I think the dualist role is tricky because it would involve of conceiving a saguna Brahman form completely free from our own ego and mental tinges that form the substance of thought about such things. So essentially until one is liberated (whatever that would mean) one cannot know the saguna, we only ascribe qualities to it the mind and ego can employ, which wouldn't be Brahman, it would be our projections about what we think Brahman is. That is my beef, so to speak, with popular 'personalism' ala GV.
One more comment, then I'll shut up. The common way particularly Vaisnava schools have dealt with this impasse is to say that sastra is praman, and the sastra tell you what saguna Brahman is. The point being, just have faith that this is somebody's realization of the absolute, and that it really is what god looks like (e.g. cowerd dressed in Gupta period clothing etc.)
The conception of the Isvara was present in the later Upanishads and the Sankhya influenced Yoga of Patanjali; saguna yes, but much different than what a modern Vaisnava would think of as Krishna and bhakti...
The point is religion progresses and changes, does the Absolute? Are there various levels of consciousness and dimensions? To hell if I know (or not I guess).
No comments:
Post a Comment