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and the activity which brings about the desired knowledge.
27 In PMS I.1.1 ("Next, then, the desire to know dharma" [atha ato dharmajijñasa]), and in UMS I.1.1 ("Next, then, the desire to know Brahman" [atha ato brahmajijñasa]), the discussion of jijñasa is placed within a discussion of the significance of the opening "next" (atha), a word which can possibly, though not necessarily, mark the beginning of an activity or text or ritual as a radical new departure vis à vis that which precedes it. |
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Sankara expends considerable effort in finding a way to interpret "atha" in this latter sense, so as to minimize any precedent for the new enterprise of brahmajijñasa which comprises the Advaita Text. After rejecting four alternative readings of "atha" which discern various precedents to brahmajijñasa,28 he finally settles upon a series of interior qualities as the sole prerequisites of the desire to know: |
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They are: discrimination between things that are eternal and things that are noneternal; a loss of taste for the enjoyment of objects here and hereafter; perfection in such practices as control of the mind, control of the senses and organs, etc.; the desire for liberation.29 |
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There is nothing specific to Advaita, nor to Vedic orthodoxy, about these interior prerequisites, nor do they bear any necessary textual component. Yet Advaita characteristically locates them firmly within the Text and interprets them entirely in keeping with the expectation of attention to it; it narrows their domain and identifies a textual pedagogy as the basis for their acquisition. How this textualization occurs is best illustrated by following the Advaita debate over the meaning of "jijñasa" in atha ato brahmajijñasa,and over the way in which this desire is established in continuity with and distinction from the dharmajijñasa of Mimamsa. This is the debate over why the unprecedented and pure desire to know Brahman, accompanied only by the four prerequisites, should be linked to other prerequisites implied by a demanding commitment to the reading of the Text. |
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Advaita draws on the Mimamsa version of the debate. In locating dharmajijñasa vis à vis its background at the beginning |
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