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Rethinking Advaita: Who Is Eligible to Read Advaita Texts? Anantanand Rambachan Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 22 Article 6 2009 Rethinking Advaita: Who is Eligible to Read Advaita Texts? Anantanand Rambachan Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Recommended Citation Rambachan, Anantanand (2009) "Rethinking Advaita: Who is Eligible to Read Advaita Texts?," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 22, Article 6. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1433 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Rambachan: Rethinking Advaita: Who is Eligible to Read Advaita Texts? Rethinking Advaita: Who is Eligible to Read Advaita Texts?1 _Anantanand Rambachan St. Olaf College MY most recent work, The Advaita Worldview: presents us with a number of significant God, World and Humanity, exemplifies two questions centered on eligibility to read Advaita related movements. 2 First, I join the growing texts, the insider-outsider dilemma, and the stream of scholars who are making efforts to Christian theologian as reader of Advaita. Am I distinguish the interpretations of Sankara from as an Advaitin committed to an important stream later Advaita exegetes. The uncritical equation of the Hindu tradition, authorized to speak for of Sankara's views with those of later exegetes and about the tradition in ways that Thatamanil needs to be challenged.3 Second, I contend that cannot? Who are the new conversation partners Advaita reflection and scholarship cannot limit for Advaita? I want to focus my response on itself to the clarification of Sankara's some of these questions through an examination interpretations. These interpretations must also of the issue of the qualification to read Advaita be critically evaluated in order for the tradition texts that are considered to be authoritative. 4 to be relevant and creative. It is problematic to The classical Advaita tradition, as assume that Sankara was immune from expounded by Sankara, understands the historical influences, cultural. presuppositions Upanisads to be a prama1Ja or valid source for 5 and his stage in life as a renunciant. The latter is our knowledge of brahman . As Sadananda particularly important since renunciation states· it in Vedantasara, "Vedanta is the traditionally implied specific attitudes to the evidence of the Upani.sads, as well as the world, community and family that inform his Sariraka Sutras and other books that help in the reading of texts and the possibilities of meaning. correct expounding of its meaning. ,,6 In the A renunciant brings different questions and traditional sequence of Advaita study the next concerns to these texts than a householder, and step, after establishing the valid source of the renunciant reading of the Upanisads has been knowledge, is determining the competency of the dominant one. The traditional reverence for the student, the subject matter, and the Sankara and his deified position in the Advaita connection between the authoritative source and lineage ought not to exclude critical questions subject matter.7 Eligibility was traditionally and historical . inquiry. His monumental interpreted on the basis of the categories of caste contributions can be both gratefully and life stage rights and duties acknowledged and interrogated. (var1Jasramadharma). Withm. the confines of Thatamanil's work, The Immanent Divine: this socio-religious system, eligibility for Vedic God, Creation, and the Human Predtcament, study was limited to male members of the upper Anantanand Rambachan is Chair and Professor or Religion, Philosophy and Asian Studies at Saint Olaf College, Minnesota, USA, where he has been teaching since 1985. Prof. Rambachan is the author of several books, book-chapters and articles in scholarlY'joumals. Among his books are Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Sankara (University of Hawaii Press, 1991), Limits of Scripture: Swami Vivekananda's Reinterpretation of the Vedas (South Asia Books, 1995), and The Advaita Worldview: God, World and Humanity (SUNY, 2006), Professor Ramabchan teaches courses on Hindu traditions, Indian philosophy, theologies of religious and interreligious relationships. He serves on the Theological Education Committee of the American Academy of Religion. Journal ofHindu-Christian Studies 22 (2009):8-13 Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2009 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 22 [2009], Art. 6 Rethinking Advaita: Who is Eligible to Read Advaita Texts 9 three castes. Women and sudras were excluded Asian ancestry! Any tradition making such as well as the untouchables who were without universal claims cannot limit access on the basis caste. This interpretation of eligibility of restrictive criteria, such as caste or gender. circumscribed unjustly those who are entitled to Such restrictions undermine the heart of Advaita read Advaita texts. Sankara is a defender of the truth propositions. Second, the Advaita tradition, traditional order and argues against the as already noted, understands itself as a source eligibility of sudras to study the Vedas. "The of valid knowledge (vedanto sudra," according to Sankara, "has no naamopani$atpramanam). ill addition, Advaita competence, since he cannot study the Vedas; defmes valid knowledge as "that knowledge for one becomes competent for things spoken of which has for its object something that is not in the Vedas, after one has studied the Vedas already known and is uncontradicted. ,,9 A and known these things from them. But there defmition of truth such as this cannot privatize can be no reading of the Vedas by a sudra, for or privilege theological claims from open and Vedic study presupposes the investiture with the unrestricted inquiry. Since the validity of sacred thread, which ceremony is confined to the Advaita claims are essentially advanced on three castes."s One cannot, in other words, epistemological grounds and are similar to develop a desire for the goal of liberation claims advanced on the basis of other sources of described in the Vedas without exposure to these valid knowledge, such as perception or texts. The sacred thread ceremony (upanayana), inference, a response is invited. ill other words, which confers permission for Vedic study, is the grounding of its claims about the nature of forbidden to sudras, exemplifying a religious reality in a pramarza argument necessarily opens and social vicious cycle. the tradition to critical examination from so­ Are there resources in the Advaita tradition called outsiders who may subscribe to for overcoming these limits and welcoming non­ alternative authoritative sources of knowledge traditional readers whose identities are not and different truth claims. Advaita is not reticent defmed by. caste of life-stage? Clearly there are about the fact that its a.ssertions abut the nature and have been non-traditional readers; many are of reality are different from commonly held present in AAR sessions. Fortunately, the views and has not avoided efforts to refute Advaita traqition does not have a central claims that are incompatible with its own. The authority issuing permission to read texts! The tr~dition should not expect anything less from absence of a controlling authority is a weak rival contemporary .views. Third, the limiting of argument for the reading of texts by those eligibility on the basis of caste and gender is traditionally excluded, and the case remains and much less obvious in the three authoritative ought to be made from within the tradition on pillars of the tradition (prastanathraya),' the the issue of eligibility. A detailed articulation of Upani.sads, Bhagavadgita and the Brahmasutra. this case is beyond the scope of this ill these sources the emphasis is on the more presentation, but some of its crucial elements universal qualities of head and heart such as can be identified and commented upon. ability to distinguish between the real and unreal First, Advaita understands the human (viveka), detachment from that which is finite problem it describes and the solution it and subject to change (vairagya) and longing for prescribes to be universal. According to Advaita liberation (mumuk$utva). There is a tension humans everywhere experience the existential between the so-called inherited criteria, like lack that remains unsatisfied by the gain of caste, and those (sadhanacatustaya) that are wealth, pleasure, fame and power. The tradition available universally to any interested human also affIrms that all beings are identical, at the being. The latter are clearly more consistent with most fundamental level of self, with the infmite the nature and character of Advaita truth claims brahman. Advaita is an excellent example of an and need to·be emphasized over the conservative illdian tradition making explicitly universal requirements 'of caste and gender. These claims about the human condition and its requirements need to be consistently and . resolution; the Upanishads clearly do not explicitly refuted by prominent Advaita address themselves only to persons of South teachers. http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol22/iss1/6 2 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1433 Rambachan: Rethinking Advaita: Who is Eligible to Read Advaita Texts? T :, 10 Anantanand Rambachan Of course, in making the
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