Samayasāra stands at the heart of later Jain thought, especially within the Digambara tradition, as a text that crystallizes the doctrine of the pure soul and orients the seeker inward. Its uncompromising distinction between the pure, knowing self and the empirical, karmically entangled self became a touchstone for subsequent metaphysical reflection. From the ultimate standpoint (niścaya-naya), the soul is affirmed as inherently pure, luminous, and identical with knowledge, while bondage and liberation are treated as attributions made only from the practical standpoint (vyavahāra-naya). This twofold perspective allowed later thinkers to hold together a vision of absolute inner purity with the lived realities of ethical effort, discipline, and worldly entanglement.

The text generated a rich commentarial tradition that both preserved and deepened its insights. Commentators such as Amṛtachandra, in works like the Ātmakhyāti and Samayasārakalasha, elaborated Kundakunda’s terse verses into more systematic expositions of soul, karma, and knowledge. Through these and other Sanskrit and vernacular commentaries, Samayasāra became a primary lens for articulating Jain ontology—jīva and ajīva, substance and modes—and for refining discussions in epistemology about the nature of consciousness and self-knowledge. This ongoing engagement also shaped the style and structure of later Jain ācārya literature, where philosophical rigor and spiritual exhortation are woven tightly together.

In the realm of spiritual practice, Samayasāra helped shift emphasis from external observance toward inner realization and self-experience (svānubhūti). Its call to recognize and abide in the pure self nourished a contemplative, adhyātma-oriented current in Jain spirituality, where meditation, self-inquiry, and equanimity are seen as the decisive means to liberation. Later mystical and devotional works echo this insistence that genuine progress lies in detachment from all that is non-self and in the steady cultivation of right vision (samyag-darśana). Ethical frameworks emphasizing non-attachment and self-control draw strength from this vision of a soul that, in its deepest nature, neither truly acts nor is truly bound, even as responsibility and moral causality are affirmed at the practical level.

Over time, Samayasāra came to function as a core scriptural authority for Digambaras, shaping both doctrinal identity and spiritual sensibility. Many later teachers present their own writings as clarifications or unfoldings of its central insights, and much subsequent literature either comments on it directly or presupposes its categories and terminology. In this way, the text not only influenced particular doctrines—about soul, karma, and knowledge—but also provided a living framework within which Jain seekers could understand their own journey as a progressive awakening to the ever-pure, ever-knowing self.