In post-Vedānta Deśika (traditional dates 1269-1370) Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta texts Hayagrīva seems to have assumed the function Gaṇeśa has in all other texts, namely he is invoked at the beginning as the God of learning, protecting the intellectual enterprise one is about to undertake.
(Musée Guimet, Cambodia)
Several years ago I had some pain in convincing a friend working on Husserl that the “phenomenologist” J. Mohanty which he knew too well was the same as the scholar of Sanskrit Philosophy J.N. Mohanty (I had similar problems in convincing the same person that avatar is a Sanskrit word). Just like there are two Mohantys, with two different target audiences, so there are two F.X. Clooneys.
Yāmuna (967–1038 according to Mesquita 1973) is one of the chief figures of the philosophy later known as Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. In fact, to me one of the most intriguing questions regards his role in the formation of this school. It is only with Rāmānuja (who lived two generations after Yāmuna) that the school becomes clearly Vedāntic and it is not by chance that it is only Rāmānuja who decided to write a commentary on the Brahmasūtra.
What are the Pāñcarātras? Is there anything like a uniform Pāñcarātra Canon and/or Theology? Or are these texts only part of a constellation which has been made consistent by its later interpreters?
Can a theist believe in God’s omniscience&omnipotence and in free will? I have argued in other posts that one can think in a compatibilist way (because God wants to be freely loved) and that this entails that no punishment/ban from God’s presence can be eternal. Here I would like to test it in the case of Vedānta Deśika/Veṅkaṭanātha, a Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin who also wrote Mīmāṃsā works.
From a Mīmāṃsā standpoint, free will is a fundamental presupposal, since Vedic prescriptions are in a dialectical relation with one’s desire (rāga): one always decides on the basis of the one or the other. That rāga itself might lie beyond one’s free will is an idea never discussed by Mīmāṃsā authors, possibly because they are interested in the phenomenology of free will and not in its ontology.
Can the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta point of view agree with this perspective? On the one hand, one might think that the omnipotency of God as conceived by Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors leads back to the initial problem. On the other, according to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta human beings are nothing but specifications (viśeṣas) of the only existing reality, God Himself. In some forms of Vaiṣṇavism (e.g., in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism), God can freely choose to self-delude Himself as part of His play (līlā). Thus, the child-Kṛṣṇa can willfully forget His omnipotence in order to enjoy His mother’s protection.
Can one conceive the freedom enjoyed by human beings also as a case of self-delimitation?
Further thoughts on free will in Indian Philosophy can be read here.
Can a theist believe in God’s omniscience&omnipotence and in free will? Suppose God leaves us free because S/He wants us to be free, still, why does not S/He interfere with our choices when they would lead to the eternal absence of happiness? Read my thoughts here.
A religion without mystics is a philosophy.”
I cannot enroll the Pope among my supporters, but this quote offers a further interesting insight on a point I raised here.
Does God have a body? And in which sense? Have a look at the whole problem, from the point of view of Western philosophy, but with an answer inspired by Vedānta Deśika in this post of mine.
At the link you can read my thoughts on the topic, from the point of view of mainly Western philosophy, but with some incursions into Indian theories (e.g., of the jīvanmukti or the Bodhisattva).