Studies In Umasvati And His Tattvartha Sutra

Author(s): G C Tripathi, Ashokkumar Singh
Publisher: Bhogilal Laherchand Institute of Indology

Page 65

Umāsvāti on the Quality of Sukha 55 samsāra. But the soul is not able to totally destroy karmic matter as long as it remains under the power of the primary-karma called mohanīya.
The term mohanīya (lit., delusion-producing) itself is significant: it is not seen merely as an agent of covering, an āvarana, as in the term jñānāvaranīya. Obscuration itself does not produce delusion. Delusion takes palce even in the presence of knowledge, as in the case of persons who know from the scriptures, the true nature of the soul and may still remain deluded about it. Hence it is argued that there is a distinct variety of karmic matter by which the soul is deluded. What it probably means is that this karma serves as the efficient cause for the beginningless transformation (anādi pariņāma) of a certain innate quality of the soul into delusion (moha). This delusion takes two forms: one that produces false notions about the soul (darśana-mohanīya)—e.g., 'soul is body—and the other that produces passions (kaşāya), which affect the conduct of such a soul—e.g., attachment towards the body—(cāritra-mohanīya).
Unlike the jñāna guņa, which is never totally obscured as seen above, we are told time and again that the soul has since beginningless times been wholly infected by these two delusions, which manifest as mithyā-darśana and kaşāya and drive the soul into unwholesome behaviour patterns. The beginninglessness of mithyā-darśana and its totality point to the presence of some quality of the soul that has suffered not merely a simple and partial obscuration but a transformation so total and profound that it has resulted in a state contrary to its own nature. In the commentaries this is called defiled transformation (vibhāvapariņāma)—like a piece of gold rusting in ore—that can be set aright so that the state of purity (svabhāva-pariņāma, or the soul's own true nature) can be realized, a case similar to the same piece of gold purified of its rust. Thus unlike jñāna and darśana, which are continually present in greater or lesser degrees in all embodied souls, this purity (which we argue to be the same as