Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c7.s10.t10.7

v1.c7.s10.t10.7

Many of the key issues the Brahma-sutra tackled had already been elaborated on in the Upanishads, with the sutra's focus of inquiry primarily placed on the Brahman-Atman relationship. The Upanishadic thinkers dwelled largely on the fundamental cause for all worldly phenomena, both natural and human, and proposed two basic concepts: "Brahman" and "Atman". "Brahman" is generally considered as the fundamental cause or essence of everything in the world, and is sometimes referred to as the "Self", while "Atman" is regarded as the main actors in life phenomena, and is sometimes referred to as the "self". It is the countless "selves" and related things that are believed to constitute the sphere of phenomena. Quite many Upanishadic thinkers maintained that the "self" and "self" of worldly phenomena are essentially the same thing, hence the theory of "Brahman-Atman unity and oneness"; while some other Upanishadic thinkers chose to draw a clear distinction between Brahman and Atman while describing them, leading to the fact that different Upanishads, or even different parts of the same Upanishad, contain inconsistent, even contradictory, interpretations on the Brahman-Atman relationship. The problem turned out to have exerted a huge influence on the ensuing generations of Vedānta thinkers, causing the Brahma-sutra to suffer the same ambivalence: on the one hand, the sutra describes Brahman and Atman as being one and the same; on the other hand, it makes a distinction between the two, a fact that also helps explain the branching out of the Vedānta school later on.