on the Vedas

For greatest ease in understanding, i recommend that you read the Introduction before this Chapter and that you then read this Chapter in the order i recommend There.

on the Vedas, by Victor Luis Villalon-Suarez

most recently reviewed on 4/17/2022 at 7:47

improvements since the immediately preceding review: Substituted “everlasting” for “eternal” throughout.

All the quotes that follow until i indicate a change are from Upanishads, translated by Patrick Olivelle, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 2008.

page 235, 2.1-3: “[death speaks to one “Naciketas”:] The good is one thing, the gratifying is quite another;/their goals are different, both bind a man./Good things await him who picks the good;/by choosing the gratifying, one misses one’s goal.//Both the good and the gratifying/present themselves to a man;/The wise assess them, note their difference;/and choose the good over the gratifying;/But the fool chooses the gratifying/rather than what is beneficial.//You have looked and rejected, Naciketas,/things people desire, lovely and lovely to look at[…].”

I: Firstly: because the passage states what the wise do, it is

uttered, for the Vedas were orally transmitted before they were written down, by one who claims he, most likely, not she, is wise. But if the wise knows what “one’s goal” is, and he must know if his claim is true that gratifying is not this, then, if he wants others to be wise as well, as he would if he were a true teacher, a good one, he would teach them what this goal is. That he nowhere states this goal indicates he does not know it, for it makes no sense to withhold this information when imparting it would at once put in the mind of the ignorant the knowledge whose lack is precisley what makes them ignorant. And the very fact that he is pontificating on what the goal is shows he purports to be teaching, yet he is missing the very essence of the lesson. As for me, i think the goal, the goal of all goals, even of itself, the Goal, is everlasting happiness, Heaven.

II: Secondly: the speaker nowhere defines the terms “good” and

“gratifying”. That he states there is a “difference” between them indicates he claims to know what this difference is. If he thinks the good superior to the gratifying, whatever he means by them, and he is a good teacher, he wants his students to choose the good, so he will teach them what this difference is, which requires that he define the terms, and he must know these definitions if it is true that he knows the difference between them.

III: Thirdly: what is good is what causes happiness that does not

cause pain, or pain that causes happiness, so the net result is pure happiness. And what is gratifying is what gives pleasure or satisfaction, which are but forms of happiness, so if the happiness is pure, thus truly pleasurable, satisfying, then “gratifying” is a synonym of “good”. So there is no difference. The whole thing is flimflam, vainglorious sophistries.

And:

IV: Fourthly: sight is people’s primary sense, so visible beauty is

the most important, although the enjoyment of this beauty, if other senses can perceive it, is enhanced by these other perceptions. If Naciketas has rejected “things people desire”, it can be only because there is something or are some things he desires more, or because he knows only that he is dissatisfied with what all others desire but does not yet know what he desires. But to be conscious is primarily to be aware of desires: “[death speaks:] Satisfying desires is the foundation of the [W]orld[…].” (page 236, 2.11) This is because everything we do we do solely to satisfy some desire, so we are always either feeling unsatisfied desire and seeking to satisfy it or satisfying desire, and so our stream of consciousness consists entirely of thinking about what we desire and then how to attain it. And what satisfies desire is what is beautiful, “lovely”, namely that which it causes happiness to perceive, as in “to look at”, or to think about. The climb up to the loveliest, the greatest beauty, progresses gradually up the series of lower forms of happiness, those Naciketas has “rejected” precisely because they are lower and either never satisfied him or do not any longer. And this is why they are lower, for a higher form of happiness is one that satisfies more than the one or ones below it, superseded by it. But i think that i can catalyze this climb into a single step from many by exposing people to the greatest beauty i know and obviating the torturous and tortuous ascent. And this is what i want to do as soon as possible, to spare everyone else the agony of the blind search, like a bolt of lightning lighting a landscape in the night, allowing one to see it all at once instead of having to wait for daybreak.

page 236, 2.10: “by fleeting things one cannot gain the perennial.” I take it that “perennial” here means “everlasting”. But referring to my argument above about the climb up the ladder of forms of happiness to the greatest imaginable, which may be the key to God’s creating Heaven, because exposure to the greatest beauty now existing, which, because not everlasting, is fleeting, may lead some perceiver to conceive a mental image of everlasting happiness elaborated from this perception, and this mental image may kindle in the perceiver, whose mind is a part of the mind of God, so also in God’s mind, desire for its materialization so intense as to cause God to materialize it, thus creating Heaven. If this is true, then maybe the only way to “gain the perennial” is “by fleeting things”.

page 236, 2.12: “both sorrow and joy the wise abandon.” There are only two mental states: pain and happiness, and thus all of their forms, “sorrow” being but deep mental pain and “joy” deep happiness. So it is not possible to abandon them, and asserting that someone does, especially the wise, clashing with the experience of any listener or reader of this passage, naturally creates a vacuum that can be filled only with the definitions of “pain” and “happiness” and the consequent realization that our minds are bound within their two limits.

page 236, 2.19: “If the killer thinks that he kills;/If the killed thinks that he is killed;/Bothe of them fail to understand./He neither kills, nor is he killed.” A killer is one who kills. If he does not kill, then he is not a killer. Someone killed is killed because he or she has been killed. If he or she has not been killed, then he or she is not killed. This stanza amounts to saying that the killer is also a non-killer, and that the killed is also a non-killed. But no thing can also be its opposite at the same time. To say the opposite is incomprehensible not because it is a mystery, but because it intrinsically makes no sense. Our minds are incapable of grasping it. And if our minds are built so as to accurately reflect reality, then so is language, and what language cannot express is unreal, has no effect. We can express nothing(ness) in words: it is the absence of space and time. It’s just that we can think about it no further, because when we try to we cannot escape the bounds of speaking in terms of time and space. We must perceive perceptions to fully understand them, but we can express the feeling they cause in us in words, as either pain or happiness in any of their forms. So although we must think of or perceive the beautiful to grasp its beauty, we can express in words the feeling the beautiful causes in us: happiness when we think about or perceive it.

page 242, 4.11: “With your mind alone you must understand it—/there is here no diversity at all!/From death to death he goes, who sees/here any kind of diversity.” This implies that everything is everything else, and so also its own opposite, which is impossible. I know there is diversity, uncountably many different things, because there are different words for them. If they were all the same, we could not express them differently. And to say that every word means the same as every other word, which this stanza also necessarily implies, is false. This is the negation of rationality, and its genius lies in its pure irrationality’s sharpening to the utmost in the listener or reader the hunger, the thirst, for its opposite: pure rationality.

page 243, 5.9: “As the single fire, entering living beings,/adapts its appearance to match that of each;/So the single self within every being,/adapts its appearance to match that of each,/yet remains quite distinct.” This directly contradicts 4.11, immediately above, because distinctness is an attribute of diversity. And 6.6, on page 245, “The separate nature of the senses;/Their rise and fall as they come/Separately into being—/when a wise man knows this,/he does not grieve”, also contradicts 4.11, because separateness is distinctness, which in turn is an attribute of diversity. Further, this stanza identifies the knowledge of this separateness as wisdom: “when a wise man knows this”.

page 246, 6.12-13: “Not by speech, not by the mind,/not by sight can he be grasped./How else can that be perceived,/other than by saying ‘He is!’//In just two ways can he be perceived:/by saying that ‘He is’,/by affirming he’s the real. […].” To perceive is to become aware of through the senses, which are touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. Speech and the mind are none of these, so they do not perceive and one does not perceive anything merely by saying something, other than primarily one’s voice.

page 246, 6.14: “When they are all banished,/those desires lurking n one’s heart;/Then a mortal becomes immortal,/and attains brahman in this world.” As i have explained above, consciousness and desires are inseparable, so whoever is conscious, desires, and it is impossible to banish desires other than by ending one’s consciousness, such as through suicide. However, even if banishing desires were possible, if one did it to attain immortality, then it could be only as an effect of the desire to do so, so one would have banished all desires except the one for immortality, and so not “all” of them.

All the quotes that follow are from The Vedas, translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith and Arthur Berriedale Keith and compiled and edited by Jon William Fergus,