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us that the problem is wrong knowing, a problem to be cured by a right knowingright knowing is achieved precisely through education according engagement in the Text. |
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Chapter 3.
The Truth Of Advaita Vedanta |
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1. In Chapters 1 and 2 I insisted that one must move beyond talking about the Text to an engaged, patient reading of it; whatever is said about it must be said only after and out of reading, not due to the privileges of any shortcuts. In particular, I argued that whatever one's position might be about the importance and function of the authors of texts, one frustrates the pedagogical expectations of the Advaita Text if one retreats into speculation about the intentions of Sankara, the mind of Sankara, as a device for "speed-reading." If one focuses on Sankara and delves only sporadically into the later commentaries, one will constrict Advaita to its initial stages and deny oneself its full blossoming and fruition. One will know something about Sankara, but not enough about Advaita. As I take up the topics of this chapter and the next, on the truth of Advaita and the reader of Advaita, I see no reason to qualify the positions thus taken. Nevertheless, the task of communicatingof choosing to write a book about Advaitaimmediately imposes on the writer the requirement to say more than, "Read the Text." One gets caught in the tension between a simple truth (reading is the starting point for comparative work) and the complexities of the actual reading that must occur (the massive task of learning to read, of differentiating commentarial positions, judging what can be omitted and what cannot). In Chapters 3 and 4 I handle this tension haltingly, by skeptically taking some of those shortcuts I have called into question: I speak of topics in the Text, for here it serves little practical purpose, were it even possible, to refer to the whole, all at once; I refer a great deal to Sankara's views, for his words offer a manageable place to stand when confronted with the rich (over)abundance of the Text; even when I use the later commentators I never give them a chance to speak their own word fully, but excerpt them selectively. My justification, if any, lies in the hope that while I am quite far from a mastery of the Text, I am far enough "into it" that my shortcuts occur after reading, not instead of it; they are posterior to the "after Vedanta" transformation of the way I think and go about writing. Readers are advised read these chapters with a sense of irony, recognizing an instance of the difference between what one says ought to be done and what one actually does. |
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2. For another presentation of truth in Advaita, see Deutsch 1969, pp. 86-90. |
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