4. "Carefully looking at it and carefully seating himself upon it, let him take a seat, &c., set it down, and meditate,—this is called the ádána-samiti.
5. "That the good man should carefully perform his bodily evacuations in a spot free from all living creatures,[86]—this is the utsarga-samiti.[87] Hence samvara has been etymologically analysed as that which closes (sam + vṛiṇoti) the door of the stream of ásrava,[88] as has been said by the learned, 'Ásrava is the cause of mundane existence, saṃvara is the cause of liberation;[89] this is the Árhat doctrine in a handful; all else is only the amplification of this.'"
Nirjará is the causing the fruit of past actions to decay by self-mortification, &c.; it destroys by the body the merit and demerit of all the previously performed actions, and the resulting happiness and misery; "self-mortification" means the plucking out of the hair, &c. This nirjará is twofold,[90] "temporary" (yathákála) and ancillary (aupakramaṇika). It is "temporary" as when a desire is dormant in consequence of the action having produced its fruit, and at that particular time, from this completion of the object aimed at, nirjará arises, being caused by the consumption of the desire, &c. But when, by the force of asceticism, the sage turns all actions into means for attaining his end (liberation), this is the nirjará of actions. Thus it has been said: "From the decaying of the actions which are the seeds of mundane existence, nirjará arises, which is twofold, sakámá and akámá. That called sakámá belongs to ascetics, the akámá to other embodied spirits."[91]
Moksha. Since at the moment of its attainment there is an entire absence of all future actions, as all the causes of bondage (false perception, &c.) are stopped,[92] and since all past actions are abolished in the presence of the causes of nirjará, there arises the absolute release from all actions,—this is moksha; as it has been said: "Moksha is the absolute release from all actions by the decay (nirjará) of the causes of bondage and of existence."
Then the soul rises upward to the end of the world. As a potter's wheel, whirled by the stick and hands, moves on even after these have stopped, until the impulse is exhausted, so the previous repeated contemplations of the embodied soul for the attainment of moksha exert their influence even after they have ceased, and bear the soul onward to the end of the world; or, as the gourd, encased with clay, sinks in the water, but rises to the surface when freed from its encumbrance, so the soul, delivered from works, rises upward by its isolation,[93] from the bursting of its bonds like the elastic seed of the castor-oil plant, or by its own native tendency like the flame.
"Bondage" is the condition of being unseparated, with a mutual interpenetration of parts [between the soul and the body]; saṅga is merely mutual contact. This has been declared as follows:—
"[Liberation] is unhindered, from the continuance of former impulses, from the absence of saṅga, from the cutting of all bonds, and from the natural development of the soul's own powers of motion, like the potter's wheel, the gourd with its clay removed, the seed of the castor-oil plant, or the flame of fire."
Hence they recite a śloka:—
"However often they go away, the planets return, the sun, moon, and the rest;