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the elitism of Advaita which often discomforts the modern student is essential to it as the practical discipline which it fundamentally is. |
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In the following pages I explore the extension of the tension between truth and Text to the description of the reader and the manner of proper reading. First, in section II, I show that the accomplishment of Advaita's simple nondual goal occurs only within the dispersed and temporal realm of reading, and that the accomplishment of perfectly skilled reading and the accomplishment of Advaita knowledge are both skill in discernment (viveka), the perfectly discriminating "reading" of self and world. The subtle mastery of the Text by its reader occurs simultaneously with the accomplishment, the event, of its truth. Second, in section III, I explore the desire to know Brahman (brahmajijñasa) as a free, unqualified and unpredictable event which nevertheless always implies the intention to learn to read in a skilled, prepared fashion. I show too how this specification of knowledge and its originatory desire cooperate to narrow the set of competent readers of the Text, particularly through the strictures of caste, and so predetermine the set of those competent to achieve Textual knowledge. Finally, in section IV, I indicate how this determination of the reader serves also as a prescription of the progress and destiny of the person who moves toward release and achieves it. The expected reader does become the indescribable, perfect, liberated personbut only within the boundaries of definite expectations: indescribability must occur in just the right way. Section V concludes the chapter with reflections on the consequences of the preceding findings for the comparativist. |
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II. Timeless Truth, Timely Reading: The Truth In Reading |
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1. The Simplicity and Temporal Complexity of Liberative Knowledge
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Advaita expectations about the reader of the Text must be studied in light of its analysis of the process of reading and understanding texts as a gradual and temporal process which |
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