Kundakunda (Ācārya Kundakunda; Prakrit Kundakunda / Padmanandin)
c. 3rd-8th c. CE (disputed; possibly a corporate authorship) · Śramaṇa Traditions · Known
Kundakunda is the name attached to the Samayasara, a Digambara Jain text whose date is argued over across five centuries; the name may cover a tradition of texts rather than one man. Split every claim in two, it says: there is the everyday way of speaking and the exact one, and only the second tells you what is real. Seen that way the soul was always unbound and never touched by karma, so liberation is recognition and the moral weight falls inward.
Signature
The position Kundakunda is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Identity
- strongly leans Unchanging
- Human Nature
- Innate Good
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (100 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Identity
- strongly leans Unchanging (0 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Multiplicity (92 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (90 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (85 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Ethics
- mildly between Ends and Means (60 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (20 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Kundakunda refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Other
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Knowledge / Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Final Liberation
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Intention
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Language
- Conventional
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Linguistic Dissolution
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Karmic Cycle
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Innate Good
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Other
What is your primary bond and loyalty?