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Śramaņa, Vol 59, No. 4/October-December 2008
way."25 Since Dhaky is not the only person who finds fault with Kundakunda for seeking "to shape Jaina religion after the mould of Vedānta", 26 it is necessary to point out that the basic differences between Kundakunda's exposition of self and Vedantic concept of self.
In Advaita Vedānta, the words jīva and ātmā have quite different meanings or connotations. In fact, they stand poles apart. For instance, ātmā is translated as Self (with capital's'), which is described as Brahman (universal or cosmic consciousness), one without a second, non-dual, eternal entity, having characteristic features of “unchanging" and "pure”. Jiva on the other hand, is equated with person and is conceptualized as an individual or egoself, having the sense of self or individuality, which manifests in the experience, as the “I” and the “me”, with its most distinctive features of pride, conceit and even arrogance (abhimăna, garva).??Individuals or persons, who speak of their “self” in terms of three aspects or fundamental capacities: cognition, feeling and action, are viewed as manifestations of the ego.28
. In Jainism, including Kundakunda, the self (jiva or ātmā) is individual consciousness and the world consists of innumerable individual selves. While in Vedānta 'ekah' signifies 'non-dual', Kundakunda, in his work Samayasāra (verse 38 and 73), uses the word ekko (in Prakrit and eka or ekah in Sanskrit) in the sense of meaning one, unique, single of its kind, uncompounded, unity, and unit. Thus, Kundakunda's ekko is not the Vedantic "non-dual”, but an indivisible unity of its three attributes, characteristics or three aspects of consciousness, viz. feeling, cognition and action, and its modes.
Kundakunda also speaks of ahaṁ (I, jiva, or ātmā) as śuddho" (in Prakrit, śuddho or śuddham in Sanskrit) (Samayasāra, 38 and 73) but not in the sense of purity/impurity or being devoid of karmas (karma-rahita), i.e. "pure consciousness”, but in the sense of being non-relational (karma nirapeksa) consciousness-as-such (păriņāmika
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