Wednesday 12 June 2019

Taittiriya Upanishad II.i.1 (no.2 in series)


The knower of Brahman attains the highest. Here is a verse uttering that very fact: Brahman is truth, knowledge and infinite. He who knows that Brahman existing in the intellect, lodged in the supreme space in the heart, enjoys, as identified with the all-knowing Brahman, all desirable things, simultaneously.

When it is said that the knower of Brahman knows the highest, what is it that they know. When the answer is given it is parsed to make sure that the meaning extracted from the incorrigible words of the Upanishad are according to their meaning. It is a lawyerly approach in which the position of commas becomes a fulcrum for distortion. For instance the phrase satyam jnanam anantam Brahma could be construed as a catenary of entities 'the truth', 'knowledge', the 'boundless' and last but not least Brahman. That would be a false reading as all those attributes have the same case ending so the phrase is meant to be a definition of the substantive 'Brahma'.

The objection comes:
If this is a definition that demarcates are we to think that it only distinguishes between this (satyam jnanam anantam) Brahman and all other sorts of Brahman much as we sort red lotuses from blue lotuses.

Not so. Sankara offers the distinction between an adjectival string that identifies an entity as a member of a class and the defining nature of the string string satyam jnanam anantam Brahma. The lotus could be described as aquatic fragrant, red,transplantable, hardy etc. All of these attributes are interlinked conceptually as dealing with plants of a certain genus. Contrariwise you could have satyam Brahma, jnanam Brahma, anantam Brahma. Satyam, jnanam and anantam have no intrnsic connection.

The words, satya etc., are unrelated amongst themselves, since they subserve something else; they are meant to be applied to the substantive. Accordingly each of the attributive words is thus related with the word Brahman independently of the others; satyam brahman, jhanam brahma, anantam brahma

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