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288 Harmless Souls In the present context, however, the meaning of the term is significantly closer to the standard Buddhist use of bhāvanā, namely, as mental development or mental culture in general and meditation in particular.20
The important point to note here is the stress on meditation on the self as the means to liberation:21 right conduct has been redefined as ātmabhāvanā (meditation on the self), and thus internalised. (There is probably also the implication that if one meditates on the self then one's external conduct is automatically correct.)
iv) Renunciation of bhāva In a similar way renunciation is also internalised: stress now falls upon the renunciation of all (mental), states or bhāva (with the exception, of course, of ātmasvabhāva). Gāthā 34 (= JGM 39) reads:
As (self-) knowledge renounces all (mental) states (bhāva), knowing them to be other (than the self), so (self-) knowledge should be considered to be the real / definitive definition of renunciation.
In other words, knowing the self, one recognises and renounces or rejects everything not self, all parabhāva.22 And it is reiterated that knowledge is the svabhāva of the self:
The holy men, who know absolute reality, call that holy man a conqueror of delusion who, having overcome delusion, realises that the self has knowledge for its own-nature (svabhāva).
Seen correctly, therefore, the self, untouched by anything else, is in a natural state of renunciation. It does not have to do anything to renounce since, having no other
20 See CPD p. 36, entry on bhāvanā, and Rahula p.68. 21 Cf. Samayasāra 151, above. 22 See Samayasāra 35 (= JGM 40).
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