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as it really is, and the knowledge which liberates the Advaitin from it.
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Though permanently textual, Advaita does not portray itself as endlessly about texts, a play of words. It argues that it is true that reality is nondual, that Brahman is devoid of all qualities, that the world has Brahman as its causematerial, efficient and finaland that these positions refer to the actual reality in which not only Advaitins live, but everyone else as well. Like other theological systems, Advaita invests a great deal in this view that its positions are adequate to the real, and that its proposals regarding the human condition are consequently helpful toward salvation. We must now explore, therefore, how the truth claims of Advaita are compatible with its permanent textuality, and how the Text extends itself in its particular, characteristic understanding claim about the world and regarding the truth of Brahman. |
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In our preliminary examination of the UMS in Chapter 2 we sketched by way of example certain approaches to knowledge in the Chandogya Upanisad,glimpsed the rich, complex and richly uneven discourse of the upanisads as represented there and in the Taittiriya Upanisad,and saw how Badarayana's UMS moves toward a systematization of the upanisads and a regularization of their meaning. His organization of the upanisads within the frames of sutra, adhikarana, pada and adhyaya, and according to procedures such as coordination and harmonization, is a possible, though uncompleted, move toward a replacement of the upanisads with a meaning derived from them, with their subject matter. |
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Sankara's Bhasya in important ways extends the systematization begun by Badarayana. Like Badarayana, he holds for a systematization of the upanisads although, as I argue in what follows, he declines to follow his predecessor in discovering a doctrine about Brahman in the upanisads; instead, he retrieves and reinvigorates the system-resistant language that is basic to the upanisads. For Sankara, the upanisads cannot tell us about Brahman, but they fail in so rich, engaging and persuasive a way that we alter our way of living and realize Brahman in a radical revision of our own identities. |
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