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Samayasāra
Chapter - 4
of nine tattvas/padārthas (categories of truth) [enumerated in chapter 1, verse 13] is the first step in this direction. Transcendentally, however, it is the result of suppression or eradication of vision-deluding (darśana-mohanīya] karma. Comprehension and proper understanding of these tattvas is right knowledge. The adjective samyag implies absence of doubt and/or error. Right conduct as conditioned by right faith and right knowledge is samyak cāritra.
Right knowledge (samyag jñāna) presupposes right belief (samyag darśana). In the absence of right world-view, the knowledge cannot be right because how can there be purity of knowledge if the self knows that it is impure? Similarly right conduct presupposes right belief and right knowledge. And composite of these three constitutes the pathway to emancipation. In other words, all three are indispensable factors of the path.
The author then deals with a complex and ticklish problem of maintaining equilibrium between the empirical and ultimate aspects of truth and reality. In the mundane life, performance of worldly activities is inevitable even for ascetics and sages (who have renounced their worldly status). Possessing true wisdom and sagacity, a sage keeps both aspects of reality before him. The empirical aspect enables him to do all activities which are necessary for meeting his individual worldly needs as well as discharging his obligations/duties as a member of the society. However, his unshakable faith in the ultimate aspects of truth permits him to maintain equilibrium both as an individual and as a member of his religious order. His spiritual purity and non-absolutist beliefs enable him to look at both the roles-individual and social-he is required to play. Thus, without reducing his full faith in the pure psychic states of the soul as per the ultimate aspect, he performs his ritual and routine without flinching, because to him ritual is as important for his mundane state as faith and beliefs are for the transcendental one.
The author, then, goes on to describe the path for emancipation in detail. He, first uses a simple analogy to illustrate the defiling nature of the perversion resulting from the beginningless delusion. The three beginningless encumbrances are perverse belief, wrong cognition/knowledge and passions. Just as the quality of innate whiteness of (bleached) cloth is destroyed by the pervasion of alien
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