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receptive readings are excluded; the "reader as observer" is replaced by the "reader as participant." |
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I wish to emphasize that the Text, composed entirely of adhikaranas, is the privileged vehicle of our entrance into the realm of Advaita, and thereafter into the acquisition of its fruit: refined, discriminate knowledge of Brahman. One goes through the Text, one is changed by it; one cannot go outside it, or around it; there is no outside, and if there were, one would not accomplish anything by going there, or in any useful way become accomplished. |
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By reading diligently, the modern reader becomes a part of this exchange, involved in the reading and argumentation, taking sides, offering new clarifications and posing new questions. Though one cannot examine every commentarial refinement of every argument, omissions imply choices about how skilled in Advaita we wish to become, how much Advaita we actually want to know, where we will draw the line in our education as Uttara Mimamsakas. |
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d. Is There a World outside the Text? The Case of World-Renunciation (UMS III.4.18-20) |
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Though the Advaitins insist that Brahman is an extratextual reality, the debate over whether Brahman consists of bliss is entirely a debate over whether Brahman is indicated by the term "consisting of bliss;" it is couched entirely in terms of exegesis. |
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Though one may readily concede this on the grounds that the problem in UMS I.1.12-19 is an exegetical one, one may hesitate to make the further claim that all adhikaranas mediate what is outside the Text, including Brahman, through the Text. I suggest that we are warranted in making that further claim that the extratextual world is not properly seen or experienced except through the Text, and that this Textual mediation constitutes the only "world" the Advaitins are interested in. If one wants to know the Advaita view of anything, the Text is the way to that knowledge. Nothing discussed in the Text can be understood apart from its appearance in the Text, since everything is transformed by its inscription therein, and is relevant only in that inscribed form. |
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