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the same way. However, they inevitably affect the reader who moves between the two kinds of texts without submitting them to a higher viewpoint which would rob them of their productive insistence by locating them on a single level of discourse, as merely two ways of talking about the same reality, saying the same thing. |
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The Advaita position that Brahman is "really" devoid of qualities even when spoken of as having qualities needs to be understood as a textual strategy which regulates the reading of the nonhomogeneous discourse of the upanisads while yet leaving intact their tensive power. That Brahman is devoid of qualities is the truth, but this truth occurs within texts which speak of Brahman in other ways as well, and the claim must not be excised from that context. The truth referred to by the Text is simultaneously the truth of the Text, and these "two" truthsreferential and textualought neither to be confused nor separated. Were the upanisads merely to inform us that Brahman is devoid of qualities, they would be telling us nothing effectively; by compelling the reader to move back and forth from texts which point to qualities and texts which deny them, they prepare the attentive reader to appropriate the truth. Though the upanisads cannot have Brahman as their contentBrahman cannot be "said," even by the upanisadsthe proclaimed ineffability is inscribed within the upanisads.
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Let us examine how all of this works out in one important adhikarana, UMS III.2.11-21. As we saw in Chapter 2, the commentators term UMS III the section on "means" (sadhana), i.e., on the texts and activity of meditation. UMS III.1 and UMS III.2 explore the horizon within which meditation is possible: the nature of the meditator, the psychological structure of phenomenal and deep self and, in UMS III.2.11-37, the nature of that Brahman which is to be meditated on.10 UMS III.2 is not expository in the broader sense of proposing a completed theory about Brahman, or the Self, or even about meditation; rather, it is written so as to ensure that meditation will continue to occur within a viable framework. |
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UMS III.2.11-21 addresses the problem we have already noted: the upanisads speak in two ways of Brahman, as pos- |
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