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scendent, cosmic and microcosmic principle of life; as interior, Brahman is occasionally equated with that Self/self known as the Atman. Recalling and revising the views of various earlier and probably contemporary Vedanta teachers, Badarayana attempts a descriptive systematization of the upanisads, a regularization of their meaning and identification of their main tenets. |
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His UMS may be divided into two connected projects. In the first half, he organizes the upanisads according to their main topic, Brahman (UMS I.1.1-2), and the right reading of texts about Brahman (UMS I.1.3-I.4.) To this he appends an articulation of the implied metaphysics and epistemology of Vedanta, in response to objections portrayed as those posed by other schools of thought (UMS II). In the second though perhaps older half of the UMS, Badarayana inquires into the proper regulation of knowledge about Brahman in meditation (UMS III.1-3) as this is practiced by the right people (UMS III.4), and concludes by describing the fruits of meditation and the way in which these fruits are enjoyed by the deceased meditator. (UMS IV)
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Badarayana's key interpretive judgment is that the upanisads describe Brahman in two ways: positively, as possessed of qualities (saguna),and negatively, as beyond all qualities (nirguna).According to the former portrayal, Brahman may be imagined as distinct from the meditator; according to the latter, even the distinction between Brahman and the meditator is only a practical, provisional qualification. Though it is not possible to determine completely the nature of Badarayana's system, it thus seems to preserve, though without a complete reconciliation, several of the possible versions of the Brahman-self relationship; in turn, it remains vulnerable to further determination. |
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Advaita, the school of Vedanta which first took form as a tradition of commentary on Badarayana's sutras, sought to provide the required further determination and to resolve the questions related to Brahman by a more exact and final reading of the texts in question.20 Among the schools of Vedanta, it is distinguished by its consistent and thorough dependence on exegesis, its balance between social conservativism and a radical critique of orthodoxy, and its decision to center its systematiza- |
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