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Truth is inscribed in the Text; it is placed within, behind, after the Text, and there is no shortcut to it. As we saw in Chapter 3, even the Advaita truth of the identity of the self and Brahman requires a painstaking and circuitous articulation; as we saw earlier in this chapter, even the Christian truth of the universal significance of the Passion of Christ remains imbedded in one or another theological expression of it. A tradition's truths, in scriptural, theological and doctrinal forms, become accessible as expressed and as understood in words composed over a period of time; the consequent truth of comparison is no exception, and indeed is all the more a matter of patient elaboration. It takes time to know how the truths of one's tradition will affect comparison and how our articulations of truth will be affected by it; distances of language and culture need to be traversed before we can restate firmly our community's truths or state anew the truth of theology after Advaita Vedanta. Texts make religions and theologies readily proximate to one another, and yet only as a time-consuming prospect. So too, as I have shown at length in the preceding chapters, the learning of a tradition's theological language(s) and an understanding and fruitful appropriation of its texts are parts of a process which is completed only in a realization achieved by the skilled reader. |
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We therefore ought not move too quickly, too impatiently, in our quest to uncover the principles supposed to underlie the act of comparative reading, or the truths to be gleaned from comparison. The practical agenda of finding of a viable way to think about these Texts and their implied and explicit systematizations must proceed without prematurely formalized conclusions to the search. The affirmation of truth within a rich textual realm is only secondarily a theoretical claim; it is primarily a practice to be performed through the reading and rereading of the texts that are involved. Change occurs through a traversal of the path of reading, teaching and doctrine, and not in a timeless conceptualization. Hence, we must practice comparisons and learn from them, and be patient when our experiments at any given time are incomplete, inadequate, when we are more sure of the practice than of its import. |
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