Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Not even the Upanishads can dare claim to be commentaries on the Vedas

To be sure, the Puranas cannot be accepted as commentaries on the Vedas. No, not even the Upanishads can dare claim to be so. The Vedas alone are the proper commentaries on the Vedas. And to understand the Vedas no other book can be our guide save the Vedas.
No doubt, the Upanishads stand quite close to them, and they abundantly possess the Vedic ideas. But at the same time we must know that the dissimilarities too are not negligible. The concept of Matter in the Vedas and the concept of Spirit in the Upanishads - even if we fail to find a connecting link between the two, still we can be sure that the Vedas and the Upanishads are the two principles of one spirituality.
To repeat it once again, we should first endeavour to understand the easy and clear portions of the Vedas and then try to discover their more abstruse and obscure truths. And we have sought to explain to our readers that the interpretation attempted here, the spiritual interpretation, means an interpretation of the basic principle of the Veda. But for that there is the need of the right attitude for looking at things and their right understanding. Those who will approach the Vedas with an ordinary intellect for the mere satisfaction of an intellectual curiosity will hardly be able to grasp the true significance of the Vedas.
What does the Veda itself say about the Rishis? rtasapa asantsakam..(Guardians of the Truth, they are with the gods, speaking the Truths with them.) They were knowers of the true nature of truth and they used to commune with the gods through the interchange of truth-principles. Therefore the study of the vedas on the part of those who have no seeking or aspiration for the attainment of the truth is bound to prove futile - a casting of seeds in the desert.

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