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Kundakunda: The Samayasāra 301
is 'to remove the perverse belief that practical conduct of saints, i.e. repentance, etc., will lead to Liberation from bondage of karmas'.44 In other words, these gāthās describe an attitude to be adopted by those on the verge of pure knowledge and liberation; and they are articulated in a way which is probably designed to shock ascetics out of attachment to those elements of their religious life which they hold most dear. (In this respect these gāthās are perhaps comparable in method to the kōans of Ch'an Buddhism.) Moreover, the eight practices given at Samayasara 306 are connected with lapses from perfect monastic conduct: the need for them implies lack of perfection on the part of the ascetic. Similarly, when they are not needed it is because perfection has been attained. (And once again ontology and epistemology do their dance: the state of perfection, where prescribed ascetic practices are transcended, is finally achieved by non-attachment to - i.e. by transcendence of - precisely such practices.)
Another modern commentator, Chakravarti, takes these gāthās to be descriptive (i.e. broadly philosophical) rather than prescriptive (religious) in tenor; he sees them as representing the perspective of the already purified 'transcendental Self, beyond good and evil, for whom the question of discipline or non-discipline is quite meaningless. For Chakravarti, the term apratikramaṇa does not imply the mere opposite of pratikramana (which would imply the removal of discipline and giving full reign to the impure emotions), rather the negative prefix (a-) 'must be taken to signify the absence of necessity to practise the discipline'.45 For the self absorbed in its own pure nature impure psychic states are brought to a stop, so it is unnecessary to practise the various kinds of discipline.46
This interpretation saves him from the potentially
44 Ibid.
45
p.190, Chakravarti's ed. of Samayasāra. 46 See ibid. pp. 189-190.
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