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पुरुषार्थसिद्धयुपाय dissociate oneself mentally from all kinds of interests and undertakings of which the worldly personality is made up. The most valuable gain from sāmāyika is the cultivation of an evergrowing feeling of equanimity, that well-balanced state of mental quietude and serenity which is the foremost attribute of divinity. The necessity for sāmāyika will be apparent to any one who will ponder over the nature of the wide gulf which separates the actual from the potential; for he who would become a God must first learn to behave as a God before he can be allowed a seat in the Assembly of Gods. Sāmāyika aims at the attainment of divinity through perfection in conduct, which, consisting, as it does, in the purest and most complete form of renunciation, is the sole and the immediate cause of salvation, that is of wholeness and freedom from the pain and misery of samsāra (births and deaths).
The layman who has just entered the path observes the sāmāyika meditation but once daily in the morning, for he is not able to tear himself away from business and pleasure at that early stage in his spiritual career to be able to perform it more often; but as he progresses onwards, he takes to its observance three times – morning, noon and evening - every day, gradually extending its duration also from one antaramuhurta to three times as much at each sitting. The ascetic who has successfully passed through the preliminary stages of renunciation, as a householder, is expected to be an embodiment of desirelessness itself, so that his whole life is, as it were, a continuous sāmāyika from one end to the other.
The quality or nature of meditation also varies with the progress of the soul, though its general aspect remains the same so long as its type is not changed from what is known as dharma dhyāna (religious meditation) to that termed sukla dhyāna, which is pure self concentration in the highest sense.
Jain, C.R., The Key of Knowledge, p. 254-255.)
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