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Virtue and Vice (Punya and Pāpa)
of sin of possessiveness (Parigraha)] [See Appendix-7]. One may feed others, one may help others but in the heart one should understand that in reality he is not the doer of the helping actions. To have an inner attachment or ownership with such helping actions is the wrong-belief-sin, and it comes in the category of possessiveness sin. Therefore, Ācārya Kundakunda in stanza 147 emphasizes over this point that one should not have any inclination of attachment or association with auspicious Karma or inauspicious Karma.
Through many stanzas (e.g. stanzas 36, 38, 51, 81-83, 100, 113, etc.) narrated earlier in this treatise, Ācārya Kundakunda has clarified that soul cannot be doer and owner of others. But still some readers may think that it may be a good idea to become the doer and owner of auspicious deeds. To remove such bias, Ācārya Kundakunda has written this chapter. He first describes commonly known categories of deeds: one as auspicious and another as inauspicious. Then he says that as both lead to the destruction of soul's independence and both prolong the sufferings of the cycles of birth and death, therefore, in real sense both are not good and both are to be kept in the same category. Ācārya Amstacandra in Ātmakhyāti has described this point in a special way with a touch of a theatre play. In the beginning of this chapter, he gives entry to virtue (Punya) and sin (Pāpa) as two different actors on the stage, and at the end of this chapter he shows exit of one actor (Karma) with an understanding to the audience that virtue or auspicious deed (Punya) and sin or inauspiciosus deed (Pāpa) are not two distinct actors but actually there is one actor (deed or action or Karma) that appears to perform double role. Question: I have understood very well the meaning as well as the
purpose of these three verses. However, these are very delicate issues and by reading these verses one may think that there is no significant difference between auspiciosus Karma
