|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chapter 2
The Texture of the Advaita Vedanta Text |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I. The Texture Of The Advaita Text |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
To understand Advaita properly is to hear it, listen to it, submit to it, engage in it, practice itthat is, to "read" it properly, to become its approved "reader."
1 Proper understanding includes an understanding of what one is doing when one reads the particular texts and commentariesfrom the upanisads to the Uttara Mimamsa Sutras of Badarayana to the Bhasya of Sankara and the commentaries on Sankarawhich comprise what I am calling the "the (Advaita) Text.'' In this chapter I investigate the texture of this Text, the particular requirements and expectations written into it which demand of the reader particular responses during the act(s) of reading and then in consequent acts of speaking and writing from and about the Text. Specifically, we need to learn how to leave the Advaita topics permanently inscribed within the Text's margins, to think about and describe its argumentation and conclusions in ways appropriate to its textual modes of progress, textual organization, and reasoning. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Let us begin simply by recalling the distinction between the (extractable and summarizable) content of a text, and the modes of composition in which that meaning is actually available to the reader; and let us emphasize that style, rhetoric and other literary features are the required resources by which we can come to understand meaningresources we ignore only at the risk of misunderstanding the content to which we would |
|
|
|
|
|