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Sistemas, tem a finalidade de contribuir para a divulgação das linhas de pensamento dentro das várias Religiões e Filosofias de todo o mundo, na compreensão de que todas partilham afinal uma linguagem comum.
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Considering the great percentage of visitors coming from all countries in the world, we consider of importance that some texts should be in English.
Tendo em conta a grande percentagem de visitas originárias de todos os países do mundo, consideramos importante haver artigos na língua inglesa.
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Ontology according to Vedanta (Vedānta)
by Swāmi Siddheswarānanda
in 25 May 2008
The other systems of Hindu thought endeavoured, each by a different way, to determine the objective truth of things. Vedānta attempts to reach the truth by formulating the problem thus: ‘In this whole spectacle - where is the Real?’ With that it took up the fundamental question and, by proceeding to its investigation, it not only discovered various perspectives of the Real, but it also found valid proof with the help of which one succeeds in defining and apprehending the highest Truth. For Vedānta that Truth is the ontological Reality (paramārthika satta), under which aspect the Reality is immutable: No change can affect it.
It will now be appropriate to expound the doctrine which, in a sense, is the corner-stone of the philosophy of Vedānta:
The ultimate Truth, the absolute Truth, is the Self;
and this Self, although manifesting itself in innumerable individualities,
is one and unique.
The world in which we live, move and have our being,
has no other reality
than that which the Self confers on it.
The other systems of Hindu thought endeavoured, each by a different way, to determine the objective truth of things. Vedānta attempts to reach the truth by formulating the problem thus: ‘In this whole spectacle - where is the Real?’ With that it took up the fundamental question and, by proceeding to its investigation, it not only discovered various perspectives of the Real, but it also found valid proof with the help of which one succeeds in defining and apprehending the highest Truth. For Vedānta that Truth is the ontological Reality (paramārthika satta), under which aspect the Reality is immutable: No change can affect it.
Brahman or Ātman
is the metaphysical basis of the manifested universe.
From that height the world forms
but the second order of the reality.
The empirical reality (vyavaharika satta), limited by the space-time continuum, is contingent: It exists only there where the laws of causality apply. If one crosses this border, if one goes on to the limit - and it is in turīya that one reaches there - the world is rigorously annihilated. Therefore, from the paramārthika position the manifested world does not have an absolute value. However, as long as the range of phenomena is unfolding, it assumes in our eyes the aspect of the Real.
Between the two categories of phenomenal existence - thoughts and objects - the mind strengthens a tendency which is natural to it: It assigns to objects a greater degree of reality than to thoughts, for the objects appear to possess a particular characteristic - stability - which thoughts are totally lacking. That is how we consider the outer world to be real, while attributing to the inner world - that altogether ideal construction - only a lower degree of reality, because of the very evanescent character of thoughts. However, we are constantly living in a ‘mental’ world and, at every moment of our life, we are trying to coordinate the internal thoughts with the external objects.
The subjective world (asmaj jagat) and the objective world (yusmaj jagat) form the warp (the former) and the woof (the latter) with which we are weaving our experience of the world (vyavahara), so to speak. And Ātman is successively identified with the buddhi (the higher reason), the buddhi with the mind (manas), the mind with the ‘I’-sense (ahaṃkāra), and the internal organ (antahkārana), in the impulse that carries it along, outwards, finally identifies itself with the gross body (deha). The jīva (the living individuality) then becomes aware that, with respect to himself, the objects that surround him possess a higher reality. He thus brings to bear all his affective power on them. The round of transmigration (saṃsāra) is set going and, while passing through an interminable series of trials and sufferings, the mind is ever asking itself the same question: ‘Where is the Real?’ So the errors have all one and the same cause: They all proceed from a misconception! We have failed to recognize this essential truth:
With respect to the Self both objects and thoughts
do not have a greater or lesser value.
It is this fundamental error which has, somehow, created multiplicity there where there is only the One without a second.
(... next)
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