Hinduism - Lesson 21

Dr. Timothy Tennent
Hinduism
wm645-21
Major Holidays in Popular Hinduism
Lesson Transcript

 

You have to kind of come down on some basic interpretation of it. So we have chosen this class to do kind of a standard interpretation of the upon the shards, and that is that of chakra. We closed the last period by highlighting some of the great statements made about Shankara. He's been called one of the great magnitudes of philosophical and technical history. He's been called one of the great metaphysical tendencies in the history of human thought. Not just Indian thought, but the history of human thought. He's been called India's greatest philosopher and the pinnacle of India's philosophical contribution to the world. Ramanujan will call him one steeped in darkness who doesn't know how to utter a true statement. But Shankar is widely regarded as a great philosopher, and I think he represents what I would call the Platonic tendency an Eastern thought. Ramanujan will definitely be the Aristotelian emphasis on particulars. Just to refresh our memory on some of the main points, and I have looked for 14 which in the past we have kind of plowed through in a lot of detail, but most of these we've already discussed. Someone. I just kind of go to briefly to remind you of Shankar. His interpretation of Monism grows out of his understanding, taught Thomas, which essentially identifies the essence of humanity with the essence of the universe. So the distinction of enjoy yours and objects of enjoyment does not exist. So he wants to erase subject, object, dichotomy, and instead identify that everything is Brahman. We're going to see how a monitor basically accepts this, but with a lot of qualifications of what this means in the second sentence. But all of us identify with Brahman or dismissed as ultimately unreal. So he wants to create a situation where the entire world is an illusory Maya state.

 

And the only thing that is done for Brahman is Atman. He deals with the whole quality of Brahman issue by focus on the inner, arguing a distinction which is absolutely critical to the whole Ayurvedic position. Everything in the open asides that talks about Brahman with qualities or attributes he uses as his hermeneutical technique that must be referring to is Farah. This is again a Brahman Shankara follows a very rigorous monism or a rigorous non dualism in the sense that he's not going to accept any statements that show qualities or attributes of Brahman. If whenever prominence worship with forms and qualities or I'm quoting him now, it's spoken of as if it were embodied. This is only because of ignorance. So therefore, in light of all of our discussion of popular Hinduism and all the Avatars of Vishnu and so forth, all of that discussion of God being embodied has to be at the level of goona, which must be relegated ultimately to illusory less than real capital R, and therefore it ultimately will fail you. It ultimately has no ability to help you achieve a moksha. The only hope is proper knowledge. So he deftly responds to all the conflicting texts and you punish shards by creating these two levels of of Brahman. He uses his text. One of the texts that we are quoted in such is thought to punish shot in our great Maha Baki pocket passages. There are two forms of Brahman the form and the formless, the mortal and the immortal, the unmoving, the moving, the actual and the true being, which he interprets as being and the goodness. SIGONA Ramana, as you will see later, interpret this as manifested and manifested. He interprets it a bit differently than Shankara does.

 

Then I thought I would just expose you do not need to know these quotes, but I thought it'd be helpful. Just expose you to a little bit of some of Shankar's actual writing. To give you a little feel for kind of his argumentation. He's such a classic Middle Ages thinker Ramana as well. They both think very much like the great philosophers of this time period thought, and they argue along these terms. And this is typical of what Shankara might say in his in this case. This comes from his from a sister based here. His commentary on the Brahma suitor is when a man is asked, where do you have pain? He points to the locus where the body is burned or cut and not to the perceiver, saying I have pain in the head or in the chest, in the stomach. If pain or the cause of pain such as burning and cutting, relocating the perceiver. He would point to the perceiver as the locus of pain. So this is chakra trying desperately to just. Distinguished between the experience of the world and the art and the eye. So when someone says I am in pain in my head hurts. They don't point to their ottoman. So the word AI is being used in some secondary sense. I have pain is actually saying my head is hurting, my stomach is hurting or whatever. It's very interesting how shocking the monitor will reinterpret how we use the word I. It's very, very important. And not only Hindu philosophy, but Buddhist philosophy. And I am convinced very strongly that both Shankara and Ramanujan are largely preoccupied with debates about the eye. Because of Buddhism, Buddhism is as a really remarkable movement. We haven't obviously dealt in this class, but Buddhism is probably sustained the most powerful blow to Hinduism that Hinduism has has yet to absorb.

 

Christianity will ultimately be the final shattering blow to Hinduism, but we've been unable to actually get our fist in the proper position to drop the blow. And so it hasn't yet happened. But Buddhism was able to formulate a very powerful critique of Hinduism that really Hinduism is still reeling from. And so Shankara is extremely preoccupied in his writings with the fact that he's not a book proving that he's not a Buddhist. He's very, very upset that people might call him a Buddhist. If you want to get an at Vedic person upset, say to him, You're a Buddhist. I know you are. You really believe in the annihilation of the self. All this really gets him in a roar. So Shankara is trying to deal a lot with this. How we use the word I listen this quote of his a man possessed by nascent. This means ignorance Aditya being different of a body, etc. I think that his argument is connected with things desirable and undesirable. This is the basic problem that we've already looked at of the upon a chronic vision. Before you get to the point of Tomasi, a Brahman and all that is that you are connecting your eye yourself with various associations, with your body and your experience. But the Scripture gradually removes his ignorance concerning this matter and uproots senescence, which is the view that Atman is different from Brahman because this is just standard stuff. We've already looked at that the root of ignorance is saying that yea, I have an eye which is other than Brahman. He says this typically and this is typical by way of all Shankara. He he says this by way of negation. But essentially innocence is the view that Atman is separate from Brahman and therefore true knowledge is the association of art and with Brahman, which is thought.

 

Tom I see. So all of this is kind of standardized by Shankara, and I don't really believe that the Hinduism, Hindu philosophy as we know it today was really properly articulated in the way that it's today done until the eighth century A.D. So it's a long time before we get this kind of crystal clear and the goodness of goon and all of that thought must see interpretation along these lines doesn't actually occur until Shankara. It actually gets more dramatic after Shankara, because I think his followers tended to take it even farther and even more emphasize the unreality of the world. I had this problem with my dissertation. I had this poem, my book. Some of those who are critical of my dissertation book were critical because they felt like I was too easy on Shankara, and I did not emphasize as much as I should have. The fact that Advait ends teach the world is unreal. And what everybody who knows will tell you that in fact it is not Shankar who does This is Shankar. As Shankar writes, It's just like, in my opinion, what happened with Calvin. When you say Calvinism, you haven't always said Calvin. When you say Calvin and you talk about some of the short throws, there's a there's a migration that goes on. And maybe it's true to the spirit of Calvin and maybe it's not. But these are two different realities. And so you have to be very, very careful about how we define what is being said by Calvin. What's been said by the followers of Calvin was said by conquest, by the followers of Shankara. So these are some of the issues that you have to dealt with. The only thing I on the handout, which I haven't mentioned at this point, is nothing nutty.

 

Do we discussed this in the original lecture on Punishment, vision, Eternity? This is a very classic statement. It means this. What I have here is a translation. This is a Sanskrit. Expression, which means not this net. The net. Not this, not this. It comes from the bridgehead at our nyarko punished shod. Section two, Chapter three, verse six. And essentially what happens in that passage is the inquiring student presses the teacher about Brahmans attributes, and the teacher says to him, Natty, Nettie, this is really important is because of a lot in the literature, because it is a nice little summary statement. Anyways, it's like a marvel. It's like a it's a great utterance. Natty. Natty. Because it summarizes the overall position of the advocates that you cannot say anything about Brahman with certainty. And so if you say God is love or natty, Natty not there is not this. You can't make those assessments. God is just not the unity. They always respond with Natty. Natty. And so when you're discussing with that maidens or they're in their their discourses, they'll often will use the expression Natty. Nothing. Yes. Unless you say God is truth, consciousness, bliss. If you say Brahman is Sachin Ananda, that's fine. As long as those are indicators of Brahman, they're viewed as indicators, not necessarily as attributes or qualities of Brahman. I mean, maybe a fine distinction, but I mean, one of the problems is that if you say nothing, nothing, everything, the philosophical weakness of it is that you could be interpreted to say that this is just nothing more than a great void. I mean, if you can't say anything about something, then it can be nothing of which the Buddha say it is. The Buddha say it's nirvana, it's nothingness.

 

It shouldn't matter. They call it so Zenyatta is nothingness. The last thing that Shankar will accept as the Brahman is nothingness. And so the such head on in this stuff kind of helps create some way of contrasting the position with the Buddhist. It's very, very difficult, actually. Quoting the phrase the absolute is reality, knowledge, infinity. This is a slight variation of search it on. And I mean, this would go into another whole thing. But actually when Shankar was writing the that particular upon God was not well known. We're not absolutely sure that Shankar was aware of that particular upon the Shard, which is such an anecdote. That's a little side thing that troubles you. Then forget it. But it it was in the literature, the discussion that Brahman is not set on in Twi. It means infinity. This guy later migrates to this other thing of bliss. It's a long kind of discourse. Anyway, in his one of his writings, the Roman suits are by Asia. He says the absolute is reality, knowledge, infinity. This is referring to an earlier kind of phrase. It is the absolute that has been defined because the absolute is being present as the primary thing that one has to know. Therefore, the reason why the words reality knowledge infinity would say such surrender are set in the same grammatical case as the word for the absolute. And in that position with it is that they represent the characteristics by which it is to be defined. Now that is the most is strongest statement he makes that seems to indicate the closest thing to some kind of definition of Brahman. But he doesn't say definition. He says this is a characterization, this is indication. He uses kind of that whole thing.

 

He makes the example of if you want to distinguish, for example, a blue lotus from a red lotus, then you use expressions like blue light as to distinct from a red lotus. So these are things that distinguish and by way of negation, the everything that is not this is denied so that they can apathetic boundaries essentially is how he deals with this. Okay. Let's move on to the Maya, which we've also discussed quite a bit. If Brahman is the only reality there is, then how do we account for the seemingly obvious plurality of the universe? That's, of course, is the key problem. And I want you to think about this question because this is actually a question that you should be able to answer. How does Shankar respond to this question? How does Ramona's as respond to this question? Because essentially both Shankar and Moniz are seeking to answer this question. Shankara answers that with the doctrine of Maya. We've examined that already. So Brahman is the only reality. Atman is identifiable, Brahman and everything else is Maya. Everything else is this lower level of. So that's the we shall not know the real nor unreal in this less than real state. Maya has been called the key concept around which his chunk or his entire system revolves. And that is an understatement. Very, very important to Shankara, his version of Maya. So Maya for Shankara is a way to deal with all of the potential problems of differentiation. Of particularity all the things that we see. We come to Maya. We've already discussed transgress, famous categories of metaphors. I just remind you of that whole discussion. And that's exactly a discussion that flows out. He doesn't actually develop this line of argumentation in his writings, but he definitely draws upon metaphors from all three of these categories.

 

This has been a later analysis of Shankara, and I used it to demonstrate the hermeneutical technique of Indians. But you remember how I told you, rather than speaking about something directly, they speak indirectly by looking at stars around the mystery and they point to it. This is the around the tea hermeneutic number that we discuss that. Okay. So in the same way, whenever he's discussing Maya, this is where the Shankar rights took off and they took one of these metaphors and they began to propagate it in the West. So most Western textbooks make the mistake of taking the subjective delusion metaphors and assuming that that's Maya. And there's plenty of Shankar right quotes to back it up. But see, Maya is here, Maya's not here. And so you have to actually take into account all of his metaphors to grasp the mystery of Maya. And we spent a good bit of time exploring that when we looked at the concept of Maya. And I've pretty much kind of told this great line at that point, because that's the starting point for any discussion on Hindu philosophy. Okay. So there's no point in going through that. Moksha, therefore, is the breaking of ignorance. It is the liberation from the effects of karma. So Shankar is very much focused on the holds and Jannah, the the priority of knowledge and moksha is breaking the ignorance so that things that were attached to the world in some way in May as the liberation from the effects of karma. And he has a famous saying of Shankara, even included here in transliteration in that from the Sanskrit Brahman Satyam jargon Mithila Jiva. But I'm either no pada Brahman is real. You can see the sun in Baba Ram is reality.

 

The world is unreality. Jiva is the person. The individual is not different from Brahman. And that really summarizes in a little phrase that's, again, kind of a little Madhavan in a way, but this is a summary of Shankara, if properly understood. Brahman is real. The world is unreal. The individual is not from Brahman. To be technically accurate, you should read this as Brahman is real capital R The world is not real capital are to keep from reading this as is total illusion. But essentially this is the way it's often translated, and this leads to some of the misunderstandings of it. But essentially Shankara, this is his phrase, Brahman is real capital R The world is not real. The individual is non different from Brahman, referring to the the Ottman, the locus of the eye. So for Shankara, going back to our three points of tension that we looked at throughout the course and are three markers on the chart, if you remember the famous chart that we keep going back to, which gives us our overall structure, this is the way Shankara is going to view it works, and devotion are only valuable if they lead to true knowledge. And I'll even add that once you come to true knowledge, this does not serve as a foundation point. It's not like a foundation you build on to get to this. Once you achieve to knowledge of chakra, this passes away, this drops off. And so he doesn't actually value this as a ongoing reality, but it's something that will simply help you in your rebirth to be born as a Brahman. That was a very brief, but I hopefully was of time. I don't want to spend a lot of time rehashing through Shankara, and that's been kind of our default thought the course.

 

So what I really want to do is focus on how Ramanujan is different from Shankar. But any questions to clarify? Shankara or any of the basic opponents like vision, If you have any question, I'd be happy to clarify if that needs to be done. Yes, I was very he said that Christianity could be, you know, a final blow to Hinduism, but you had to be on the right spot. Well, I'm actually speaking more historically, and I am methodologically. I mean, I think that obviously in the cross. And the resurrection of Christ, the decisive blow has been delivered. So I don't really see that we have anything we can do. I mean, what's what needs to be done is already been done. The question is, how is the the the in breaking the kingdom? How can that be known in a way that the Hindus recognize that their system is simply a house of cards built upon itself with no foundation? And I think that's that has not been well communicated. And a lot of it is because Hindus, as a rule, have so many associations with Western culture and various things with Christianity they haven't admitted actually hear the gospel properly. And we haven't done a very good job at actually creating the proper discourse in their languages so that it's being communicated in their own language. So there's a lot of layers of problems that we're trying to address, but the most important being that we're training North Indians to plant churches among North Indians. That's the best way. Because as Andrew Walls beautifully says in his book, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History, his second collection of his writings, he says the sign of the church is not a converted individual, but a worshiping community.

 

I really think that the church in India has never actually realized that point. We have. It's been 2000 years trying to save individuals in India, out of Hinduism, and we never really seen the importance of creating believing communities that can transform the society and live out. What does it mean to be a member of the body of Christ in a Hindu, proudly Hindu society? And that's what we're starting to see happen little by little. Yes, it's about being. The house of Cards brings up the question of why someone like C.S. Lewis recorded such. Well, let me just clarify what Lewis says. And I don't and I don't mean maybe the House of Cards analogy shouldn't be taken as a as a wipe out of my entire course. I hope that I have demonstrated over the whole course of this. Hours and hours of lectures on this that I take this very seriously and that I respect that the Hindu worldview is internally consistent with in itself a real point where it just has no proper ontological foundation, in my view. Therefore, what C.S. Lewis said about his of about Hindu, if he wasn't a Christian, he'd be a Hindu, was simply to affirm the fact that he acknowledged that Hinduism had a coherent structure. Once you accept their presuppositions, if you ignore the present positions, then okay, then you can build from there. But the positions are in error. Of course, if C.S. Lewis was not totally convinced of the Christian faith, he would abandon it. So he was a committed Christian, not a Hindu. But he was simply acknowledging the fact that this is a well thought out system. It's not something you would dismiss. I think it's basically he's saying. Did you have a question? I'm sorry, I forgot the.

 

What is the ashram? Ashram? I'm sorry. We did not mention that, did we? Or mud. Yeah. It's pronounced like much like. Like a dog that it's like. But Ashram refers to the. What happened was when the Hindu philosophers, they didn't just teach in like, seminaries. This is a big from the second notion. We think of Western philosophers who are writing in some university scene in a, you know, endowed chair writing books. But these are actually men that start communities of followers that live together, which is called an ashram. Ashram is a community of devotees and saints that live together. Gandhi started an ashram. There are many, many Hindus over the centuries that started ashrams. So the ashram represents more of kind of like the disciple guru community where they just live together. A mutt is much more than that. A mutt is a bit closer to what we would call a seminary. A mutt play a place where you actually train people in your philosophical thought. It's much more of a formalized, even though they all live there. I mean, it's a it's a community to a mutt is simply an advanced ashram. It's not that you take away the ashram aspect, but it's a much more advanced place where you actually promulgate the philosophy and you focus on explicit teaching, formalized teaching, much like we're doing here. Shankara and or Manager both established at least four months where they would establish these to promulgate their teaching. And this is partly how their teaching became so widely known and embraced around the world, or at least around India. Yes, I find that here. But how do you spell it now? I'm sorry, it's on the handout. It's imitates is the singular the prose mut inmate A is just pronounce are not.

 

It's like everybody says bhakti, but it's actually bhakti. You'll say bhakti Hinduism. But it's actually, it's a ah, interesting thing about Sanskrit. It is not an alphabet. Have it taught you that yet in your study in Sanskrit class, I mean you're taking Hindi class. Have they told you it's not an alphabet yet. Figure that out that the first day I'll go. It isn't the same as just learning letters an alphabet, because you actually have what's called a celebrate, which means you actually have. And this is so insightful in Hinduism, every letter is a vocalized letter. So rather than a, B, c, D, you are Barkha is like that. But in Hinduism every constant has a default r sound attached to it. So you cannot have. Okay, Jeff, I'll give you a, I'll give you a test here. What letter is this last. So he didn't say Lily and le, if you don't do anything that's le if you want it long, you do that. Le if you want to say lea, you put that lea, you'll say le you put that le. There's all kinds of ways you put vowels on it, but that consonant is not just a like a letter. L It's always a le And so the affects the way everything is. That's why when you're listening to Sanskrit sound, some musical, because the R is constantly in there, that creates like a new past. So you learn that the first day. So I'm sure you're much more advanced than that. Anyway. Are you going to come in in the second? But I was at last time. The second thread is part of the investiture of the and I forgot again to bring it into the class. I apologize. I have it.

 

I have one in my office. You'll probably be disappointed if I bring it in a dirty string. But it's when you become a certain age, you take on the let's like a bar mitzvah for a Jew. You take on the associations and the responsibilities of being a Brahmin male, and they invest you with the sacred chord. And so it's just a sign of a Brahmin. In some parts of India, it can be worn by all high caste Brahmin, etc. of Asia. But that's actually not proper. I mean, technically it's only the Brahmin males that wear it. And you also have certain reform movements that refuse to wear it. In fact, one of the big dividing points in the Brahma surmises, which is a 19th century reform movement, was a debate about whether it should cast off a sacred thread or not. So if you're a Brahmin that believes in the reform of the cast that we want to you know, we don't like being known as dominant and crushing people and we want to care for the Dalits and all that. The way you show that is to publicly cast off your record, to show, you know, I'm just one of you kind of thing. So there's many dramatic examples in history. People they'll say cast off a sacred thread. It's a symbolic way of saying, you know, I'm just one of you and all that. And that happens in various points in history. So the term second thread is a term you should know. Okay. Moving on to Ramanujan. Ramanujan occurs much later than Shankar, so a tom or a monitor comes around. We have very developed Shankar right thought, which is known as Advait ism. And Ramanujan writes a number of famous commentaries History by Shah.

 

He's by my sister, by the word Bhatia. This is their work for commentary. The Brahma Sutra. You you already know about from our early part of the class. This is the writings of the philosopher early from Brahmins about the Brahm honors. Sri Bashir. This is the Lord's commentary, the master's commentary, things like that. These are two of. You don't need to know these commentaries, but they are two of his more famous ones. And it's from these writings primarily, though I quote a few others that I get the ramanujan's thinking. His system is not known as Advaita. We've talked a lot about Vedanta. Vedanta is actually divine. The three major schools of thought. Vedanta, of course. Is that part of the philosophy of the six schools? On your chart, you'll see that the Sixth School of Philosophy is Vedanta. The what was the word Vedanta mean in the end of the Vedas? What is the end of the Vader's? The Punjab. So these four sort of schools that focus on the Punjab are known as Vedanta people, often incorrectly when they say Vedanta began to blab on about Advaita and you'll often find even textbooks will equate Advaita with Vedanta. But actually data is one school of Vedanta. Vedanta is the main category, and then you have three major schools underneath it. You have the Advaita, which is this one. This is Shankara. When we've been looking at so far is epitomized by Shankara, and then you have the Vish ish type data, which is the Ramanujan, which we'll look at. And then you have a form of dualism which is by God in mudra, which we have not discussed and we're not discussing. This class is not one of the things that we will have time to deal with.

 

It's a third school and it's a school that rejects the whole conception of monism, but it is a later development. It has influences outside of India and I don't think it's actually true to the Panasonic vision. So we haven't really discussed this dualistic school of mudra. We have discussed this quite a bit and now we're going to briefly begin to develop a Ramanujan school. So Vedanta, the main thing to know is Vedanta is the umbrella and you have various sub schools within it. We looked at Shankara and he is the Plato. Ramanujan is the Aristotle. His view is called This is Dad Vader. This is the word for two dua. So has the provocative A in front of it. Just the way we use like words like a theism. This means not not to non dualism because you have the same thing here with Ramana so you have he he continues the word advaita but he adds the prefix to it vish ista which means modified modified non dualism. So essentially from monitor is going to accept the basic and Vedic principle of Shankara, but he's going to modify it. And that modification is extremely important for our our study in this class. Non dualism is still the determining factor for Ramanujan. He is going to fully accept monism. However he is going to modify it by embracing differentiation and particularity. This is the why I call it the Aristotelian thrust. He's going to find a way to reconcile plurality in his monism particularity differentiation. That's very, very important to Ramanujan, as we will see. I want to quote from Amartya Sen here. I didn't because I never had, but it's I just I love Ramayana or they write because they write with such force.

 

Today we don't write that way. We're always so careful, you know, we're always qualifying everything. We've we haven't really learned to write the way they wrote or they hadn't written. Right. The way we write. I don't know how you look at it, but they attack their opponents with just, I mean, absolutely all guns blazing in which the sun is, He said. This is when he talks about Shankar's inability to embrace differentiated particularity. He describes Shankar's philosophy as, quote, This is actual romantic quote, a fictitious foundation of altogether hollow and vicious arguments from one whose intellect is dark and it has no insight into the meaning of words and sentences. Can you imagine say that somebody I mean, this is not like your typical ETS where, you know, with the greatest respect, you know, my dear colleague, blah, blah, blah, you know this guy, you know, can you imagine saying, you know, your intellect is darkened, you don't even know the meaning of words in sentences? I mean, this is not something that no one's ever called. My arguments hollow and vicious. It's another world. But the real question that we have to ask, obviously, is how do you reconcile monism or non dualism what they would say it, But I'm using the Western terminology here. How do you reconcile monism or non dualism with Ramanujan's enthusiastic embrace of particulars? That is the real big question. If you can answer that question, then you'll be in great shape. The way he answers it is to recast what it means to talk about Brahman. What he does is he argues that Brahman is a personality. Which comprehends within himself all plurality. This is what he calls monism of the different. This is a one essence with internal differentiation.

 

So if you look at my body as representing Brahman in his philosophy, he'll take the entire world. He'll take you and the worshipers and idols and everything else, and he'll place it inside the body of Brahman. So you have all the particularities of the world are now placed inside of Brahman. So we have only one essence, the only one Brahman Brahmans. All there is. But inside Brahman there is the world of particularity. Brahman is the only reality, but the absolute is inclusive of particulars in all their infinite variety. So he affirms that Brahman is the only reality. But he also affirms that the absolute is inclusive, not exclusively. Shankara says its exclusive. The particularities are ultimately relegated to Sigona, which is illusory. Its Maya. But he's affirming the particulars in all their infinite variety. This is a much warmer, warmer kind of philosophy than we find in Shankara. Therefore, a manager rejects the in their goona so goona distinction absolutely rejects their goodness again that distinction. He says that this is a false dichotomy which is so central to that ism. But he sees that the manifold qualities of Brahman are merely inside of Brahman. All the attributes are united into one absolute. In this phrase from the upon Assad's end of the game. That was one without a second. We looked at this particular phrase, and the punishment is one of our malakas. Okay, Shanker interprets this as a reference to Laguna. In the beginning there was one Brahman without a second. The second would be all the lower Sedona realities that are there. So there's only one reality Brahman. Everything is either identifiable Brahman or called illusory or called Maiya. Okay. He takes the same phrase and interprets it very differently. For a Monisha.

 

He says, Yeah, this, this is this Tex is true. But rather than dismissing the particulars, all the attributes are united in one absolute. And so they are either in a UN manifested state or a manifested state. But all this is occurring inside the body of Brahman. So Brahman is going to be identified with Is Vara not separated? Absolute Brahman is is Vara, whereas Shankara would say that absolute Brahman is not as far that's not absolute Brahman is only no going to you cannot speak of Brahman though it's not consistently held in Ramanujan's writings. But Shankara never refers to Brahman as my knowledge offhand, as he only is it, or as the absolute or the assigned. He has to return that always in personal terms. Ramanujan We refer to Brahmin as he and that's a very important difference with a God is it, or a he? Ramanujan is much more infusing personality into the ultimate supreme being in a way that is unthinkable in the Shankara system. So once you abolish the Nair goona singular distinction, then of course you have to ask, Well then what can we know about Brahman? What can we say about Brahman? He's going to open the door for a lot more insight because he equates is far out with Brahman. He argues that rather than trying to put a tension between knowledge of God and all other knowledge of statements as some kind of v just some kind of ignorance, instead it can actually be true knowledge because there is a subject and there is an object. For Shankara, there's only subject, there is no object. And that is another nice way of summarizing chakra monism For Shankara, he's only concerned with Brahmin and subject Ramana so is concerned with subject and object.

 

What is the relationship between the ultimate to the worshiper? What is the relationship between the eternal reality with the world that's very, very important to Ramanujan. For example, he says a sentence in the upon a shots, for example, is a combination of words which denote something. Therefore, words have meaning. If a child sees a cow and a child says there is a KAL, it must be identified with some reality, some association which is manifested as cow or dog or cat, whatever. What he would say is there's a KAL. This Kal reflects some kind of qualities. Kal ness, we might call it. I don't know. It's a kind of a platonic way of looking at it. But essentially he's asking, what is the relationship between this idea of Kal that Shankara says is all there is Brahman, this kind of concept? And basically Shanker wants to sever the tether between a cow and this idea of KAL. I mean, you could say Brahman or the idea of God, but I'm just trying to use a practical example of this. He's saying, how do you know what talent this is like except by looking at a cow? So he's trying to redirect the discussion to say that Shankar is wrong. By severing these two, we have to reunite the particulars with the universals because the only way to understand a universal is to examine the particulars. And so the only way to know what God is like is by understanding the particulars of how God has manifested himself. Whereas Shankar is going to say all that is illusory, all that is not going to give us any knowledge about God, because Shankar is only concerned with subject. Roman is concerned with subject in object. How are people who worship God? What can we learn about God from people? The works of God was relatively non dualism and differentiation.

 

This is the kind of dilemma that Ramanujan is trying to explore as a manager than do more cosmic apologies. He's much more positive with that because to me, that's why cosmology is showing the relationship between particular the universe still. And that's classic, I mean. We've seen consistent in the past like thought. So, yes, he will make a big deal of that. In fact, part of what people who study both of these writers have argued is that Shankara tends to reinterpret the text. He looks very narrowly at a particular word, and he interprets according to kind of his theological grid. Ramanujan is much more looking at the overall context of the passage, and so he's actually looking at a little broader scope about the punch shards and what the punch as a whole teaches. And certainly the whole book. So is a much more contextual thinker. And so he's bringing in a lot more of the particulars than Shankar as a little more narrow approach or manager essentially comes to is that there are five qualities or attributes which define Brahman. The five defining attributes of Ramanujan's writings are here before you. This is what he calls the Divine Oneness. That is the nature of God is known by this kind of what. This is what we call a society. This is what we know about God in himself. He is safety of Brahman. Just briefly, he accepts the conception of Satya or the fact that Brahman possesses unconditional being that distinguishes him from all non intelligent matter which is subject to change and alteration. He also affirms that Brahman is knowledge. This can be checked, but he typically will actually focus more on the term John now, which is the term we've already used for knowledge in our own knowledge or even consciousness.

 

Enlightened souls are released from bondage of calm and rebirth can never know true knowledge because we have we're bound up by our karma. True karma recognizes the reality of God and we reckon our place in it. He says that God can be known as infinite on a to that God is free from all limitations of place, time and so forth, particular substantial natures and so forth. He distinguishes in the eye of the worshiper and the thou of the absolute. And so even when he talks about Tort Tomasi, he says, Thou art. That does not mean thou equals that. And he talks a lot about the relationship of what does it mean to talk about thou art that what way do we identify with Brahman? As we'll see later, he argues that this identification is a relational identification, not identification, where we are lost in the absolute net. Tinetti for Ramanujan means there's nothing more exalted than Brahma in nature or in attributes. So you cannot compare God's attributes to human attributes. But it does not mean that God is without attributes. He has He defined attributes. He accepts the conception of Ananda Bliss, this text, and by sutra where he says Brahman is being full of bliss. He accepts that in all of his writings he talks about Brahman as and will acquire purity also can mean statelessness without stain. The main point of this is that all of this involves serious, lengthy discussions in Ramanujan, but basically the idea is that we now have clearly defined attributes, which he relates everything to in his writings. So this is a breakthrough from what we've seen in Shankar. These are defining qualities, defining attributes. Sankaran says that the highest Brahman is near good. Now, without qualities, the manager says, no, we can identify defining qualities of Brahman.

 

Let us actually give you some text from our romance, give you a feel for it, he says. Tex would speak of Brahmans quote Qualities do not point to a lower level so Guna they point upward to Brahmans defining qualities. So everything is related to these five qualities, but they're not reduced to Sigona.