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derstood in the Text; the pure and absolute nature of the final knowledge of Brahman does not undercut the definiteness, practicality or temporality of the path that reaches there.
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However one may use portions of the UMS for purposes more or less extrinsic to Advaita's own purposes, these uses must be subordinated to the full and practical context in which they developed in the first place: the proper practice of purposeful, fruitful meditation (UMS IV) by the right persons (UMS III.4); this meditation upon properly organized texts (UMS III.3) as carried out by meditators cognizant of the ontological and cosmological context within which meditation can be fruitful (UMS III.1, 2), and undergirded by the fact of a coherent truth in the upanisads (UMS I) which, though not available to the reasoning mind without an appeal to scripture, successfully surpasses all competing, nonscriptural explanations of the world (UMS II). |
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It is in light of this practical structure that we best understand the important opening sutras, UMS I.1.1-4: |
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I.1.1 Next, therefore, the desire to know Brahman. |
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I.1.2 "Brahman" indicates that whence derive the origination, etc. of this world. |
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I.1.3 Brahman is knowable because it is the source of the teachings. |
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I.1.4 It is known from the upanisads because it is their consistent object. |
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These sutras are prefatory and regulative indications of how the reading is to proceed. They are not general, informative summations of what comes later in the Text; they are true beginnings, not substitutes for what follows.51 They set the parameters within which the ensuing analysis is to proceed:52 a. the UMS inquiry is motivated by a desire to know Brahman (UMS I.1.1); b. the word "Brahman" is minimally designated as referring to "that which is the cause of the world," so as to enable us to use it intelligently, yet without making the ensuing exegesis superfluous by assuming to know in advance all that must be known of Brahman (UMS I.1.2); c. Brahman is investigated according to the exegetical analysis of the UMS, because Brahman |
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