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 attEnding to Brahman Upāsana Practice Past and Present Upāsana refers most broadly to the way brāhmaṇas throughout history have envisioned and venerated deities, sacred entities, and natural elements that reveal some aspect of the formless expanse of brahman. In contemporary brāhmaṇa practice, upāsana is typically directed towards sunrise, sunset, and food prepared for consumption, envisioning these simple phenomena as manifestations of transcendent divine beings and/or universal cosmic forces. As noted in chapter 1, such envisioning constitutes the first of the three types of skill whose perfection leads to those qualities which Śaṅkara lists, in UMSbh 1.1.1, as prerequisites to understanding brahman’s true nature. In this chapter I show that training in the ritual practice that inspires and grounds upāsana is integral to the “mastery of methods such as quieting [the mind] and taming [the body and senses].” The term is derived from the root √ās, “to sit”: the prefix upa- added to this root yields the literal meaning “sitting up close.” In Hindu tradition generally, the word denotes services rendered to an elder or important personage: one must sit close by, watching the master attentively, waiting for any sign that one is needed.1 The same term also refers, however, to any act of directing one’s attention intently towards something. In brāhmaṇa sources, particularly upāniṣads, “upāsana” denotes focusing on a deity or supernatural force, such as the sun, food, or vital breath, in a prescribed way; yet the connotation of doing service is never lost. As noted in chapter 1, I translate “upāsana” as “attending,” rather than the more common “meditation ” or “worship,” in order to preserve the dual connotations of mental focus (as in “attention”) and service (as in “attendant”). For Śaṅkara and brāhmaṇas generally, upāsana is not only giving something one’s full attention ; it also connotes attending to a being greater than oneself, as a servant would a master, or a student a teacher. Chapter 2 the hidden lives of brahman 30 Upāsana practice involves attentive engagement with several phenomena encompassed by the notion of brahman surveyed in chapter 1. Most obviously, it involves expressing, observing, or visualizing the brahman manifested through the actions of vedic fire-offering (yajña), which inspire upāsana, and mulling over brahman in the form of recitations and declarations used to consecrate ritual substances, actions, and persons in yajña, which focus the mind in upāsana. Though these uses of the word “brahman” are no longer widely remembered, the same term remains embedded today in the name of the traditional “attendant” or upāsana practitioner, whose designation first as “brahmacārin” (“engaged with or in brahman,” during his period of studentship) and more generally as “brāhmaṇa” (“of brahman,” during the remainder of his life as a householder) depends on having been initiated into and trained in upāsana, particularly daily offerings to the rising/setting sun and to food taken at meals. On a more subtle level, the ritual declarations at the heart of upāsana practice describe homological correspondences between the human microcosm of ordinary substances, actions, and person(s) involved in ritual and the divinely infused macrocosm in and through which brahman manifests. As described most vividly by Mahony (1998, 104–55), the ancient vedic notion of ṛta foreshadows this concern with the artful way in which divine and human levels of reality fit together; later brāhmaṇa sources, including some upāniṣads, provide explicit examples of such correspondences for a broad range of fire-offering rituals. While the fire-offering tradition that provides the context for homologies found in brāhmaṇa sources is today largely extinct, the analytical skill evident in those sources survives in the way upāsana practice envisions the interconnectedness of human and divine. Some vedic ritual declarations coincide with and highlight one or more climactic ritual moments. Such primary declarations, as I will refer to them, are a key feature of upāsana practice, as they articulate a hidden connection between the “attendant” engaging in upāsana and the primary deity or other object of focus. The most vivid and common contemporary example of such declarations honors the sun’s radiance at both twilights, during the practice of sandhyā-vandana (literally “conjunction-veneration,” referring to conjunctions between day and night), sometimes called sandhyopāsana (“conjunction-attending”). Its primary declaration is the mantra known...

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