Category Archives: Advaita Vedānta

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Viśiṣṭādvaitins speaking of Advaitins

The following passage is from Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi and it is a description of the Advaita position about the brahman as being tantamount to consciousness:

ato ‘syā na meyaḥ kaścid api dharmo ‘sti. ato nirdhūtanikhilabhedavikalpanirdharmaprakāśamātraikarasā kūṭasthanityā saṃvid evātmā paramātmā ca. yathāha yānubhūtir ajāmeyānantātmā iti. saiva ca vedāntavākyatātparyabhūmir iti (ĀS, pp. 29–30 of the 1942 edition)

Therefore this (consciousness) has no characteristic as its knowable content. Therefore, this very consciousness is eternal, uniform and it consists of light-only, without characteristics, in which all conceptualisations of difference have been dissolved. This consciousness alone is the self (ultimately identical with the single brahman, but illusory identified as one’s own self) and the supreme self (i.e., the brahman). As it has been said: ”That experience (i.e., consciousness) is unborn, cannot become a knowledge content, it is endless, it is the self”*. And this alone is the ultimate meaning (tātparya) of the Upaniṣads’ sentences.

The quote within the passage (yānubhūtir ajāmeyānantātmā) could be from Vimuktātman’s Iṣṭasiddhi (1.1: yānubhūtir ajāmeyānantānandātmavigrahā |
mahadādijaganmāyācitrabhittiṃ namāmi tām ||).*

Yāmuna’s description seems fair to me. Do readers more expert in Advaita agree?

*I am grateful to Anand Venkatkrishnan for his help in identifying this quote.

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Does anything exist according to Advaita Vedānta?

Not substances, not qualities, perhaps not even the brahman?

The authors of Advaita Vedānta maintain that God, the impersonal brahman, is the only reality and that each hint of dualism or pluralism is due to māyā ‘illusion’. In other words, the absolute, the brahman, is the only reality and everything else (including the material world and the conscious beings within it) only seems to exist, due to māyā, but is not ultimately real. Due to the the Advaita Vedānta’s absolute monism, the brahman cannot have any quality, as any quality would introduce a duality in the singular nature of the brahman. Thus, given that the brahman is the only reality and that it is absolutely simple (since any complexity would entail plurality) it cannot contain any intentional knowledge*, since any such knowledge would be necessary articulated according to the distinction between a knowing subject and the objects it knows and exactly such distinction is considered illusory by Advaita Vedānta authors.

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Interactions among Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava and other religious and philosophical schools

The religious debate in the early second millennium in South India

The early second millennium in South India saw a culmination of scholarly activities in the sphere of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava devotional movements, including both philosophical and ritual discourses. While we tend to study these separately from each other, for Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava thinkers both aspects – theological speculations and ritual practice – played an integral part in their intellectual and daily lives, and thus we should consider their theological works deeply entangled in the ritual world they moved in.

Further, these scholarly activities were embedded in an environment with a long history of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava interactions, with some works showing passages conceived in direct response to their competitors. The present workshop aims to transcend disciplinary boundaries and investigate the interactions between both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava thinkers as well as theological theory and ritual practice and how these may be manifested in discourses of identity on both an ideological and a practical level. Some of the questions will be: Do ritual practice and theological theory correspond to each other? How did theories develop from rituals and subsequently feed back and impact theological discourses and vice versa? To what extent do rituals presuppose an identification between God and His human devotees? And does the answer to this question depend on a dispute between opponents, who upheld the opposite view (i.e., a non-dualist Śaiva answer may depend on a dualist Vaiṣṇava opponent)? Or how much do Śaiva-Vaiṣṇava or intra-Vaiṣṇava and intra-Śaiva exchanges shape prescriptive and theoretical discourses on ritual practices relating to external religious markers?

In order to pursue this set of questions, a range of specialists has been asked to choose a passage from key works that shaped the intellectual and ritual life of early medieval South India. While an introduction to each of the sources will be presented, the sessions will focus on the joint reading to be held in the light of this set of guiding questions. In addition, further specialists have been invited to join the reading and contribute towards the discussions.

You can read the whole program here.

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Again on omniscience: Why talking about it, God’s omniscience and some reasons to refute it

Why is the topic of omniscience relevant in Indian philosophy? Because of at least two concurring reasons. On the one hand, for schools like Buddhism and Jainism, it is a question of religious authority. Ascribing omniscience to the founders of the school was a way to ground the validity of their teachings. Slightly similar is the situation of theistic schools ascribing omniscience to God, as a way to ground His ability to organise the world in the best possible way. On the other hand, for other schools the idea of omniscience was initially connected with the result of yogic or other ascetic practices. In this sense, omniscience was conceptually not different from aṇimā `the faculty to become as small as an atom’ and other special powers.

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A basic introduction to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta

(I have been asked to write a short introduction to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and would like to test it on you, dear readers. Any comment or criticism would be more than welcome!)

In its full-fledged form, the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta (henceforth VV) is a Vedāntic school, thus one which accepts the authority of the Upaniṣads, the Brahmasūtra and the Bhagavadgītā and which recognises a form of God as brahman (on the various ways of understanding God in India, see here). The full-fledged VV accepts also further groups of texts, namely on the one hand the Pañcarātra (a group of Vaiṣṇava texts prescribing personal and temple rituals, see Leach 2012, and, here) and on the other the Tamil devotional poems collected in the Divyaprabandham.

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Bhakti in Rāmānuja: Continuities and changes of perspective

(The following is my attempt to make sense of Rāmānuja’s conceptions of bhakti. Comments and criticisms are welcome!)

To Rāmānuja (traditional dates 1017–1137) are attributed, with more or less certainty, a series of Vedāntic works, namely the Śrī Bhāṣya (henceforth ŚrīBh) commentary on the Brahma Sūtra (henceforth UMS), which is his philosophical opus magnum, both in length and philosophical depth, the Gītabhāṣya on the Bhagavadgītā (henceforth BhG), a compendium of his philosophy, the Vedārthasaṅgraha, and two shorter commentaries on the UMS, namely the Vedāntadīpa and the Vedāntasāra.
Beside these works, the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta school, at least since the time of Sudarśana Sūri and Veṅkaṭanātha (also called Vedānta Deśika, traditional dates 1269–1370), recognised Rāmānuja as the author of also three extremely short works (about 3–4 pages each), namely the Śaraṇāgatigadya, the Śrīraṅgagadya and the Vaikuṇṭhagadya, and of a manual of daily worship called Nityagrantha.

The terms bhakti `devotional love’ and bhakta `devotee’ are not very frequent in the ŚrīBh, where they are mentioned slightly more than ten times, a portion of which in quotes (some of which from the BhG). By contrast, the Śaraṇāgatigadya mentions bhakti 19 times in its only 23 sentences, and adds further elements to it (such as Nārāyaṇa instead of Kṛṣṇa as the object of devotion, and the role of prapatti ‘self-surrender’, see immediately below). Does this mean that the Śaraṇāgatigadya is not by Rāmānuja and represents a further stage in the theological thought of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta? Alternatively, one might suggest that Rāmānuja addressed different audiences in his philosophical and in his religious works. In other words, the difference between the position of the ŚrīBh and that of the Śaraṇāgatigadya could be only due to the fact that the first develops a philosophical discourse about God, whereas the latter enacts the author’s relationship with Him.

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Omniscience and realism

Marginal notes about a workshop in Hawai'i

A non-intelligible entity cannot be conceived to exist. But, if the world needs to be known in order to exist, we need to postulate a non-partial perspective out of which it can be known. Since the perspectives of all human beings (as well as those of other animals, I would add) are necessarily partial and cannot be reconciled (how could one reconcile our perspective of the world with that of a bat?), this perspective needs to be God.

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The Mīmāṃsā approach to the sentence meaning as something to be done

According to Mīmāṃsā authors, and unlike Nyāya ones, Vedic sentences do not convey the existence of something, but rather that something should be done. This means that the entire Veda is an instrument of knowledge only as regards duties and cannot be falsified through sense-perception, inference, etc. No Mīmāṃsā author, for instance, could ever blame a scientist for reaching a conclusion that clashes with data found in the Veda.

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The subject as knower and doer in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi

Again on the ontology of qualities and substances

Opponents coming from the Advaita field figure often in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi, which shows that even before Rāmānuja Vaiṣṇava authors were taking seriously the challenge of Advaita. Even more interesting is the way Yāmuna answers to them. Let us see some examples concerning the concept of self (ātman):

[Obj.:] But the fact of being a cogniser is the fact of performing the action of cognising and this implies modifications and is (typical of) insentient things and belongs to the sense of Ego.

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खपुष्प तुच्छत्वम् पूर्वोत्तरमीमांसादर्शनयोर् न्यायदर्शने च

खपुष्पं भवत्सिद्धान्त इत्यादिप्रयोगेषु तु भाट्टानां पुष्पे खसम्बन्धित्वारोपेण आरोपितखपुष्पपदार्थनिष्ठासत्त्वादीनां सिद्धान्ते सत्त्वेन प्रयोगः । इदं न खपुष्पम् इत्यत्र तु पुरोवर्त्तिनो ज्ञानाविषयत्वभाव एवार्थः स्यात् । इति तन्मते आरोपविषयता शब्दजन्यविकल्पवृत्तिविषयता चालीकस्याङ्गीक्रियेते , तथैव तस्य अभावात्मकधर्म्माश्रयत्वमपि । अत एव तद्रीत्या अलीकलक्षणं किं स्यात् इति चिन्तनीयम् , न हि तन्नये मनोवृत्तिविषयत्वसामान्याभावोलीके इति । कालासम्बन्धस्तु तल्लक्षणं वक्तुं शक्यते ।

वेदान्तिनां नये तुच्छस्याध्यारोपाविषयत्वात् कथञ्चिच्छब्दमहिम्ना शशशृङ्गपदेन विकल्पात्मकमनोवृत्तौ जातायामलीकत्वस्य विषयत्वमङ्गीक्रियते । तथापि विकल्पस्य ज्ञानत्वानङ्गीकारात् ज्ञानाविषयत्वमलीकस्य सम्भवति । अथापि विकल्पस्य ज्ञानाद्विविच्य प्रदर्शनाय तैः सत्त्वेन प्रतीत्यनर्हम् अलीकम् इत्युच्यते । उक्तानर्हताया अवच्छेदकञ्च किञ्चिद्वक्तव्यम् इति अत एव तन्नये तदेवावच्छेदकं तल्लक्षणं – सर्व्वदेशकालवृत्त्यत्यन्ताभावप्रतियोगित्वे सत्युत्पत्त्यादिशून्यत्वम् – इति सम्भवति ।
अथवा – उक्तप्रतियोगित्वे सति कालासम्बन्धित्वमेवालीकत्वं तदस्तु ।

तार्किकनये तु अलीकस्य ज्ञानसामान्याविषयत्वम् इति तन्नये न विकल्पवृत्तिरङ्गीक्रियते इति प्राप्तम् । अत एव ज्ञानाविषयत्वमेवालीकलक्षणम् । कालासम्बन्धित्वं वा ।

एतेषु सर्व्वेषु पक्षेषु इदं चिन्त्यं यत् –
तत्तन्मते तुच्छस्य यल्लक्षणं ज्ञानाविषयत्वदि तत् किं तुच्छे वर्त्तते न वा । वर्त्तते चेत् तस्यापि स्वरूपं प्राप्तं , नास्ति चेत् कथं तस्य तुच्छत्वम् ।
– इति ;
तुच्छस्यापदार्थत्वेनैव भेदप्रतियोगित्वादिभावधर्म्मानाश्रयत्वे सति पदार्थेषु तद्व्यावृत्तिः कथं सिद्ध्येत । तदसिद्धौ पदार्थानां तुच्छाभेदेनालीकत्वमापतेत् , तत्सिद्धौ च तुच्छे प्रतियोगित्वादिकमङ्गीकर्त्तव्यमापतेत् ।

– इति च ।

(My friend, Sudipta Munsi brought this post from the Bharatiya Vidvat Parisat to my notice and obtained permission from the author to cross-post it on this blog. Except for his name, the learned author, Srimallalitalalita, prefers to remain anonymous.)