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of itself, is concentration."
21 Here, fixed-attention is indicated by the words, "it must be heard, it must be understood." Contemplation is indicated by "it must be meditated on." Concentration is indicated by "it must be seen."22 |
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Earlier, in his elaboration of the Bhasya comment on UMS I.1.4, while insisting on the necessarily gradual achievement of verbal knowledge,23 Vacaspati had already compared it with the gradual nature of progress in yoga: |
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Hence, after one has comprehended that the human self is the supreme self, through knowledge of the nature of hearing texts like "You are that" [Chandogya Upanisad 6.8.7], and confirmed this by reasoning based thereon, there results intuition of Brahman through the contemplation [otherwise known as focused apprehension (bhavana)]of that [truth] practised at length and unintermittently; sacrifice, etc., serve in this [contemplation]. As it says [in Yoga Sutras I.14], "But that [discipline of meditation] practiced for long, unintermittently and with care is the firm basis [for realizing the truth]."24 |
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The slow, painful, patient mastery of one's body in yoga culminates in an absolutely simple and perfect moment of realization; so too, the discipline of mastering the Advaita Text culminates in a simple realization of Brahman.25 |
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Reading, like yoga, is a complex set of practices which results in a realization greater than the component activities. In neither Advaita nor yoga is realization caused by anything: twisting one's body this way and that does not cause realization, words uttered or written on a page do not cause knowledge of Brahman. But in both, practices are essential to the achievement of what can never be the result of practices. If one were to despise bodies or to avoid texts because of some desire for a higher spiritual knowledge, one would be left with an undisciplined and unrealized desire; only through the physical and textual does one acquire a knowledge which is reducible to neither.26 |
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Reading, music, yoga: knowledge takes time, and one must use one's time properly. The result is the ability to discriminate, the skill to make the required subtle distinctions which consti- |
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