The relationship between knowledge and action

At the beginning of class, we started with a few questions about what readings do. The question that struck me as most interesting was, “What is the relationship between knowledge obtained through sacred texts and the actions one takes based on them?” and the interaction between knowledge and action. We spoke about two different views, the Mimamsa and the Advaita Vedanta. Mimamsa views action as more important than knowledge whereas Vedanta views knowledge as more important than action. Kumarila, a mimamsika thinks that knowledge is not enough and Sankara, a vidantin thinks that knowledge is all that really matters. Kumarila suggests that actions are influenced by other actions and knowledge influences in a secondary way. Kumarila says that liberation can be reached through action. On the other hand,  Sankara says that liberation is the knowledge of identifying the atman and brahman and that liberation is a specific kind of knowledge that can only be reached through understanding. Both view knowledge and action as independent of each other. However, to start to answer the question that was posed in the beginning of class, the relationship between knowledge and action is that knowledge is a kind of action and a process. When thinking about what Sells says, we can look at apophatic discourse in understanding knowledge as an action. Apophatic discourse creates the possibility of surpassing these distinctions between self and other, knowing and doing, etc. I’m still working on understanding the entire concept of apophatic discourse, but it makes more sense when thinking of knowledge as a kind of action and that it is not as simple as having them each exist independently. Feel free to comment if you have other thoughts regarding this idea!