Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The common origin approach to comparing Indian and Greek philosophy
- 2 The concept of ṛtá in the Ṛgveda
- 3 Harmonia and ṛtá
- 4 Ātman and its transition to worldly existence
- 5 Cosmology, psyche and ātman in the Timaeus, the Ṛgveda and the Upaniṣads
- 6 Plato and yoga
- 7 Technologies of self-immortalisation in ancient Greece and early India
- 8 Does the concept of theōria fit the beginning of Indian thought?
- 9 Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides
- 10 Soul chariots in Indian and Greek thought: polygenesis or diffusion?
- 11 ‘Master the chariot, master your Self’: comparing chariot metaphors as hermeneutics for mind, self and liberation in ancient Greek and Indian Sources
- 12 New riders, old chariots: poetics and comparative philosophy
- 13 The interiorisation of ritual in India and Greece
- 14 Rebirth and ‘ethicisation’ in Greek and South Asian thought
- 15 On affirmation, rejection and accommodation of the world in Greek and Indian religion
- 16 The justice of the Indians
- 17 Nietzsche on Greek and Indian philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Ātman and its transition to worldly existence
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The common origin approach to comparing Indian and Greek philosophy
- 2 The concept of ṛtá in the Ṛgveda
- 3 Harmonia and ṛtá
- 4 Ātman and its transition to worldly existence
- 5 Cosmology, psyche and ātman in the Timaeus, the Ṛgveda and the Upaniṣads
- 6 Plato and yoga
- 7 Technologies of self-immortalisation in ancient Greece and early India
- 8 Does the concept of theōria fit the beginning of Indian thought?
- 9 Self or being without boundaries: on Śaṅkara and Parmenides
- 10 Soul chariots in Indian and Greek thought: polygenesis or diffusion?
- 11 ‘Master the chariot, master your Self’: comparing chariot metaphors as hermeneutics for mind, self and liberation in ancient Greek and Indian Sources
- 12 New riders, old chariots: poetics and comparative philosophy
- 13 The interiorisation of ritual in India and Greece
- 14 Rebirth and ‘ethicisation’ in Greek and South Asian thought
- 15 On affirmation, rejection and accommodation of the world in Greek and Indian religion
- 16 The justice of the Indians
- 17 Nietzsche on Greek and Indian philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
What can we say about a concept like the ātman when its principal feature is its apparent indefinability and impersonal nature? Initially we could do worse than utilise Jurewicz's definition of the term, based mainly on Ṛgvedic sources: ‘This word is used to denote the essence of an entity, the whole body (which ensures personal identity and existence), its most important parts, which are the head (which ensures personal identity and existence – here and in the afterworlds) and the breath (which ensures the existence of a living being)’. But moving on to the Upaniṣads, the final texts in the Vedic corpus, we find a systematisation and an impersonalism in the conceptual development of the ātman idea. We are confronted in the Upaniṣads with what individual teachers say about it, rather than what it is, because what it is defies easy description in words and this has to be taken as the axiomatic commencement point for any study of it.
In looking at the possible origin of the idea of such an essence, we could draw upon Proferes, who has recently argued for ideas of universal sovereignty, associated with the sacred fire of the household, clan and tribe, where the rājā's fire combines the parts with the whole. It becomes a political metaphor that could be used to develop a metaphysical idea of unity within diversity. For Proferes,
The identity of the king with his dominion and, ultimately, with the cosmos can be shown to have directly informed the early Upaniṣadic discourse on the nature of the absolute and the means to achieving spiritual freedom. The evidence is found in the substantial number of Upaniṣadic passages in which metaphors of sovereignty are employed in immediate connection with the identification of the macrocosm and microcosm.
He gives a series of examples from the two earliest Upaniṣads, in order to argue that it is the sense of ‘unlimitedness’ associated with Vedic ideals of freedom that becomes disconnected from theories of kingship and translated into a metaphysical idea of freedom from all limitations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016