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The Unknown Pilgrims
classical texts, we may mention the Karma-prakrti of Abhayacandra Siddhānta Cakravartin, where the author describes in detail the different types of karmas related to the guṇasthānas, the several stages of spiritual progress. 53
For our study of this progressive association of jiva-karman, we shall try to follow the main lines of Kundakunda's rigorous treatment of the subject as given in the third chapter of the Samayasāra. A jiva, in itself, in its pure and unalloyed state, does not modify karmic matter nor, however, is it non-karmic matter.54 Amộtacandra in his commentary upon the Samayasāra, gives the example of a poiter fashioning an earthenware jug. In this operation, the clay is the upādāna-kāraṇa, the substantial cause, and the potter is the nimittakāraṇa, the external cause, the agent who fashions the jug. This, applied in the domain which is of interest to us, means: the substantiai cause, the upādāna-kārana, of modifications in the particular karman and modifications in the particular jiva is pudgala, matter in the form of particles; but how are we to explain the nimitta-kāraņa? Who is the potter the external agent? Not, certainly, the jiva, living, conscious, immaterial substance. On the other hand, pudgala cannot be the kartā, the agent of psychic modifications in the jiva. However, if the jiva and the pudgala, two absolutely antithetical substances, cannot be brought into relationship to each other by a process of material causality, any identity between the two being impossible, they can never the less be related through instrumental causality. This is to say that the modifications undergone by each are the result of their mutual conditioning, each of the substances being the substantial cause of its own modifications. Although each operates within its own substance, the two do indirectly condition each other, and the nimitta-kāraṇa, the
53 A Sanskrit work of the XIIIth c. It is clear that, in amplifying and commenting upon it, the authors have introduced ideas and subtleties that were not in the ancient texts. Though some effort of clarification was doubtless necessary, nevertheless the fact remains that the elaboration of structures and the piling up of them one upon another result in a certain heaviness, while the proliferation of classifications renders the whole inassimilable to most readers.
54
Cf. Sam Sa 75
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