The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1
Religion
The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1
Vedanta
The embodied Self, the purvapakshin says.--Why?--Because the embodied
Self as the ruler of the organs of action is well known to be connected
with the mind and so on, while the highest Brahman is not, as is
declared in several scriptural passages, so, for instance (Mu. Up. II,
1, 2), 'He is without breath, without mind, pure.'--But, it may be
objected, the passage, 'All this indeed is Brahman,' mentions Brahman
directly; how then can you suppose that the embodied Self forms the
object of meditation?--This objection does not apply, the purvapakshin
rejoins, because the passage does not aim at enjoining meditation on
Brahman, but rather at enjoining calmness of mind, the sense being:
because Brahman is all this, tajjalan, let a man meditate with a calm
mind. That is to say: because all this aggregate of effects is Brahman
only, springing from it, ending in it, and breathing in it; and because,
as everything constitutes one Self only, there is no room for passion;
therefore a man is to meditate with a calm mind. And since the sentence
aims at enjoining calmness of mind, it cannot at the same time enjoin
meditation on Brahman[136]; but meditation is separately enjoined in the
clause, 'Let him form the determination, i.e. reflection.' And thereupon
the subsequent passage, 'He who consists of mind, whose body is breath,'
&c. states the object of the meditation in words indicatory of the
individual soul. For this reason we maintain that the meditation spoken
of has the individual soul for its object. The other attributes also
subsequently stated in the text, 'He to whom all works, all desires
belong,' &c. may rightly be held to refer to the individual soul. The
attributes, finally, of being what abides in the heart and of being
extremely minute which are mentioned in the passage, 'He is my Self
within the heart, smaller than a corn of rice, smaller than a corn of
barley,' may be ascribed to the individual soul which has the size of
the point of a goad, but not to the unlimited Brahman. If it be objected
that the immediately following passage, 'greater than the earth,' &c.,
cannot refer to something limited, we reply that smallness and greatness
which are mutually opposite cannot indeed be ascribed to one and the
same thing; and that, if one attribute only is to be ascribed to the
subject of the passage, smallness is preferable because it is mentioned
first; while the greatness mentioned later on may be attributed to the
soul in so far as it is one with Brahman. If it is once settled that the
whole passage refers to the individual soul, it follows that the
declaration of Brahman also, contained in the passage, 'That is Brahman'
(III, 14, 4), refers to the individual soul[137], as it is clearly
connected with the general topic. Therefore the individual soul is the
object of meditation indicated by the qualities of consisting of mind
and so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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