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are the (controversial) notions that the Chandogya text actually has a single right meaning, and that this meaning is consonant with the meaning of all of scripture. These notions rely on a series of judgments about which parts of texts are more important, how primary and secondary parts are to be sorted out, why other apparently plausible readings are inappropriate and, finally, when and how other upanisadic texts and arguments drawn from various disciplineslogic, Mimamsa, grammarare correctly introduced.
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These corollary judgments must be understood, linked, appreciated and eventually accepted, if the persuasion regarding the main doctrine is to be successful. The reader, like the Advaitin, needs to be engaged in making a series of judgments along the way, judgments which in turn need to be reviewed in terms of how much the reader knows of scripture and why the reader's arguments are properly formed and properly applied. The successful reader, able to be persuaded that there is a single meaning to the upanisads, that Brahman is the focus of that meaning, and that this Brahman is the sole cause of the world, is a reader who isor who is becomingliterate and cultured in the "Advaita way." |
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Nevertheless, as one begins to understand properly the view that Brahman is the material and spiritual cause of the world, one is beginning to say more than the upanisads say directly, and one is composing a cosmology, metaphysics, fundamental theology. Increasing clarity about the world and its Truth occurs in accordance with an increasingly perceptive skill in the reading of the Text; but even if this occurs only after reading, it nevertheless takes one beyond the strict limitations of what one has read. |
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3. UMS I.1.2: Inference within the Margins of the Upanisads |
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By attention to UMS III.3.11-13 and I.1.5-11 I have been sketching a probable genealogy for the systematic exposition of the truth of Advaita; what emerges is a careful balance between a continuing commitment to texts and the articulation of rules |
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