/lit/ - Literature

>>14902683
>Aha! But then the vaishnavas come in and say that that Supreme Self is Vishnu and achieving Moksha is merely ascending to a higher heaven than the heaven of Brahma. On support of this they will cite the Kata Upanishad were it says that the beyond this is the highest abode of Vishnu.
That citation doesn't stand up to scrutiny, in the Katha Upanishad in that passage it's not occurring in the context of any discussion of any sort of Vaishnavite-like or other typical devotional heaven but rather where that occurs in chapter one part three we find verses describing a liberation from worldly and conditioned existence. The verse they are citing is verse 1.3.9. of the Katha Upanishad:

'A man who has discrimination for his charioteer and holds the reins of the mind firmly, reaches the end of the road; and that is the supreme position of Vishnu.'

The chapter has 17 verses and is about liberation and what is needed to attain it, in verses 7 and 8 it describes discrimination, spiritual insight etc leading to one becoming freed from rebirth, and in verse 15 from the chapter describing the attaining of this highest achievement which the same chapter calls the supreme abode of Vishnu it says the following which doesn't resemble heaven:

Katha 1.3.15: 'Having realised Atman, which is soundless, intangible, formless, undecaying and likewise tasteless, eternal and odourless; having realised That which is without beginning and end, beyond the Great and unchanging−one is freed from the jaws of death.'