Sacred texts - 3. Quoting & interpreting

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

In this posting, as I make some suggestions about quoting and interpreting, it

should be clear that I am speaking personally, to fellow sadhakas and fellow

members of our e-group. I am not speaking as a moderator, putting forward any

formal rules for posting in this e-group. In fact, we moderators have a

principle that each moderator must be treated as an ordinary member, while

posting a message to the list. It's only in our collective capacity that any

formal rules are set out and applied.

 

The suggestions that I have to make are essentially reflective and informal. Or,

at least, they should be so. I think that this is a delicate necessity, in a

spiritual philosophy like Advaita Vedanta. For here, the texts demand (in no

uncertain terms) that we must question deeply back, beneath all narrowly

personal and cultural belief in any name or form or quality.

 

As any sadhaka or seeker receives a text, it has two aspects, one constructed

and the other unconstructed:

 

1. The constructed aspect is made up from names and forms and qualities, which

make it personal and cultural. It is passed on and transacted from one person to

another, as a cultural commodity.

 

2. The unconstructed aspect cannot be passed on or transacted. In itself, it has

no name, no form, nor any quality. It is an impersonal and uncultivated ground

of objectless knowing, shared in common by all different persons and all

different cultures. From there, all texts and all contexts have arisen.

 

When a text is quoted, its constructed form is reproduced for a listener or a

reader. And by interpreting this form, there is intended a reflection back into

that common ground which is shared by writer and reader or by speaker and

listener alike. Without such a reflection, there can be no true agreement. No

common truth can rightly be agreed upon, by different persons in their differing

contexts of society and culture.

 

As Shri Dennis points out, it can help here to agree upon a set of texts that

are socially and culturally accepted as authoritative. When texts have been thus

socially and culturally instituted, they can help to regulate discussion: by

asking what they have to say, about some issue where contesting arguments are

inclining to get personal. In this kind of situation, externally instituted

texts can serve to remind the contestants that the discussion needs to be

broadened and clarified, beyond all petty differences and troubled conflicts of

personality.

 

But then, in what spirit can our minds be broadened and our thinking clarified,

by use of quotation from a sacred text? I'd say that such a quotation is not

rightly used to attack someone else's belief. Or, in other words, it is not

right to try forcing anyone's belief from some outwardly instituted authority.

For a sadhaka (a seeker) at least, if there is any attack upon belief, it must

be inward: so as to address one's own mistaken prejudice.

 

Here, Shri Sunder has been very helpful, in pointing out that a request for

quotation need not be taken as a personal challenge. It's better taken as an

open invitation, for some useful reference that is culturally suited to the

person making the request. The Hindu tradition pays particular attention to this

question of cultural suitability.

 

When quoting from a sacred text, the listener's or the reader's culture needs to

be respected and thus positively taken into account. Hence the Hindu emphasis on

cultural relativity, and the associated reservation about any hostile conversion

of belief. Sacred texts are meant to deepen mere forms of belief into truer

conviction. Conversion of such forms is an all too worldly transaction, with a

distracting and damaging expense of energy away from purity of spirit and from

clarity of truth.

 

In the Kanci Mahasvami's book, Hindu Dharma, he says:

 

<< ... the cosmos functions in accordance with the vibrations of the Vedic

sounds -- so the Vedic mantras are the very breath of the Supreme Being. >>

 

But, having said this, he is careful to say later on:

 

<< If the cosmos of sound (shabda-prapanca) enfolds all creation and what is

beyond it, it must naturally be immensely vast. However voluminous the Vedas

are, one might wonder whether it would be right to claim that they embrace all

activities of the universe. 'Anantah vai vedah', the Vedas themselves proclaim

so (the Vedas are endless). We cannot claim that all the Vedas have been

revealed to the seers. >>

 

As I understand the Kanci Mahasvami here, he is exemplifying the Hindu ideal of

cultural relativity. He is encouraging Hindus to have full faith in their own

sacred texts, while allowing for other texts held similarly sacred in other

cultures and traditions. To me, the point here is that each person needs to be

fully committed -- to whatever particular means is being used for reflecting

back beneath all personality and culture.

 

It's only by a completely full commitment that anyone can come to an impersonal

truth. By way of helping us towards such a commitment, we study and make use of

texts that have been culturally instituted. This institution has been carried

out externally, by social interaction in an outside world. An externally

instituted learning thus presents us with culturally valued texts, which are

made up of names and forms and qualities.

 

In studying such valued texts, their names and forms and qualities are used to

reflect back inwards, to a ground of knowing that they all express. A full

commitment is achieved by returning there: from where all cultures have been

formed, through their variety of social institutions.

 

But what then does this tell us, about quoting and interpreting the texts that

we hold sacred? There are of course no formal rules that can be devised to

calculate what quotations we should choose and how we should interpret them. Our

choices and interpretations must, in the end, be inspired through a free

intelligence. That free intelligence must somehow rise of its own accord,

inspired from within; so that one who is ready may be taken back to truth.

 

However, as a rough and ready rule of thumb, I'd venture that quotations are

best used to *illustrate* whatever point may be at issue, in some culturally

suited and sensitive way. But, conversely, I'd also say that quotations may go

sadly wrong, if they attempt to *force a proof* that has been artificially

derived from any merely textual names or forms or qualities.

 

In the end, no texts have any true authority beyond what is derived from their

expression of an underlying truth that is essentially unnamed, unformed,

unqualified. Without such grounding in that truth, no text has any proper use at

all. It's only on the basis of such grounding back that texts have any value.

It's texts that are in need of truth. Truth has no need of any texts.

 

Ananda

[Guest guest]

advaitin , " Ananda Wood " <awood wrote:

 

 

> It's texts that are in need of truth. Truth has no need of any texts.

>

 

Namaste Ananda-ji,

 

Thank you for the thought-provoking series on the subject of Sacred

Texts. The texts indeed are like a pond compared to the ocean

for one who has realized the Truth. (Gita 2:46)

 

Would you kindly elaborate on the phrase '...inclined to skeptical

questioning..' (your message #44610 of Apr. 13) and its relation to 'saMshaya' &

'shraddhA' that Gita has emphasized? (eg saMshayAtmA vinashyati,

chhinnasaMshayaH, etc.)

 

Thanks again.

 

 

Regards,

 

Sunder