|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Brahman can be referred to as "consisting of bliss," Appaya Diksita cites UMS I.2.3 in favor of the view that this is not possible, and UMS I.3.19 in favor of the view that it is possible.
36 At UMS I.1.23, he cites UMS IV.1.13 in support of the purvapaksin's elucidation of the Chandogya verse under discussion.37 A striking example from later in the UMS is Sankara's indication that the siddhanta of UMS III.3.58 illuminates the whole of UMS III.3, though one encounters it only at the end of the pada.38 In general, an important reason for the density of the Text is the inscription of each commentator's mastery of the whole Text into his commentary on any part of it. The unity of the Text is in part an event which occurs in the memory and learning of its readers, and so the task confronting the student has two key aspects: to appropriate the wisdom of earlier readers of the whole, and to infuse their own reading increasingly with their own gradually achieved sense of the whole. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
c. Two Strategies of Coherent Practice |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Although a sense of the connection among adhikaranas is most effectively gained in the ways described in the preceding section, and although the advantages of staying patiently with individual and then groups of adhikaranas are estimable, the reader is also justified in making use of larger features which characterize the Text, including certain strategies which programmatically knit adhikaranas into padas. By way of example, let us consider two examples: UMS III.3 as a pada dedicated to the practice of "coordination" (upasamhara), and UMS I.1-4 as a group of four padas dedicated to the practice of "harmonization" (samanvaya).39 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
i. Coordination (upasamhara) in UMS III.3 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Modi has shown us40 that UMS III.3 provides the best starting point for a clear and coherent understanding of the composition of the UMS Text as a project rooted in exegetical and meditational questions. This is so, even if UMS III.3 as we now have it is not necessarily the oldest portion of the heavily redacted UMS. UMS III.3 is concerned with the proper use of texts together in economically unified acts of meditation, wherein texts which remain distinct from one another are used together; |
|
|
|
|
|