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
4. And because there is (separate) denotation of the object and the
agent.
The clause 'When I shall have departed from hence I shall obtain him'
denotes the highest Brahman as the object to be obtained, and the
individual soul as that which obtains it. This shows that the soul which
obtains is the person meditating, and the highest Brahman that is to be
obtained, the object of meditation: Brahman, therefore, is something
different from the attaining soul.
5. On account of the difference of words.
The clause 'That is the Self of me, within the heart' designates the
embodied soul by means of a genitive form, while the object of
meditation is exhibited in the nominative case. Similarly, a text of the
Vâjasaneyins, which treats of the same topic, applies different terms to
the embodied and the highest Self, 'Like a rice grain, or a barley grain,
or a canary seed, or the kernel of a canary seed, thus that golden
Person is within the Self' (Sat. Br. X, 6, 3, 2). Here the locative form,
'within the Self,' denotes the embodied Self, and the nominative, 'that
golden Person,' the object to be meditated on.--All this proves the
highest Self to be the object of meditation.
6. And on account of Smriti.
'I dwell within the hearts of all, from me come memory and knowledge, as
well as their loss'; 'He who free from delusion knows me to be the
highest Person'; 'The Lord, O Arjuna, is seated in the heart of all
Beings, driving round by his mysterious power all beings as if mounted
on a machine; to him fly for refuge' (Bha. Gi. XV, 15, 19; XVIII, 61).
These Smriti-texts show the embodied soul to be the meditating subject,
and the highest Self the object of meditation.
7. Should it be said that (the passage does) not (refer to Brahman) on
account of the smallness of the abode, and on account of the denotation
of that (viz. minuteness of the being meditated on); we say no, because
(Brahman) has thus to be meditated upon, and because (in the same
passage) it is said to be like ether.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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