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290 Harmless Souls
Thus the knower does not desire all these various states (bhāva), for in reality his nature (bhāva) is knowledge, and he is independent of everything [214 = JGM 230].
As we have already seen, both meritorious and demeritorious actions keep one in samsāra. Here, the desire for the fruits of such actions has the same result. More interesting in this context, however, is the internalisation of aparigraha with regard to eating and drinking. Now it is the attitude, the lack of desire for food and water, which defines fasting. The stress has been shifted from the material fact of non-consumption, so closely tied to physical ahimsā, to the underlying state, or mental attitude. And aparigraha itself is defined as desirelessness, an attitude.
Thus the indices of the religious life - physical renunciation and non-possession (aparigraha) - are, through internalisation, drawn into the equation of selfknowledge and liberation. And the condition of renunciation is no longer something to be achieved through action or inaction but, being the natural state of the self, it is therefore something to be realised. In other words, the barrier to full renunciation and thus liberation is, in effect, a delusion with regard to what is not self: the delusion that it is possible in reality to have a relationship with it. Consequently, it is not the physical objects which make up the ajiva world themselves which are to be renounced, but the attitude towards those objects. As Samayasāra 210 puts it, 'a person who has no parigraha is said to be desireless' [apariggaho añiccho bhanido); and it is by this kind of non-possession or desirelessness that one is a knower, i.e. liberated.24 The concomitant of this is that it is attachment or desire, an attitude, which prevents selfknowledge and thus liberation. So according to Samayasāra 20 (= JGM 214):
24 See p. 289, above.
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