According to the Jain text, Purushartha Siddhyupaya: After renouncing all attachments and aversions, and adopting a sense of equanimity in all objects, one should practise, many times, periodic concentration (sāmāyika), the principal means to realize the true nature of the Self.Sāmāyika is also one of the five kinds of conduct (cāritra) other kinds being reinitiation, purity of non-injury, slight passion and perfect conduct.
Champat Rai Jain in his book The Key of Knowledge writes:Sāmāyika aims at the attainment of divinity through perfection in conduct, which, consisting, as it does, in the purest and most complete form of renunciation, is the sole and the immediate cause of salvation, that is of wholeness and freedom from the pain and misery of saṃsāra (births and deaths).
The layman who has just entered the path observes the sāmāyika meditation but once daily in the morning, for he is not able to tear himself away from business and pleasure at that early stage in his spiritual career to be able to perform it more often; but as he progresses onwards, he takes to its observance three times – morning, noon and evening – every day, gradually extending its duration also from one antaramuhurta to three times as much at each sitting.
The ascetic who has successfully passed through the preliminary stages of renunciation, as a householder, is expected to be an embodiment of desirelessness itself, so that his whole life is, as it were, a continuous sāmāyika from one end to the other.
This consists in:[6] According to Jain text, Puruşārthasiddhyupāya: For the sake of strengthening the performance of daily meditation (sāmāyika), one must undertake fasting twice each lunar fortnight (proşadhopavāsa).
The householders, due to the absence of all sinful activities during the period of meditation (sāmāyika), observe great vows, although the conduct-deluding karmas remain in operation.