Divine Self, Human Self The Philosophy of Being in Two Gfta Commentaries Chakravarthi Ram -Prasad BLOOMSBURY LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY 40 Divine Self, Human Self ingenious, often breathtaldngly unconventional (and to this day, hardly 2 understood and much misinterpreted) reading of the nature of Kr~1)a in the Gftii. We have to make what we will of the interpretive conundrum in Sankara's description of Kr~l)a as the signifier (abhidheya) of brahman, Being and the God Other than Being: in the introduction to the commentary: 'This sacred text, the Gftii, while particularly revealing the ... ritual cosmic order having the highest good as Ramanuja on brahman and I(f~l)a its purpose and the supreme reality called Vasudeva - being that signifies brahman in excess - as its subject matter, is shown to have a special purpose and connection:96 The Gita is God's self-declaration and, as such, a text ripe for the Vai~i:iava theology that Ramanuja is seeking to develop; but nonetheless - or indeed, precisely for that reason - Kf~l)a has a great deal to say about brahman. So we have to inquire into the nature of brahman in Ramanuja's commentary as well. The hermeneutic challenge in the body of the Brahmasutras for Ramanuja was always the absence of Kr~i:ia-Vasudeva, whose supreme name and form is Vi~l)u/Narayai:ia. So there, brahman itself had to perform fully the theological function necessary for a faith centred on Narayal)a; and Ramanuja looked to derive from its statements a reading of brahman that leads to Narayal)a. The Gftii, of course, is utterly different. It permits a far greater freedom to approach Narayal)a directly (given, of course, the historically complete identification of K1wa with Vi~l)u/Narayal)a). A different interpretive task, one focussed on Ramanuja's overall ViSi~tadvaitic position, might well occupy itself with looking at how the brahman-oriented commentaries are made to yield a theology that can also cohere with the one available through reading the Gltii.1 But as my intention in this book is to treat the Gita commentary on its own independent terms, as a single source of theological reconstruction, we only need to contrast Ramanuja's task with Sankara's. Roughly put, in exact opposition to Sankara, Ramanuja implicitly asks: what is brahman doing here? This is because Ramanuja explicitly commits himself, from the introduction onwards, to a reading of the Gita as about Kr~l)a/Narayai:ia (and Narayal)a's consort Sri), thereby foregrounding K1wa's presence as the ultimate significance of the text. We will, of course, have to see what Ramanuja says about I(Jwa that permits us to call I(J·~i:ia 'God; and there­ after to see what such a God means for him. But we have to explore too what brahman means for Ramanuja, in order to see what 'God' is for him. We have to ensure that, even if Ramanuja locates an account of brahman within a larger 42 Divine Self, Human Self Ramanuja on brahman and Kr~(w 43 theology of Kr~i)a, and we have seen Sat'lkara do the opposite, the difference The second distinction concerns self and the body. Ramanuja does not between Ramanuja and Sankara is more than a mere switching of names such want to treat the material world as ultimately non-being, but he does have that Sankara's brahman is Ramanuja's God (Kr~l)a) and vice versa.2 to explain the key contrast at 2.16: 'For that which is non-existent (asat), I hope to show here that, while Ramanuja uses 'brahman' in a way that no being (bhava) is found; for that which is existent (sat), no non-being can exegetically be rooted in the Gita and share some significant conceptual (abhava) is found. But the core (antab) of both of these has indeed been seen sense with Sankara's use of it - centring around notions of being - he also by the seers of realitY: 5 How is 'non-being' to be understood here in a way circumscribes it in a way that significantly opens up his radical vision of that does not treat the mutable, material world as of a different order of being Ktwa/Narayal)a as bhagavan (Lord). The upshot is that, while both of in relation to self? Ramanuja's answer is ingenious: 'For the non-existent, them use the word 'God' to describe Kr~t)a, they interpret the nature and the body, being as an existent is not found, and for the existent, the self, no significance ofI(f~l)a, and thus the ultimate import of 'God/the Lord' (lsvara/ being as a non-existent [is found]: 6 1hat is to say, Ramanuja reads the verse bhagavan) very differently. So we must first ask what Ramanuja means by as offering two categories of being (bhava), namely, being as an existent 'brahman: just as we did with Sankara. (sadbhava), and what is not found thus. While the atman self-evidently has being through its nature as an existent, the body's being lacks such existence. This can make sense only if 'non-existence' - a term found in the Gita An inquiry into being/ s: The world, the body verse, which cannot therefore be avoided - is defined in such a way as to and the self not open the chasm between being and non-being that Sankara discerned. This Ramanuja proceeds to do. 'Non-existence is that which has destruction as its intrinsic being; and existence is that which has non-destruction as its In what follows, as with Sat'lkara, I talk of 'beings' when the Sanskrit refers intrinsic being? This does not mean that, just because the body is perishable, to human individuals, or animals, creatures or 'the world' (jagat) in the it is non-being (as Sat'lkara would have it). Rather, it just means that the sense of humanity; the 'being' of beings, that is to say, of their totality, when perishable, or that which undergoes destruction, is called 'non-existent' (by the Sanskrit uses 'bhuta: and their 'existence' for 'satta'. How 'being as such' Kf~l)a). It is being itself that can be polarised into two orders of being, the ('Being' in Christian or Heideggerian terms, but one I am reluctant to use indestructible, imperishable selves and destructible, perishable bodies. There when translating from Sanskrit) relates to brahman for Ramanuja is the issue are simply two orders of being under being as such. Why then does Kr~i)a I am trying to explore, given that we have seen what it meant for Sa11kara. make this distinction? 'To quell that delusion of his (Arjuna's) - the delusion We must first locate Ramanuja's understanding of brahman within a from ignorance of the intrinsic being of body and self [respectively] - what pluralist ontology that decisively rejects Sankara's view that the mutable is to be taught is discrimination between the two: that whose intrinsic being order and material diversity are ultimately non-being. Precisely in opposition has destructibility as its form and that which has indestructibility [as that to Sankara, Ramanuja asserts that there are two distinctions. The first one form]'. 8 Kr~l)a is only using the existence/non-existence binary as proxy for concerns 'the Lord of all' (sarve5vara) who is the supreme self (paramatma) two orders of being, the indestructible and the destructible. In taking the and 'the selves that know the field/body' (k~etrajfia'tmanab) (p. 63/33). 3 He body to be the self (the exact nature of which error we will explore in the draws this out of Kf~l)a's saying at 2.12 that, 'There never was a time that next chapter, on the self), Arjuna is taking the one for the other. There is no I did not exist, nor you ... Nor will we cease to exist, all of us ...' Whereas ontological issue of being and non-being here. Sankara has to say that the use of the plural (bahuvacanam) refers to the For Ramanuja then, there is God, there are selves, and there is the difference merely between individual bodies4 and therefore less than real material world. The question of the relationship between God and being (since all materiality - prakrti - is ultimately non-being), Ramanuja uses the will concern us soon enough, in the following section of this chapter. For directness of the verse to assert that the difference (bheda) indicated here is the moment, let us concentrate on Ramanuja's ingenuity (in the face of Gita ultimate (paramarthika) (p. 63/34). As we will see, this 'ultimate difference' 2.16) in preserving a plurality of selves and the material world (including is qualified in interesting ways; for Ramanuja's position is, after all, called the body) within the realm of being. This permits him to say that both 'Qualified Non-dualism'. But as a first statement, it indicates that his explo­ are brahman. This does create a tension within his gnostic project of self­ ration of the question of being is going to differ from Sat'lkara's. realization, which he strives to resolve. 44 Divine Self, Human Self Riimiinuja on brahman and Kmia 45 First, we have him declare that the material world, including embodying Ramanuja offers his own interpretation of maya, which can literally mean materiality, is brahman. He takes Kr:;n)a to be saying at 3.15: 'Know sacrificial 'illusion' and which we saw Sankara take to mean the ultimate non-being action to come into being from brahman, and brahman to come into being of the changing phenomenal world.