If I seem to glory in the fact that I generally read primary texts, perhaps it is because I have confronted the scholarly problem in almost every area where I have pursued my studies. And being that great anathema du jour for scholarship, namely, a raging generalist, I have trespassed on any number of fields where some legitimately creative research is being done, and scholars have not only built their walls and defensive watchtowers, but claim to have surveyed the terrain, establishing not only boundaries, but also the central scholarly regions, namely, the essential scholarly problems. The only difficulty that I see is that in many cases a trespasser, an intellectual poacher, a generalizing independent researcher such as myself, crossing the borders into their domain commonly sees the fortresses and redoubts established in some arcane mountains, far from the natural boundaries and true economy of their particular cognitive territories.
            In a recent post, I spoke of my work with Upanishad, and how I had discovered a complete interpretation within the context of the ten principle Upanishad, but that the reader was unlikely to find even an inkling of it. This, of course, leaves me open to the accusation that what I saw was a pipe dream, and perhaps in the full force of contemporary usage. But what I saw was not illusion. The illusion was what I had to wade through to get to a raw interpretation of the text. What I dealt with points up the pejorative connotation of the word 'scholasticism'. The fact that, with Upanishad, we are speaking of centuries of interpretive shrinkage and misdirection simply amplifies the result, certifying the peculiar nature of the cultic or bureaucratic intellectual impulse and its basic disvalue.
            The Upanishad developed approximately in the six centuries centered on the beginning of the Common Era. Some of the archaic sources date back to the fifth century BCE, and one or two of the later ones may date after 300 CE. Buddha, as I have said here, is considered an Upanishadic teacher and some of his teachings are included in the tradition, although Buddhism itself consciously inverts - not to say subverts - some of the basic Upanishadic teaching. Upanishad began with the great melas, originally the great recitation festivals at which the purity of the oral tradition of the Veda was preserved. When discrepancies arose, arguments followed. Eventually, these became full-blown philosophical discussions, preserved in the peculiarly cryptic style of oral traditions, with compressed teaching verses, direct and indirect biographical notes and formally preserved dialogues. Interspersed with these are contemporary hymns, mantric formulas and other explanatory and esoteric texts. If I remember correctly, there are over 100 accepted Upanishadic texts.
            But the final cycle of the Upanishad appeared in an India under the domination of Buddhism, a religion which was ultimately perceived as essentially alien to an original Hinduism of the classical Sanskrit tradition. Modern Hinduism turns on the re-emergence of an explicitly 'Vedic' religion, perhaps beginning with the Brahma sutras and other interpretive and commentarial texts, but finds its pivotal figure in Shankara, who is usually held to have been active in the early 700s. Upanishad is also known as Vedanta, a pun meaning both the 'end' and the 'essence' of the Veda. While Shankara's philosophical and exegetical work is a mainstay in the interpretive as well as pragmatic and ritualistic reestablishment of Hinduism, perhaps one of his most significant acts was to define the 'ten principle Upanishad' and to offer an interpretive access key, a key that threads through most of these texts.
            On the one hand, Vedanta is a generic word for the Upanishadic texts. But Vedanta is also one of the 'six philosophies' of India. I am not sure when the six philosophies as the 'six philosophies' were consolidated. Some, such as Samkhya, are apparently ancient. Vedanta seems to have existed in some form prior to Shankara. But Shankara's students are responsible for its ultimate formulation as 'advaita Vedanta', 'non-dualist Vedanta', a philosophy that claims to lead directly to 'moksha' or 'liberation', without the intervention of ritual, gods or God, although, supposedly, there are theistic and non-theistic versions.
            Shankara offered an access to Upanishad - although I expect it was only intended as an access - namely the 'Aum' doctrine. The majority of the ten principle Upanishad offers some version of this doctrine. The mantric syllable AUM is broken down into its three letters, each of which is identified with a 'state'. A is the waking state. U is sleep and the dream state, also equated with the 'spiritual'. M is the deep sleep and 'pure causal' state. Vedantin meditation takes us through these three states with the presumptive absorption in the final deep causal state as 'moksha' or 'liberation'. The key assumption behind this structure is the assertion that 'Brahman is atman', that the pure 'unmanifest' nature which is tantamount to divinity (Brahman) is ultimately not different from the essential nature of the self (atman); and that merging in the 'pure causal state' is the simultaneous merging of atman in Brahman.
            But the students of Shankara eventually treated this as if it were the only interpretation of Upanishad. The modern Vedantin translators, for example, insist that the word 'atman' only means 'self', and explicitly state that it never means 'body'. The only problem with this is that if one follows along in the Sanskrit text, one will find that the Vedantins themselves sometimes translate 'atman' as 'body'. But, at those junctures, atman does not mean 'physical body', commonly designated by the Sanskrit term, 'shariram'. What 'atman' actually means is the most subtle integral sense of the self, which is ultimately the integral or integrity itself. In this, Upanishad begins to touch the insight of the German Idealists, with their understanding that the integral that defines self is also the integral that defines 'object'. But the Upanishadic teachers were not concerned with the object. They were concerned with the moment of experience. They understood that this integral not only binds 'the self' it also binds the moment of experience.
            If one reads the Vedantin translations, however, (essentially the only translations now available in the west) one will not discover this construction. The original language that would give access to this interpretation is disregarded by the Vedantin translators, just as the interpretation of the word 'atman' is skewed and compressed. In other words, the Vedantin 'translation' is in fact a doctrinaire exegetical interpretation masquerading as a translation. I have engaged in the close reading of a number of other Sanskrit texts in which it became clear that the translation was little more than an interpretive response to the text, and not the text itself. As a general rule, these mistranslations represent narrow, cultic interpretations. Since the relevant philosophies have been codified for centuries, one can sometimes take a single base text and find 'translations' in more than one tradition. And sometimes the readings vary so widely as to suggest that they share no common base text. Even differing lineages within the philosophies can sometimes produce stunning differences in the translations of core texts.

            Since I have already dragged you thus far into this theme, dear reader, and since it tallies with many of the points I have been making in the blog, let me proceed a little further with the interpretation of Upanishad, in hopes, perhaps, of further justifying my rant.
            My favorite keys to the Upanishad are the two 'gods', Prajapati and Hiranyagarbha. As a god, Prajapati is fairly old. But I think Hiranyagarbha may be relatively late. In many respects, Prajapati is the pure causal principle, insofar a such a principle can be defined in a 'religion' - or perhaps more accurately, a 'religious context' - in which 'cause' is not automatically equated with God, at least in terms of cosmic nature or cosmic origins. Prajapati sometimes stands in for Shiva, who, in certain dimensions, takes on a primordial causal force. Literally, Prajapati is 'lord of birth'. That is, Prajapati is a seed principle and stands behind and is invoked for a number of initiatory moments, such as the sunrise homa (fire ceremony) sacralized by the Gayatri. Hiranyagarbha, on the other hand, is the 'golden womb' or the 'golden egg'. It is explicitly identified with the 'Great Body' of the senses, the body as the sensory instrument through which the whole field of awareness is presented to consciousness.
            I think one would be hard pressed to watch the dance of Hiranyagarbha and Prajapati throughout the course of their invocations in the hymns and songs, and in terms of the philosophical discussions about them scattered throughout Upanishad without realizing that they constitute a formative pair in the production of the moment of experience; and that Upanishad is therefore ultimately concerned with the nature of the moment of experience as a moment of consciousness - that this in fact constitutes a valid and nearly ultimate key to interpreting Upanishad as religious philosophy.
            As I have said repeatedly here, when we recognize solipsism - the fact that all our experience is necessarily a function of consciousness - and that self-awareness is a 'produced' state - that we were not born self-aware - then it becomes clear that both cause and unity are also 'produced', but that they are equally 'prior' functions that appear in and through the 'original' moment of self-awareness. In Upanishad we find these two principles personified as gods in terms of their originating functions within the frame of consciousness. Thus, together, they produce the 'thought instant', defined in Sanskrit as 'kshana' - the 'lightning flash' - that later appears in Buddhist philosophy and eventually comes to rest in Ch'an and Zen as nien and nen, respectively, the essential thought moment whose isolation is the focus of meditation and tantamount to kensho.

            But I was referring to this particular textual problem to point out how not only the scholastic tradition, but the nature of scholasticism itself tends to distort the natural 'problems' inherent in any text or potential arena of academic study. I have had the same feeling, when I took graduate courses, particularly in the study of American literature, where the professorial insistence that certain problems were 'key' to the text. I say particularly in American literature because, by and large, American literature is so young. Perhaps there have been some definitive scholarly statements made about Moby Dick. The scholarly study of the development of the text is undoubtedly an imperative. But this is not necessarily the key to the text. And while one can carry the conclusion far beyond the general statement, the general statement is the basic statement, the legitimate access point for the reader.
            It is not simply helpful to know that Melville began Moby Dick as a romantic story of adventure, but then began to study texts on the whaling trade for background. As soon as one knows this fact, one recognizes the uniqueness of the story as a groundbreaking 'industrial' novel; and still possibly one of the best in terms of its reverence for the whole of the 'industrial' process and its faint nostalgia, its slightly prescient recognition that whaling would never again be such a dominating occupation. But, at best, this is suggestive and peripheral. The verisimilitude is now indigenous in the story. A subtle reader should be able to hear some of source texts as reflected in Melville's writing, as well as the differences in Melville's temperament as evinced by the struggle between the scholar and the Romantic in his own persona. These conflicts are essential to the thematic development, but not the core. And while perhaps we can 'explicate' the core more accurately, as experience it remains untouchable.

            The fact that, nowadays, traditions of scholarly problems commonly begin in a single (secondary) text, and often, after producing a glut of tertiary responses, revert to the first scholarly definition of the problem, should suggest the logic for a certain reticence about establishing 'traditional' scholarly problems. But, as much as scholars read secondary texts, it seems they commonly fail to note the peculiar faddism of scholarship itself. Scholarly problems rarely last more than a generation - even the dominating scholarly problems of a given generation. And when they do, they not uncommonly become keys to a narrowing misinterpretation that requires some subsequent scholarly 'revolution' to disestablish.

            I would suggest establishing a scholarly study of scholarly study, if my knowledge of the peculiar bureaucratizing and institutionalizing forces of scholarship did not convince me that it would simply become another layer in the problem.