Harmless Soul

Author(s): W J Johnson, Dayanand Bhargav
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 70

56 Harmless Souls
(bandhahetavaḥ), enumerated at Tattvärtha Sutra 8:1, occur as asravadvāras - causes of (literally, 'entrances for') asrava.28 As Ohira points out in connection with this, theoretically there is no difference between the root causes of asrava and of bandha,29 but Umāsvāti took yoga to be the root cause of asrava (on the basis that the threefold yogas are present in all the other causes), and then classified yoga as causing both īryāpatha āsrava and sāmparāyika āsrava while placing the rest of the canonical āsravadvāras (viz. mithyādarśana, avirati, pramāda, and kaṣāya) in the category of samparāyika āsrava only. The crucial alteration here, however, is Umāsvāti's division of yoga into that which stems from kaṣāya and involves mithyādarśana, avirati, and pramāda, and that which is free from kaṣāya, i.e. it is only one kind of yoga which causes bondage - the other (passionless) kind does not bind. Thus Umāsvati has in effect made a distinction between the causes of asrava and the causes of bondage: whereas both kinds of yoga (passionless and passionate) cause asrava, only one kind causes bondage.
The canonical idea that mithyādarśana, avirati, pramāda, kaṣāya, and yoga, as the causes of asrava, are indistinguishable from the causes of bondage, makes it clear that before Umāsvāti there is no technically formulated conception of any kind of asrava which does not bind.30
At Tattvärtha Sutra 8:9 (10) the four kaṣāya are included in a list of twenty-eight deluding karmas (as caritra-mohaniya, 'right-conduct deluding karmas'), but they are not mentioned there as the specific cause of karmic matter adhering to the jiva. It is clear that Umāsvāti is here
28 See, for example, Sthāna 5.2.517, and Samavāya 16, cited by Ohira, p. 62.
29 Ibid.
30 See the discussion, p. 14, above, of the ancient meaning of asrava according to Alsdorf (1965), indicating that asrava was probably originally synonymous with bondage.