The Hidden Lives of Brahman by Dubois Joël André-Michel & Christopher Key Chapple

Author:Dubois, Joël André-Michel & Christopher Key Chapple [Dubois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781438448077
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2013-10-30T05:00:00+00:00

The syntax here resembles that used to convey the rice husking analogy of TUbh 2.2. Identical case endings and alliterative parallels underscore the simile between the divided-up (vyākṛtasya) world and the tree (vṛkṣasya). The final statement, which once again interprets the intent of the upaniṣad, underscores both conceptually and rhythmically that this saṁsāra-vṛkṣaḥ (“tree of cycling [from birth to birth]”) is karma-bijo (“whose seed is activity”) and avidyā-kṣetro (“whose field is blindness”). Śaṅkara here analytically discerns the root of saṁsāra and definitively urge its removal; what standard translations miss is the rhythmic juxtaposition of the three compounds, underscoring the persistent effort needed to uproot of the sprout of that vast world-tree from which the disenchanted person yearns to be released.

Immediately following the grammatical analysis of the pronouns “that,” “this,” and the verb “divided-up” in the upaniṣad's first line, described in chapter 5, Śaṅkara adds another complementary, mutually restricting analogy that draws attention to the subtlety of (iii) brahman's connection to (iii) samsāra, which links (i) avidyā to the concept of “name-and-shape.” (The (ii) disenchanted person is not explicitly mentioned in the above discussions, but his yearning for release is the implied impetus for discerning the precise relationship between avidyā, saṁsāra and brahman.) The logic of his statements are clear; but what standard translations once again miss is the structure of his syntax, which seems to mimic the five-fold diversity of the BU 1.4's own imagery. BU 1.4.7's next statement—“he who is this [primordial entity] entered26 here [into the body] up to the very nail tips”—implicitly links the undivided entity (a-vyākṛtam), now divided simply by name-and-shape (nāmarūpābhyām eva) in the multiplicity of this world, to the vital presence within each embodied being. In transitioning to his gloss of this sentence, Śaṅkara strings together five clauses syntactically linked to the subject of the sentence, the pronoun sa (“he”), which summarize the features of this abstract primordial entity. The number of parallel clauses here may mimic the five variations on the phrase “in the beginning this [world] was…,” which likewise all refer to the same primordial entity.

yad-arthaḥ sarva-śāstrārambho

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