[Advaita-l] fig trees??????????????

Anand Hudli anandhudli at hotmail.com
Fri Jul 11 12:59:14 CDT 2003




>From: ken knight <hilken_98 at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta 
><advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
>To: advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
>Subject: [Advaita-l] fig trees??????????????
>Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 03:06:35 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Who is the Father in the Rgvedic hymn and why do the
>Upanishads omit this aspect of the image?
>

sAyaNa's commentary makes it clear that the verse 164.22 talks about two 
things at two
levels - adhidaivamAdityamadhyAtmamAtmAnaM cha prashaMsati. At the adhidaiva 
level
it talks about Aditya or the Sun, but at the adhyAtma level,  it talks about 
the Self,
AtmA. About the word pitaraM, (literally accusative case of pitR or Father), 
sAyaNa
says that one who knows not the Self which is the basis of the jnAna or has 
jnAna
as the fruit, does not attain the fruit of mokSha or liberation. Here 
pitaraM refers to
the Self, AtmA. So sAyaNa says " ata AtmAnaM yo veda sa eva tanmokShaphalaM
prApnoti-ityarthaH", therefore one who knows the Self  alone attains the 
fruit of
mokSha or liberation - this is the import.

This lengthy hymn of dIrghatamA auchathya consists of 52 R^iks and has 
several
deities and meters. It is enigmatic and difficult to understand. It is one 
of several
jnAna centric hymns of the R^ig Veda. According to sAyaNa, it deals with 
jnAna,
mokSha, and the Imperishable Brahman.

Anand

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