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The
author of Samaysara was Sri Kundakundecharya. KundaKundecharya as the leader of the mulasangha was the most eminent among the ascetics. This is clear from a popular sloka found in the following Jain inscription.
Mangalam Bhagavan viro, mangalam gautami gani,
Mangalam kundakundadya jaina dharmostu mangalam.
Following works of Kundkundacharyadeo are available:-
Samaysar, Pravachansar, Panchastikaya, Niyamsar, Asta Pahud, Dwadshanu-preksha
and Dash Bhakti. Rayansar and Moolachar are also said to be his works. It is
said that he wrote eighty four pahuds. It is also said that he wrote a
commentary named Parikarma on the first three parts of Shat-khandagam, which is
not available.
Samayasâra
is full of the one idea of one concentrated divine unity. It is as
persistent and emphatic about the Soul’s identity with Itself,
being the only living Conscious Reality, as pure Mohammedanism is
about the Vahdâniyata of God, or Monistic Vedântism about
Para-Brahma. This is the only One Idea which counts. All Truth,
Goodness, Beauty, Reality, Morality, Freedom is in this. The Self
and It alone is true, good, lovely, real, moral. The non-Self is
error, myth, mityâtva, ugly deluding, detractor from and obscurer
of reality, immoral worthy of shunning and renunciation, as bondage
and as anti-liberation. This Almighty, all-Comprehensive, claim of
SELF-ABSORPTION must be perfectly and completely grasped for any
measure of success in understanding Sri Kunda Kunda Âchârya’s
works, indeed for the true understanding of Jainism.
Samaysar is the great unique treatise of Jain spiritualism.
In Samaysara he emphasize
clearly that there are two distinct categories: Perfect and
Imperfect. The pure disembodies soul alone is perfect. The mundane,
matter-clad soul is imperfect. By perfection here is meant a
condition than which nothing is better for ever. Perfection is where there is no want, no desire, no room
for further improvement or betterment. Perfect desire lessens,
complete non-attachment imperturbable
Vit-rag-ta are connotations of perfections. Thus it is that Jainism
dose not believe God, an Almighty, Perfect, Conscious Soul to be a
Creator. Creation means bringing about something which was not
before. The mundane soul when it becomes a Perfect Pure Soul, at the
end of the 14th Spiritual Sage, certainly creates its own
perfect condition of Infinite Perception, Knowledge, Power and
Bliss. In this sense, and in this sense alone, God or Siddha may be
said to be the Creator of all the universe, present, past and
future, for the Siddha is Omniscient; and all the universe, with
will its substances, with all their attributes and modifications, in
all times and places becomes subject to this All-Seeing Omniscience,
and thus it may be said to create the universe. Here creation means
the attainment of Perfection, of Omniscience, of Omnipotence, of
Godhood, of Siddhahood. In no other sense, creation is possible in
Jainism. If creation means the making or bringing into existence of
something which was not before, (excepting that becoming perfect
means bringing into existence the condition of Self-perfection and
Omniscience, which was not before), it implies the conscious
creation of something necessary and useful, or of something
unnecessary and useless. If the
former, why was a useful thing not made before; if the latter, the
Creator is a frivolous wastrel, or simply
puerile in making, and then breaking the universe.
If
the Universe is created by God as an absolutely new thing, it must
follow that before its creation God was not Krita Kritya, one so
perfect that nothing remained to be done by him. If he only
recreates a destroyed universe, then the Jaina explanation (that the
universe is uncreated and passes through a sort of birth and death
at the junction of Avasarpini and Utsarpini semi-cycles of time) is
simple and sufficient. If it be said that there must be some creator
(as distinct from some cause or co-existence or sequence) of
everything, then there must be some Creator of God, and so on ad
infinitum.
Further,
like creates like. God as Pure Soul can create only Living Soul. How
then can He create non-living unconscious matter out of Himself?
The Jaina
doctrine is that the lifeless, non-living, unconscious Universe is
eternal and uncreated and it evolves and revolves within its own
countless attributes and modifications for ever, and that it
undergoes even radical, catastrophic changes in Space and Time,
which the history of all nations records as the Deluge, the Mahâbhârata,
the Great War, the Pralaya, etc. etc. Is this doctrine not more
soul-satisfying, simple and stamped with cogency and Truth than an
attempt to explain things by the doctrine of Creation ? Creation
thus being only the creation of its Perfect condition by the Pure
Soul, it is easy to see that all else in the Universe, from the
point of view of
conscious, living, knowing Soul, is Imperfect.
Obviously
Imperfection is only tolerated because and so long as we cannot get
rid of it. Therefore all worldly endeavor, being the child of the
living Soul’s union with non-living matter, is to be merely
tolerated, to be shunned, to be renounced. When renunciation is
impossible or impracticable, it has to be merely tolerated and
controlled and regulated so as to keep it within the limits of the
most minimum harm to Perfection.
A clear
intellectual perception and a persistent, practical pursuit of this
in our daily life is essential to keep us true to the Center of
Truth. No verbal jugglery, no pious deception of self or other will
save one from error and harm if this Central Truth is lost sight of.
All Politics, Ethics, Laws and Economics will be engulfed in
stygian, chaotic darkness, if once the human mind, the soul, loses
or loosens grip of this First Fact of Life.
On the other
hand, if this beacon-light is kept in view, nothing in the world can
delude us long or deep. Our joys and sorrows, our successes and
failures, our illness and health, births and deaths of relations and
friends, victory and defeat, prosperity or adversity, - all these
will be easily and instinctively referred to the Central Guide, and
dealt with in their own proper perspective. All our worldly
valuations depend upon our angle of vision. Ugliness is
beauty in the wrong place, or seen from the wrong angle. High
treason is patriotism from the wrong view-point. The State and
Politics create chaos in an attempt to save the country and citizens
from disorder and disruption. Marriage sanctifies apparent monogamy
and not seldom becomes an effective cloak for mental and even
physical polygamy. Trade and commerce meant for natural and equal
distribution of things of necessity and use, often result in
extravagant waste or stagnation of such things in the hand of the
rich few, to the agonizing misery of the poverty stricken many. Even
religion, the sign and mantle of God, has cloaked Satan more than
the Light-ever-lasting against whom Satan rebelled for ever. Indeed
there is nothing good or desirable in the world, which to some
extent or other is not locked up in the arms of its contradictory.
Verily, the extremes meet literally. Life means death. Death breeds
life. The extremely rich are extremely poor. The possession less are
the richest. The crown of thorns is ever the real, ultimate
adornment. The cup of misery is the only joy-giving nectar. Purusa
and Prakriti are inextricably interlocked. Brahma and Mâyâ lie
mingled together; none can say which is which. There is only one way
out of the den of this Duessa. It is to recognize the reality of
this den and also of the flower glade of real roses outside. Till
the rose glade is gained, the dark den must be tolerated and
regulated.
In fine, there
is no aspect or detail of practical life where the teachings of Sri
KundaKunda will not be of immense utility. Everywhere they will lay
bare the deepest truth about the question in hand, and give the most
lucid and clam guidance in the handling and solution thereof.
Obviously the touchstone of the eternal Truth as laid down in the
book is to be applied by every man or woman according to the point
in hand and in the light of surrounding circumstances of substance,
place, time and the object in view. In this sense, Jainism may be
said to be the apotheosis of relativity with which Eastern has made
the Western world familiar.
Dravya, Kestra,
Kâla and Bhâva form the eternal quaternary for our practical
guidance. The same question can be and even must be answered
differently according to the differences in substance, place, time
and circumstances. This gives a knock-out blow to rigid consistency,
and conservative orthodoxy, social or political, and perhaps
indicates the wonderful essential sameness of religion and true
conduct in different forms, in different countries and ages.
Great is the
power of purity and truth. The ten aspects of religion supreme
forgiveness, humility, straightforwardness, truth contentment,
self-control, austerity, renunciation possession-lessens and
chastity or self-absorption are of eternal value, guidance and
inspiration. They are God given and God-given. We reach God through
them. They negate the sine and passions of anger, pride, deceit,
greed etc. Sin and sorrow are also as eternal and infinite and
indestructible as soul and salvation. You cross the ocean of Samsâra.
You never destroy it.
The Bhavyas or Liberals
only attempt to follow the path laid down by the Arhatas. But
mundane misery must ever remain inviolable in its extent and length.
The motion and
movements of matter are not necessarily the signs of life. Matter
may be moved by soul. Then also it is moved by the non-soul partner
of soul in its embodied condition. For pure soul has no desire or
need to move matter of any kind. Thus in a way matter is moved by
matter only. In other words, soul is not the cause of any motion,
except when the soul is impure, soiled with its connection with
matter and then it becomes the cause of motion. Even love and art,
and the noblest and highest forms of endeavor in life are material
and renounce able. A beautiful form is matter born a result of the
physical body made of assimilative molecules (Âhâraka Varganâ).
Love is only an effect upon the mind produced by this form of
beauty. The soul may also be affected by deep, devoted love owing to
this love reinforcing a pure kind of delusion which again is Kârmic
matter. Similarly art. The artist’s unity with his all-absorbing
aim in painting, poetry, melody, sculpture or architecture is only a
child of matter, which is subtle, pure, non-harming but all the same
matter, which soils the soul and stands between it and its full
realization. Similarly, religious practices, worship, postures of asceticism
etc., all the ladders to spirituality are material and matter-born.
They fall into category of non-soul.
They are obviously not the soul in its entire fullness, in its
perfect purity. They are helps for the soul to achieve self-realization.
But they are not the soul. As pneumatic belts or upturned floating
pitchers are helps to a swimmer in water, but are not the swimmier,
the practices of religion, even the highest of them, the sincerest
and most earnest pursuit of right belief, right knowledge and right
conduct are all mundane matters. They have no place in the region of
pure souls. They are material, mundane, cis-liberation. As long as
the soul is fascinated by or dependent upon or even in association
with any of them, its connection with matter, with Karma, with Samsâra
is not severed and the mundane soul dose not achieve the dignity and
status of selfhood, of being its own pure self, of being a liberated
soul, pure for ever.
Latest science
has begun to perceive the existence of millions of atoms in a
pin-head, revolving in a terribly continuous fashion. This is a
great help to understand Jainism. Jainism posits the existence of an
infinity of matter, i.e. of infinite atoms and molecules. If a
pin-head has millions of atoms, how many atoms must a hut or a place
or a street or a city have ? How many atoms must there be in a whole
country or continent, in an ocean ? How many our earth, in the moon,
in the sun ? In our solar system ? In all the solar systems in the
starry sky ? How many in the whole universe ? Certainly, infinite.
Again, it is clear that a pin-head has no life, when
by life we mean a manifestation of soul or consciousness or
attention by means of the five senses respiration etc. The presence
of millions of atoms in a pin-head or in a speck of dirt, on the
paper or the pen or the chair dose not prove that the pin or paper
or pen or chair are alive or have a soul. The multitudinous
movements of matter and its uncountable variations and
transfigurations do not demolish the eternal wall of distinction
between soul and non-soul, between the living and the non-living.
The Living now, as ever, has consciousness and attention. It alone
has this. None else can be or is conscious (chetana) or capable of
attention (upayoga). The non-living never possessed this soulless;
never can and never shall possess consciousness. It shall never have
the capacity of attending to anything; it shall never have knowledge
of anything. It cannot know. Jňâna is not its forte and never can be.
This is the one
primary distinction between living and non-living, the ignorance of
which is the fertile mother of many pitfalls in Philosophy and
Metaphysics. The great teachers of Jainism insist upon this
distinction in very lucid, persistent and un-mistakable language.
They emphasize with ceaseless repletion that the pupil, the
disciple, the earnest seeker after Truth must have a firm,
un-faltering, un-losable grasp of this basic FACT of the universe,
that the living and the non-living substances quite exhaust the
universe, and make up a perfect division of it by dichotomy, and
that the living is the living and never anything else, and the
non-living is itself and never living.
This lesson was taught in the great, soul-purifying gâthâs
of Samayasâra by Sri Kunda Kunda Âchârya in the first
century B.C. To guard against
any misunderstanding of Jainism, this central teaching, this clear
golden must ever be kept in mind and in view.
It may well and
legitimately be asked : what is the practical use of this Jaina idea
of self absorption ?
The answer is :
The mere insight into and knowledge of this Reality, is of everyday
use in the conduct of our individual and collective lives. It is a
true and the only panacea for all our ills. Its rigors may be hard.
Its preliminary demand may occasion a wrench from our cherished
habits, customs, and fashions of thought and action. But its result
which is immediate, instantaneous and unmistakable, justifies the
hardship and the demand. The relief and service, the sure uplift of
ourselves, the showering of clam balm, by practices of self-realization,
upon the sore souls of our brethren and sisters, justify the price
paid. Indeed it is merely the temporary yielding of a hollow,
fleeting pleasure for the attainment of a real, permanent happiness
and peace, which once gained, can never be lost. Once the soul has
had its first dip into is own milk-white nectar Ocean of SELF; in
Christian phrase, once the soul has been the presence of God, it
never go away from it for ever. It must come back to the presence
sooner or later, and oftener; till in the end it is always THERE and
nowhere else.
To this an
obvious criticism would be directed that this is making men angels
or at least faultless supermen, whereas humanity consists as best of
frail, feeble, faulty human mortals. This is quite true. Humanity
can never become a community of angels. Our passion-tossed hearts
must keep us generally deluded weak, imperfect. But the practice of
self-realization makes us less deluded, less weak and less
imperfect, and it brings us one or many steps nearer that condition
of our purified and strengthened consciousness which is free from
delusion, weakness and imperfection. Self-realization deals with our
inner warring impulses and feelings by suppressing some, eliminating
others; and by self-control, self-discipline and self-respect, regulating the others into a self-guided harmony, which is a
helpful reflection of God Himself.
Once
you sit on the rock of self-realization, the whole goes round and
round you like a crazy rushing something, which has lost its hold
upon you and is mad to get you again in its grip, but cannot. The
all-conquering smile of the Victor (Jina) is on your lips. The
vanquished, deluding world lies dead impotent at your feet.
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