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"-maya," and "puccha."
31 Both are similar too, one must confess, in their ability to tax the energies and attentions of readers; they build upon their masters' thought only in the most careful and painstaking fashions. |
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A reader might study Advaita without ever engaging the thought of Vacaspati Misra, and one might study the Summa Theologiae without exploring the problems and resolutions finely achieved by Cajetan. Yet attention to the larger connections which constitute Texts, and the practice of comparative reading that places a rereading of the Summa Theologiae after the Advaita Text together compel the attentive reader to take commentaries seriously, and to retrieve questions which may not have been immediately noted by the casual reader. One acquires, now in a comparative setting, a refined sense of discrimination, an appreciation of the subtle linguistic refinements which enhance a Text and amplify its significance. |
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A rediscovery of Cajetan in the comparative context is perhaps counter-intuitive, a reversal of the ordinary expectation about comparative work. Instead of a search for the original text or earliest, freshest insights, or for the genius of Aquinas untainted by scholastic analysis, or for the most general statement of theological positions, stripped of "local," scholastic detail, one learns actually to prefer the kinship of more difficult theologians such as Sankara and Aquinas, Amalananda and Cajetan, and these in the most precise and demanding of their writings. Comparative reading does not strip traditions down to elemental truths or experiences, but retrieves respect for the wholeness of their development; the particular complexities and refinements of traditions are revealed as cross-culturally most illuminative, most efficacious in teaching the theologian how to read comparatively. |
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Once the practice and intention and multiple effects of Aquinas' exegesis are brought to the fore as important objects of inquiry in a theological rereading of the Summa Theologiae, and once we have similarly begun to search out the history of commentary on the Summa, we thus begin to establish the Summa as a correlative adequately parallel to the Advaita Text opened up in the preceding chapters. Returning primacy to the actual reading of Texts, we begin to construct a richer, more complex field |
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