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the word "jijñasa" signifies the desire to know. "Desire to know" is indeed what makes one undertake the inquiry.
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The distinction and connection are legitimate, and the clarification of terminology is possibly helpful; the word "mimamsa" is used to distinguish the activity of inquiry from the originative desire, and the word "jijñasa" is reserved for the desire. As desire, brahmajijñasa may come at any time; but as a project that needs to be undertaken, it is just like dharmajijñasa, and is necessarily posterior to knowledge of the pertinent textsboth versions of jijñasa as inquiry are reading activities. The claim of Advaita's independence from ritual is thus balanced by the admission that one must be like a Mimamsaka, an Uttara Mimamsaka, in order to "do Advaita." The kind of skill one gains from Mimamsa is required, however one may achieve it.34 |
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This specification is surprising only if we mistakenly define Mimamsa as ritual rubrics. Mimamsa itself is not so much about the performance of rites as it is about the proper understanding of rites, their texts, their actualization and the extended set of related issuesan understanding acquired by a sophisticated probing of language, ritual and their presuppositions. By distinguishing knowledge about how to do rites from the ability to discern connections and differences in a ritual/textual context, Vacaspati sorts out "mere Mimamsa" as that detailed knowledge of rites which is decidedly not necessary for Advaita, from the skills of making proper distinctions which the Advaitin as Uttara Mimamsaka assuredly must acquire. Though the desire to know and its satisfaction cannot be caused, the skill through which knowledge is accomplished can be learned, and needs to be taught properly to proper students. Though content35 and the manner of relationship between texts and object of inquiry differ in Mimamsa and Advaita, and though such differences entail differences in epistemological, metaphysical and cosmological structures, they do not mark radically different textual commitments and methods. Neither differences in content nor the consequent differences in structure indicate that Advaita is performed differently; the Advaitin must be an Uttara |
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