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15. Thus, in commenting on UMS I.1.6, Sankara explains Chandogya 6.8.8, of which "You are that" is the conclusion, as follows: "By [first] saying, 'That is the self,' the text presents that reality, that subtle self, as the self under consideration; then, in the text 'You are that, O Svetaketu,' there occurs the instruction about it as the self of the conscious being Svetaketu." See also his use of tat tvam asi in UMS II.1.14 and UMS III.2.27. |
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16. The great sayings continue to be used by the later commentators as a tool for the organization of the Text. For example, at UMS III.3.1 Amalananda comments that UMS III.2 was devoted to an analysis of the tvam, the human self (in UMS III.2.1-10) and the tat, Brahman (in UMS III.2.11 ff.); consequent upon this analysis, UMS III.3 now takes up the means of meditation, the texts themselves. Or, the second version of the topic at issue in UMS III.3.16-17 inquires into the relation between Chandogya 6 and Brhadaranyaka 4.3-4. Amalananda and Appaya Diksita explain the siddhantathat although the texts seem to have different topics they can be meditated on togetherby showing how the two passages are both about tat tvam asi,the Chandogya beginning with tat and concluding with tvam,and the Brhadaranyaka moving in the reverse direction. Hence, the two texts are useable together because of their common emphasis on the single "great saying." |
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17. As we shall see in Chapter Four, in UMS IV.1.2-3 the purvapaksin questions the efficacy of "you are that" and the other great sayings. If such a statement has liberative meaning, it will communicate it upon first reading, or not at all. The siddhantin defends the value of reading and rereading, insisting that only gradually does the meaning of the statement become clear and effective in the experience of the reader. The great sayings are not magically effective, but are rather regulative distillations of the larger texts of which they remain part (in earlier Advaita, at least). |
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The preceding analysis too is indebted to Riffaterre, who provides a way to understand the function of great sayings. Though the great sayings too might be interpreted as subtexts (see above), I wish to consider them simply in terms of a second of Riffaterre's strategies, that of "ungrammaticality," discussed in Riffaterre 1978 and 1990. When the reader first reads a text, she or he looks for meaning, tries to understand; but while succeeding in discovering the (apparent) references of words, the reader is also able to perceive "incompatibilities between words: for instance, to identify tropes and figures, that is, to recognizes that a word or phrase does not make literal sense, that it makes sense only if he (and he is the only one around to do it) performs a semantic transfer, only if he reads that word or phrase as a metaphor, for example, or as a metonymy . . . This reader input occurs only because the text is ungrammatical." (1978, p. 5) These ungrammaticalities "signal that the subtext's |
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