samayasara by acharya kundakunda
Kundakunda was a Digambara Jain monk and philosopher, who probably lived in the second or third century CE. His writings Pravacanasāra (‘The Essence of the Doctrine’) and Samayasāra (‘The Essence of the Soul’) are widely regarded as the essence of the Jaina teachings.
A Jaina teacher, Âchârya Vidyanand Muni, comments in a recent edition of the Samayasāra:
In a living organism the soul can be conceived as the nucleus circumscribed by the limits of the gross physical body. It is to be liberated and enlightened. Acharya Kundkund’s advice – remain a spectator, an observer, a witness to all that is happening in the physical world but do not become an actor, a doer, because the drama is being played by the aliens and you being a spectator have right knowledge, right faith and right conduct constituting the right path to final emancipation and liberation of soul. The trio is known as “The Three Jewels”.
Samayasâra is the ultimate conscious reality. The enlightened soul has infinite glory. It has the innate ability to demolish the power of karmas, both auspicious (punya) as well as inauspicious (pâpa), which constitute the cycle of births and deaths, and are an obstacle in the path of liberation of the soul.
Osho, who was born into a Jaina family, remarked on the Samayasara in Books I have loved (1983):
I have never spoken about it. I decided to many times but always dropped the idea. This is one of the greatest books the Jainas have produced, but it is very mathematical; that’s why I have always dropped it. I love poetry. If it was poetic I would have spoken on it. I have even spoken on unenlightened poets, but not on even enlightened mathematicians and logicians. Mathematics is so dry. Logic is a desert.
Perhaps he is around here among my sannyasins… but he cannot be. Kundkunda was an enlightened master, he cannot be born again. His book is beautiful, I can only say that much. I will not say anything more because it is mathematical…. Mathematics too has its beauty, its rhythm, that’s why I appreciate it. It has its own truth but it is very limited, and very right-handed.
Samayasar means the essence. If by chance you ever come across Kundkunda’s Samayasar, then please never hold it in your left hand. Keep it in the right hand. It is a right-hand book, right in every way. That is why I have declined up till now to speak about it. It is so right that I feel a little aversion to it – of course with tears in my eyes, because I know the beauty of the man who wrote it. I love Kundkunda, and I hate from my guts his mathematical expression.
I am left handed, I like mathematics and I loved to read the Samayasāra. Therefore decided to include it in my collection of sacred writings.
The Samayasara – here in a richly commented version from 1950, which is freely available in the internet.