गोविन्द भाष्य (श्रील बलदेव विद्याभूषण - अचिन्त्यभेदाभेद वेदान्त ब्रह्मसूत्र भाष्य सटीक)

the demigods), or surām na pibet (No one should drink wine). The Upaniṣads do not give us a string of orders and prohibitions, but merely a description of the eternally perfect Brahman. for example the Upaniṣads tell us satyam jñānam (The Supreme Personality of Godhead is truth and knowledge). This is of small help in the matter of orders and prohibitions. Sometimes the Upaniṣads' descriptions may be a little useful, as for example when they describe a certain demigod, the description may be useful when one performs a sacrifice to that demigod, but otherwise these descriptions afford us little practical beneifit, and are more or less useless. This is confirmed by the following statements of Jaimini Muni. āmnāyasya kriyārthatvād anārthakhyam atad-arthanam "The scriptures teach us pious duties. Any scriptural passage that does not teach us our duty is a senseless waste of our time." —Pūrva-mīmāṁsā 1.2.1 tad-bhūtānāṁ kriyārthena samāmnāyo 'rthasya tan-nimittatvāt "Just as a verb gives meaning to a sentence, in the same way instructions for action give meaning to the statements of the scriptures." —Pūrva-mīmāṁsā 1.1.25 To this objection I reply: Do not be bewildered. Even though the Upaniṣads do not give us a series of orders and prohibitions, still they teach us about the Supreme Brahman, the most important and valuable object to be attained by any living entitiy. Just as if in your house there were hidden treasure, and a description of its location were spoken to you, those words would not be useless simply because they were a description. In the same way the Upaniṣads' description of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is the greatest treasure to be attained by any living being, whose form is eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss, who is perfect and beyond any criticism, who is the friend of all living entities, the Supreme Lord who is so kind that He gives Himself to His devotees, and the supreme whole of all existance, of whom I am a tiny part, is not useless, but of great value to the conditioned soul. The descriptions of the Supreme Brahman in the Upaniṣads are valuable, just as the description "your son is now born" is useful and a source of great joy, and the decription "This is not a snake, but only a rope partly seen in the darkness," is also useful and a great relief from fear. The specific benefit attained by understanding the Supreme Brahman are described in the following statement of Taittirīya Upaniṣad (2.1): satyaṁ jñānam anantaṁ brahma yo veda nihitaṁ guhāyāṁ so 'śnute sarvān kāmān