The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48
Religion
The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48
Vedanta
The qualities about to be stated can belong to the highest Self only.
'Made of mind, having breath for its body,' &c. 'Made of mind' means to
be apprehended by a purified mind only. The highest Self can be
apprehended only by a mind purified by meditation on that Self, such
meditation being assisted by the seven means, viz. abstention, &c. (see
above, p. 17). This intimates that the highest Self is of pure goodness,
precluding all evil, and therefore different in nature from everything
else; for by the impure minded impure objects only can be apprehended.--
'Having the vital breath for its body' means--being the supporter of all
life in the world. To stand in the relation of a body to something else,
means to abide in that other thing, to be dependent on it, and to
subserve it in a subordinate capacity, as we shall fully show later on.
And all 'vital breath' or 'life' stands in that relation to the highest
Self. 'Whose form is light'; i.e. who is of supreme splendour, his form
being a divine one of supreme excellence peculiar to him, and not
consisting of the stuff of Prakriti.--'Whose purposes are true'; i.e.
whose purposes realise themselves without any obstruction. 'Who is the
(or "of the") Self of ether'; i.e. who is of a delicate and transparent
nature, like ether; or who himself is the Self of ether, which is the
causal substance of everything else; or who shines forth himself and
makes other things shine forth.--'To whom all works belong'; i.e. he of
whom the whole world is the work; or he to whom all activities belong.--
'To whom all wishes belong'; i.e. he to whom all pure objects and means
of desire and enjoyment belong. 'He to whom all odours and tastes
belong'; i.e. he to whom there belong, as objects of enjoyment, all
kinds of uncommon, special, perfect, supremely excellent odours and
tastes; ordinary smells and tastes being negatived by another text, viz.
'That which is without sound, without touch, without taste,' &c. (Ka. Up.
I, 3, 15).--'He who embraces all this'; i.e. he who makes his own the
whole group of glorious qualities enumerated.--'He who does not speak,'
because, being in possession of all he could desire, he 'has no regard
for anything'; i.e. he who, in full possession of lordly power, esteems
this whole world with all its creatures no higher than a blade of grass,
and hence abides in silence.--All these qualities stated in the text can
belong to the highest Self only.
3. But, on account of impossibility, not the embodied soul.
Those who fully consider this infinite multitude of exalted qualities
will recognise that not even a shadow of them can belong to the
individual soul--whether in the state of bondage or that of release--
which is a thing as insignificant as a glow-worm and, through its
connexion with a body, liable to the attacks of endless suffering. It is
not possible therefore to hold that the section under discussion should
refer to the individual soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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