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96: Śramana, Vol 62, No. 1 January-March 2011
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metaphysical presupposition of the ultimate Self. Inevitably the empirical self is defined by "wrong faith, wrong knowledge and wrong conduct."43 Those who investigate perceptive experience are condemned as having "dull intellect," being victim to "sheer ignorance." Far from a true naya or valid perspective, the empirical becomes an enemy of the transcendent and its fruits of imagination, creativity, and skepticism are rendered meaningless.45 Further, only by the removal of all bhāva, or emotional attachment such as desire, aversion or dissatisfaction, can one be free of the unwieldy burden of the empirical Self.46 But where does this leave a scientist, when it is precisely the excitement of conjecture, or dissatisfaction with the status quo that drives curiosity, yearning, and ultimately the empirical process. A science null and void of all feeling or investment, "indifferently experienced"47 as Kundakunda encourages, would never have resulted in the Copernican Revolution.48 A Self utterly neutral to the material world, exhibiting "neither a desire for the present changes nor a longing for the future ones," would never have developed carbon dating or genetics that are so essential to our increasing understanding of a complex and enchanting world.
The Samayasara, or "Essence of the Soul," ends up, not merely as a pure transcendent state to "contemplate upon,' 49 but a tyrannical
abstraction that renders the empirical reality moot.
The Promise of the Abhavya
Though the dialectic of vyavahāra and niscaya ends up being more a totalitarian relation of the transcendent over the empirical, Kundakunda does not leave us totally empty-handed. The autonomous empiricist, exercising his svarāja (self-rule), intent on employing the scientific method as well as Kaufmann's canon to explore relevant alternatives to transcendental and empirical claims, can still find inspiration from an unlikely series of passages in the Samayasara. In the eighth chapter, Kundakunda describes the abhavya as a "person incapable of spiritual liberation."50 This concept predates the Samayasara though the reason for developing
