundakunda's other
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