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nevertheless yields a knowledge of a Brahman which is perfectly simple and beyond time. I sketch this process by noting the Advaita analysis of Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 2.4.5, a text which the Vedantins of various schools use to explore the tensions between knowledge and text:
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The self, dear, must be seen, must be heard, must be understood, must be meditated on, Maitreyi. By seeing and hearing the self, dear, one understands; by this knowledge, all this is known. |
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The text marks, and seems to enjoin, moments in a process that (apparently)3 begins in seeing (darsana) and culminates in true vision (darsana):seeing, hearing, understanding, meditating, vision. |
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The manner in which knowledge of Brahman can be said to arise textually is the core question the passage occasions for the Advaitins. Once they admit, as they readily do, that texts neither contain nor constitute that which they communicate-even upanisadic words are not the reality they articulate4the Advaitins are required to explain how knowledge of Brahman, which is perfectly simple, beyond qualification and time, can be acquired through a gradual mastery of texts over a period of time. In the very long adhikarana composed under UMS I.1.4,5 the question of whether knowledge can be enjoined, as ritual isit cannot, from the Advaita viewpointleads to the question of what is actually enjoined when one hears an injunction such as, "Know this." |
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The purvapaksin argues that texts such as Brhadaranyaka 2.4.5 clearly indicate that knowledge of Brahman is enjoinedit must be heard, understood, meditated onjust as ritual is enjoined according to the Mimamsa tradition. The siddhantin responds that knowledge of Brahman cannot be enjoined. Why? because knowledge is never an activity: |
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Since [when an object is known, the knowledge of it] is determined by a thing coming within the range of perception, it is surely knowledge and not action. Thus also it is to be understood in the case of all objects coming within the range of the valid means of knowledge. |
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