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social practices which are unavailable to us now, nor that commentators talk about things in the language of scripture. Rather, it is that even renunciation, uncompromising liberation from strictures such as texts, is meaningful only when inscribed in the Text; as a topic in the Advaita discourse, it subsists in its textual constitution, and its significance is available only in the medium of that proper, literate context. |
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If we are then to engage in the Advaita discussion of renunciation, we need to understand first of all the close connection between renunciation and exegesis, deferring for the moment our conceptions as to what renunciants give up or what ought to be said about them when they renounce. Then, as readers, we become able to engage the reality constituted in this adhikarana and others like it, as literary places in which certain religious practices are (re)constituted on a textual basis; we are enabled to talk about renunciation in its distinctive and properly Advaitic sense. We learn not only that renunciation is vindicated by the upanisads; more importantly, we learn to use upanisadic texts properly, reading them according to the proper rules of Mimamsa argumentation, and so learn that renunciation, like everything else, can be properly accounted for. |
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Of course, one may still talk about renunciation in other ways, perhaps raising a whole range of social and historical issues, seeking too to delve behind the Advaita presentation, to see it in terms of power relationships, etc. But one must still work one's way through the Text, if those other inquiries are to be relevant to Advaita. |
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3. Weaving the Text Together: Samgati and Pada |
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Adhikaranas are the key units by which Advaita constructs its Text. But we still need to make use of the larger structures of the Text, its divisions into padas, made of adhikaranas, and adhyayas, made of padas. In the following pages I approach this large task only in a preliminary fashion, showing that the emerging thematization connected with pada and adhyaya contributes to the construction of the Text as Text, and does not encour- |
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