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Kundakunda: The Samayasara 281 delusory contact with the other and thus realise its real condition.
As we have seen, with increasing stress on the essential purity of the self and its equation with knowledge (omniscience), the idea arises that the atman, in its essence or svabhāva, cannot by definition ever really come into contact with any material substances. And what was originally true just of the individual who had attained kevala-jñāna is now predicated of every ātman.
This points us towards something which is implied but never made explicit in Kundakunda's reformulation of the relationship between self and matter - namely, that it is impossible that the soul could ever be or ever have been really bound. Naturally, this is closely allied to the shift away from the importance of physical karma and the concomitant rise of the idea that the pure self is something to be attained by realisation of its true ontological status. It should be stressed, however, that because of the eclectic nature of the Samayasara the direct link with the path of physical austerity is never finally broken. Thus, for instance, while gathā 71 (= JGM 76) states that:
When the absolute difference between äsravas (inflowing karmic matter) and the self (ātman) is known by this jīva, then there is no bondage for it,
the following verse (72 = JGM 77) tempers this with the statement that:
Having known the impurity of asravas, their contrary nature (to the self), and that they are the causes of misery, the jiva abstains from
them.
In other words, the jiva that knows the true relationship between the self and paradravya does not act in an asravacausing way and so is not bound. Thus in these verses, it is implied that knowledge is still at least nominally subsidiary to conduct as the means to liberation. Nevertheless, given
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