{"id":289,"date":"2012-04-13T03:21:30","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T01:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/?p=289"},"modified":"2012-06-08T19:37:57","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T17:37:57","slug":"the-mok%e1%b9%a3opaya-the-unrevised-yoga-vasi%e1%b9%a3%e1%b9%adha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/the-mok%e1%b9%a3opaya-the-unrevised-yoga-vasi%e1%b9%a3%e1%b9%adha\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya, the unrevised Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha"},"content":{"rendered":"

The value of the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha<\/em> has long been known to students of Theosophy. Already in 1936 the classic study of this text, The Philosophy of the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha<\/em> by Sanskrit scholar B. L. Atreya, was published by the Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India. As I had noted elsewhere, the distinctive terms used by the Advaita Ved\u0101ntin Theosophist T. Subba Row, cid-\u0101k\u0101\u015ba<\/em> and also cit-\u015bakti<\/em>, do not come from the standard treatises on Advaita Ved\u0101nta, but rather come from the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the early 1990s an extraordinary discovery was made. In the process of assembling manuscripts from which to prepare a critical edition of the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha<\/em>, Indologist Walter Slaje found an entirely distinct, unrevised recension of this text that called itself the Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya<\/em>, the \u201cMeans to Liberation.\u201d It is equally huge, about 30,000 verses, but it preserves a considerably more original version of the text.<\/p>\n

Walter Slaje wrote about this in full detail in his 1994 German language book, Vom Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya-\u015a\u0101stra zum Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha-Mah\u0101r\u0101m\u0101ya\u1e47a<\/em> (\u201cFrom the Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya-\u015a\u0101stra<\/em> to the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha-Mah\u0101r\u0101m\u0101ya\u1e47a<\/em>\u201d). This major find led to the Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya<\/em> Project, with government and university funding to prepare a critical edition of this large and important text. A brief account of this in English by Slaje, titled \u201cThe Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya Project<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d was published in Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute<\/em>, vol. 77, 1996, pp. 209-221 (attached).<\/p>\n

In the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha<\/em>, a pervasive layer of Ved\u0101nta ideas has been added to the advaita or non-dual teachings of the Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya<\/em>. Perhaps the most significant difference between the two is the well-known fact that Advaita Ved\u0101nta takes the authority of scripture as the only truly valid means of higher knowledge, thereby discounting the role of reasoning in reaching higher knowledge. The Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya<\/em> does just the opposite, taking reasoning as the valid means of higher knowledge, and entirely discounting the authority of scripture. Another difference is that terminology now found primarily in Buddhist texts has been systematically replaced. In this, and in its emphasis on pure advaita or non-dualism, the Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya<\/em> is very reminiscent of Gau\u1e0dap\u0101da\u2019s M\u0101\u1e47\u1e0d\u016bkya-k\u0101rik\u0101<\/em>. Slaje describes some of the \u201cwillful changes\u201d that were made in the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha<\/em> in the above-mentioned article, p. 212, including:<\/p>\n

\u201can attempt to \u2018ved\u0101nticize\u2019 the text, which\u2014though it does teach monism (advaita<\/em>)\u2014has nothing in common with the particularities of \u015aa\u1e45kara\u2019s Ved\u0101nta, but indeed very much with Gau\u1e0dap\u0101da\u2019s K\u0101rik\u0101s and the La\u1e45k\u0101vat\u0101ras\u016btra of the Mah\u0101y\u0101na.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Gau\u1e0dap\u0101da\u2019s text we had only a small example of these teachings, about 200 verses. Now we have a massive source of these teachings in its unrevised and more original form. It promises to be a fundamental resource for students of Theosophy.<\/p>\n

The Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya<\/em> project has been underway for about two decades now, and the long-awaited results of this painstaking research are now seeing the light of day. In the 1990s three small volumes of the fragmentary commentary Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya-\u1e6d\u012bk\u0101<\/em> were published, followed by a fourth in 2002, giving a taste of what this unrevised text has to offer. In 2011 the first two volumes of the critical edition of the Mok\u1e63op\u0101ya<\/em> itself were published, and the third volume in 2012. They were published in Germany by Harrassowitz (http:\/\/www.harrassowitz-verlag.de), and are expensive. I have not yet seen them. Of particular interest for Book of Dzyan research is the large third chapter, the utpatti-prakara\u1e47a<\/em> or section on cosmogony, published as volume 2 of the now available volumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The value of the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha has long been known to students of Theosophy. Already in 1936 the classic study of this text, The Philosophy of the Yoga-V\u0101si\u1e63\u1e6dha by Sanskrit scholar B. L. Atreya, was published by the Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India. As I had noted elsewhere, the distinctive terms used by the Advaita […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noteworthy-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prajnaquest.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}