________________ Pancastikaya-samgraha EXPLANATORY NOTE The worldly soul (jiva) is bound, from beginningless time, with the eight kinds of material-karmas (dravyakarma). These are instrumental causes (nimitta karana) of impure transformations slike attachment (raga) and aversion (dvesa)], called karma-consciousness (bhavakarma or karmacetana), in the soul. When a worthy (bhavya) soul treads the empirical (vyavahara) path to liberation represented by the discrete Three-Jewels (bheda ratnatraya) and also the transcendental (niscaya) path to liberation represented by the indiscrete Three-Jewels (abheda ratnatraya), it destroys the materialkarmas (dravyakarma) as well as the karma-consciousness (bhavakarma). It then attains, from the point-of-view of the mode (paryayarthika naya), a state that it has never experienced before, that of the Siddha. From the point-of-view of the pure substance (suddha dravyarthika naya), it has always been of the nature of the Siddha. Imagine a very long bamboo whose bottom half is artificially tainted with figures while the top part is clear of all blemish. A person who is able to see just the bottom part of the bamboo, and not its top part, would, with his limited knowledge, imagine that the whole of the bamboo must be such tainted. Same is the case with our understanding of the nature of the soul (jiva). In its worldly existence, the soul (jiva), due to its wrong-belief (mithyatva) and unnatural transformations in form of attachment (raga) and aversion (dvesa), is contaminated [from the empirical point-of-view (vyavahara naya)]. However, from the point-of-view of the pure substance (suddha dravyarthika naya), it has the nature of infinite-knowledge (kevalajnana), etc. Just as the tainted bottom half of the bamboo causes the ignorant person to assume that the full bamboo must be similarly tainted, in the same way, when we perceive the soul from the eye that is contaminated with wrong-belief (mithyatva) and unnatural transformations in form of attachment (raga) and aversion (dvesa), we refuse to see it as a naturally pure substance. Just as the tainted bottom half of the bamboo becomes clear on washing, similarly, the . .. . .. . 46
