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
To this we make the following reply: What is here taught as the object
of meditation is the highest Brahman only.--Why?--On account of its
being spoken of as the object of sight. For the person to be meditated
upon is, in a complementary passage, spoken of as the object of the act
of seeing, 'He sees the person dwelling in the castle (of the body;
purusham puri/s/ayam), higher than that one who is of the shape of the
individual soul, and who is himself higher (than the senses and their
objects).' Now, of an act of meditation an unreal thing also can be the
object, as, for instance, the merely imaginary object of a wish. But of
the act of seeing, real things only are the objects, as we know from
experience; we therefore conclude, that in the passage last quoted, the
highest (only real) Self which corresponds to the mental act of complete
intuition[176] is spoken of as the object of sight. This same highest
Self we recognise in the passage under discussion as the object of
meditation, in consequence of the term, 'the highest person.'--But--an
objection will be raised--as the object of meditation we have the
highest person, and as the object of sight the person higher than that
one who is himself higher, &c.; how, then, are we to know that those two
are identical?--The two passages, we reply, have in common the terms
'highest' (or 'higher,' para) and 'person.' And it must not by any means
be supposed that the term jivaghana[177] refers to that highest person
which, considered as the object of meditation, had previously been
introduced as the general topic. For the consequence of that supposition
would be that that highest person which is the object of sight would be
different from that highest person which is represented as the object of
meditation. We rather have to explain the word jivaghana as 'He whose
shape[178] is characterised by the jivas;' so that what is really meant
by that term is that limited condition of the highest Self which is
owing to its adjuncts, and manifests itself in the form of jivas, i.e.
individual souls; a condition analogous to the limitation of salt (in
general) by means of the mass of a particular lump of salt. That limited
condition of the Self may itself be called 'higher,' if viewed with
regard to the senses and their objects.
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