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Chapter 4
Advaita Vedanta and Its Readers |
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I. The Tension Between The Text And Its Truth |
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In Chapter 2 I attended to the constitution of Advaita as a Text comprised of upanisads, sutras and their continuing fruition in commentaries, a Text (formidably) accessible to us in the broad and rich variety of its textures; in Chapter 3, I traced the careful, cautious, but gradually decisive and effective enunciation of a post- and extratextual truth that is not only a right understanding of the upanisads and of the world, but also a right enunciation of an event of realization that is always more and yet also simpler than the words in which it occurs, and I resisted the implication that Advaita is exclusively textual knowledge, or merely "words about words about words." Together, these chapters sharpened the paradox of Advaita: there is an evident, universally available truth which commands assent, but it is available only under certain pedagogically prescribed circumstances, after the Text is read, mastered, accomplished. The "outside" of the Text as truthits reference, its universalizable meaningis nevertheless located "after" it, discovered when reading is properly undertaken and when the Text's inscribed truth is carefully and patiently articulated without the breaking of those threads of contextualization by which it remains permanently a Textual truth. |
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Though it demands to be read, the Advaita Text never makes the truth merely present to the reader, for mere presence would |
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