Brahma Knowledge

PART I: section 10. BRAHMA IS ABSOLUTE BEING.--The question whether the universal substrate, or Brahma, should properly be called being (sat) or non-being (a-sat), already agitated the Vedic poets (see Rig veda, x. cxxix. 1), and passed through the schools of the Brahmanas to those of the older Upanishads. The debate, however, was merely over words. As Brahma is beyond all the limiting conditions of phenomenal being, either term may be applied to it; it is at once metaphysically existe

section 10. BRAHMA IS ABSOLUTE BEING.--The question whether the universal substrate, or Brahma, should properly be called being (sat) or non-being (a-sat), already agitated the Vedic poets (see Rig veda, x. cxxix. 1), and passed through the schools of the Brahmanas to those of the older Upanishads. The debate, however, was merely over words. As Brahma is beyond all the limiting conditions of phenomenal being, either term may be applied to it; it is at once metaphysically existent and empirically non-existent.

Brahma is non-being, B.A. II. iii. 1, Ch. III. xix. 1, Taitt. II. vi.-vii.; being, Ch. VI. ii. 1, etc. Brahma is "reality of reality," B.A. II. i. 20, iii. 6; "the Eternal cloaked in (empirical) reality," I. vi. 3. A reconciliation from the transcendental standpoint is found in S'vet. IV. 18, v. 1, Mund. II. ii. 1, etc. S'ankara (on Brahma-sutra, I. iv. 14 f.) rightly notes the twofold meaning of the terms "being" and "not-being."