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performance of sacrifices, pursuance of austerities and charitable gifts.s0 Again, the realization of Brahman will liberate one from results, both good and evil, which constitute the bonds of action.si
This spirit of transcendence is expressed also in the Gītā in another form. When the embodied soul rises above the three guņa-s, Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, which cause the bodily existence, he is freed from the subjection to birth and death, old age and suffering, and thus attains the life eternal. 52 Thus, to go beyond the spell of the three guņa-s is the ideal. In other words, one is required to be possessed of the self to be free from the dualities, to be fixed in the true being, to be away from the triple modes, and gettings, and havings, $3 inasmuch as the bondage to these guņas leads one to the rounds of birth. To be more clear, when Sattva predominates, the embodied is born in the spotless worlds of the knowers of the highest principles, when Rajas prevails he appears amidst those who are attached to action, and lastly, when Tamas invades him, he takes births in the wombs of beings involved in nescience. 54 The same may be expressed by saying that those in Sattva rise upwards, in Rajas stay in the middle and in Tamas sink downwards. SS Thus the culmination of human achievement consists in transcending the ethical level and rising to the spiritual. The considerations of the Gītā, the Upanişads and the Jaina conform with one another regarding the transcendental plane of life besides and beyond righteousness and unrighteousness.
According to Kundakunda the worldly persons generally recognize inauspicious conduct as bad and the auspicious one is taken by them as good. But how can the latter be understood as good, since it too makes the entrance of the self into the cycle of birth and death?56 Just as a shackle,
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Spiritual Awakening (Samyagdarśana) and Other Essays
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