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SVASTI - Essays in Honour of Prof. Hampa Nagarajaiah
"Having seen the modification of bondage, the soul being its cause, it is said that karma has been produced by the soul, but only metaphorically."21 "Even though a battle is carried out by soldiers, people say that it is carried out by the king. In the same way, the obstruction of knowledge and other such things are
produced by the soul (only) from a practical point of view."22 The distinction, in this discussion, between a higher point of view and a practical point of view is unavoidable.23 Indeed, it is the confusion between these two which is responsible for the fact that most people do not see the road to liberation. This is not only true of Kundakunda's thought. It applies with equal force to the Sāmkhya system of thought which Kundakunda criticizes. There, too, the failure to see the distinction between the realm of the soul and the realm of Prakrti keeps people tied up in the world of eternal transmigration. This is not to say that Kundakunda's thought is identical with Sāmkhya. Unlike Sāmkhya, the soul as conceived of by Kundakunda is capable of certain activities, which are however limited to its own domain. All this we have seen. The verses of the Samayasāra present, sometimes in quick succession, the two different points of view just mentioned. This can easily lead to confusion. Since all verses do not explicitly state whether they present the highest or the practical point of view, the impression is often created that they contradict each other. The contradictions, it seems to me, can almost always be resolved by keeping the two points of view in mind, and assigning, of two contradictory verses, one to the highest point of view, the other to the practical point of view. Kundakunda's main point, unsurprisingly, is to emphasize that the soul is not, and cannot be, the agent of what happens in the material world of karma. This is essential, because it is this knowledge that allows of a dissociation of the self from all that which leads to karmic retribution. Kundakunda's ideas about the realm of the self in which the self can be an agent constitute a theoretical elaboration meant to distinguish his thought from Sāmkhya – which he obviously looks upon as a close competitor – and no doubt to allow place for certain traditional Jaina notions as to the possibility of the soul to be an agent after all. Indeed, verse 127 points out that if the soul did not transform itself into states such as anger, this would signify the end of the cycle of rebirths, or the acceptance of Sāmkhya.24
21 Samayasāra 112/3.37: jīvamhi hedubhūde bamdhassa ya passidūņa pariņāmam /jīvena kadam kammam bhannadi uvayāramatteņa // (Sanskrit: jīve hetubhūte bamdhasya ca drstvā pariņāmam jīvena krtam karma bhanyate upacäramätrena //). 22 Samayasāra 113/3.38: yodhehim kade juddhe rāena kadam ti jampade logo / taha vavahārena kadam nānāvaraņādi jīvena // (Sanskrit: yodhaiḥ krte yuddhe rājñā krtam iti jalpate lokaḥ / tathā vyavahāreņa krtam jñānāvaranädi jivena //). 23 See on this distinction Bhatt, 1974. 24 See above, note 3.
