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instead devote our attention.
2 Advaita has suffered at the hands of readers who have discussed its themes without sufficient attention to the manner in which these are inscribed in the Text. |
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In Chapter 1 I have already noted how a too prominently placed thematic or authorial focus may distract us from the full commentarial "flourishing" which constitutes the Advaita project. We must learn to become completely attentive to the way in which Textual meaning comes to us, as we engage in reading the Text and as we learn gradually, on the basis of that activity, to say things about it. The Text resists summation based on major themes, conclusions, or the important intentions of its authors; it resists a (merely) linear reading that moves either toward an expressible conclusion, or from a generally stated theory to its (mere) exemplification. These inscribed acts of resistance can be interpreted more positively by noticing Advaita's insistent imposition of specific demands on its readers, to educate those readers in certain ways of thinking and organizing what is learned from reading, so as to implicate them in ongoing acts of commentary from which the readers cannot simply disassociate themselves. |
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II. The Rough Texture Of The Upanisads |
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We begin our review of the complex development of the Text by reviewing in general terms, and using the Chandogya Upanisad as an example, the array of possibilities opened up by the upanisads as the textual basis on which Advaita composes its interpretive framework.3 |
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The upanisads embody several attitudes and possibilities regarding learning and what can be known and expressed, and in various ways they present to us modes for the presentation of that knowledge. First, occasionally they report simply the factand not the contentof conversations between seekers and wise teachers, and exhort the reader to seek similar conversations, presumably since a text cannot replicate the dynamics of the teacher and student relationship. For example, the story of Satyakama (Chandogya 4.4-9) moves from an initial dialogue between Satyakama and his mother (4.4) and the teaching of the |
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