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Third, while Yearley's stress on the skill and imagination of the comparativist is consonant with my own theological concern about the faith and community of the comparativist, his comments on the issues of faith, truth and community are minimal. I raise these questions more explicitly, exploring the tensions between what one reads and what one writes, between what one believes and how one lives. Consequently, my work is more concerned than Yearley's with the theological implications of the comparison undertaken and with the question of how the tensions created by comparative work can be resolved, in the comparativist and in her or his community. |
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In the preceding pages I have sketched the contours of a form of comparative theology which remains close to the particularities of the traditions studied, which maintains the prominent position of the practical issues of faith and commitment which characterize theological investigations, and which generalizes in the sense that as a member of a larger community, the comparativist as theologian is required to recount for that community both the details and implications of the comparative project in order to engage the community in the practice or its results. In the remaining sections of this chapter I further specify these indications by attention to the Advaita tradition as a practice of exegesis and commentary (IV), and by a sketch of how a focus on texts, reading and the identity of the reader shape this experiment in theology after Advaita Vedanta (V). |
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IV Advaita, Text And Commentary |
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The following introduction to the Advaita theological tradition, to be amply filled out in Chapters 2, 3, and 4, begins with an overview of the texts relevant to this study. I then situate Advaita, first by examining its understanding of itself as a coherent, organically integrated tradition of commentaries, and then by exploring the significance of the fact that Advaita is at its core an exegetical system, and therefore is heir to the ritual exegesis of the older Mimamsa school of ritual exegesis. I will show that Advaita is fundamentally a practice rather different from the philosophy it has generally been conceived to be, that |
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