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it is closer to "theology" than "philosophy," and closer to "scriptural theology" than ''philosophical theology." Thus characterized, Advaita places a different and in many ways more arduous, yet practicable set of demands on the interested practitioner, the interested hearer and student, whom throughout I describe as the "reader." Advaita thus portrayed loses some of the universality attributed to philosophy; but it also becomes more and not less accessible to the unauthorized but gradually implicated outsider, the comparativist, the theologian who is willing to be (re)educated by the Advaita texts. |
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1. A Brief Overview of the Advaita as a Commentarial Tradition |
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"Vedanta" refers generally to a body of concepts and a number of schools of thought which claim as their primary referent and authority the Sanskrit-language upanisads, a group of texts from the middle and late Vedic period (after 800 BCE). In the upanisads speculation about the orthodox rituals of ancient India was increasingly accompanied by speculation on the nature of the world in which ritual is efficacious, on human nature, and on the nature of the "higher" or post-mortem reality which renders human experience ultimately significant. Inquiries into, and discourses about, the vital breath (prana),the self (atman),and the corresponding spiritual and cosmic principle, Brahman, are prominent in the upanisads. These upanisadic explorations proceed by experiment, by question and answer, by exposition and summation; in their rough texture they replicate earlier oral debates and inquiries. The older upanisads appear to be only partially homogenized collections of yet older debates and teachings; they are not presented as single works by single authors, and are not complete systematizations. Consequently, Vedanta's theological appropriations of the upanisads are marked from the start as acts of careful reading and constructive systematizations which go beyond what is in the texts. |
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Badarayana's Uttara Mimaamsa Sutras
17(perhaps 4th or 5th century CE) is a set of 555 brief, terse aphorisms (sutras)18which intend just such an organization of upanisadic speculations into a system of thought focused on Brahman, the absolute and tran- |
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