[Obj:] But in this way the Revered one alone, who is the giver of all results, is the one to whom one must take refuge, even in order for surrender in Him to succeed. What is the purpose at this point (in the text) of surrendering to Lakṣmī?

[R:] It is not so. If one ascertained that it is possible to surrender now (i.e., before surrendering to Lakṣmī) to the Revered one, then one would be using (upādā-) that (surrender) in order to [reach] liberation (mokṣa), but this should not be employed in order to achieve that (liberation). If, by contrast, one were not able to ascertain that it is possible [to directly surrender to Nārāyaṇa], then [it would be] even less likely for one to do so.

nanv evaṃ sakalaphalaprado bhagavān eva tatprapattisiddhyartam apy āśrīyatām, kim iha lakṣmīprapadanena? maivam. yadi bhagavatprapadanam idānīṃ śakyam iti niścinuyāt, tadā mokṣārtham eva tad upādadīta. na punas tadarthaṃ tat prayuñjīta. aniścite tu śakyatve natarām. (Intro to v. 1, Aṇṇaṅgarācārya 1940–1: 98).

In other words, in order to surrender, one must be desperate, up to the point of despairing about their possibility to successfully surrender. If one said “I surrender”, while still thinking to be in control one one’s situation, one would not in fact be really surrendering, since surrendering involves giving up the responsibility for one’s salvation (this is technically called bharanyāsa ‘giving up the burden’). Thus, surrendering in order to reach salvation would be an internal contradiction. Still, one’s ability to independently surrender shows that one was indeed free to surrender.

By contrast, one might argue that emotions are (proto)-volitional acts. After all, emotions often motivate one to act and in this sense, they seem to be strongly linked to volitions.

Or are they something completely different than cognitions and volitions? And which part, function or organ of the self is responsible for emotions?

What would be the “standard” South Asian view about emotions? And how does the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedanta view differ from it?

Well, the first thing to say is that there is no “standard” view, but at least two. The Sāṅkhya model is very authoritative and has emotions as cittavṛtti `affections/perturbances of the mind’, completely distinct from the self, which is a pure observer, unaffected by emotions. The Nyāya and the Advaita Vedānta model inherit the basic idea of the self as a pure observer and therefore imagine that in the state of liberation, no emotion is experienced. This stage might be nonetheless described by Advaita Vedānta authors as blissful since bliss would be the inner nature of the self.

By contrast, the Mīmāṃsā model sees the self as inherently an agent and a knower. It acknowledges the sequence, originally discussed by Nyāya authors, moving from cognitions to volitions and then to efforts and actions, however it considers that one and the same actor is responsible throughout the process. Volitions are described as having the form of desire to obtain or desire to avoid, thus including an emotional colouring. In this sense, one would imagine that emotions are implicitly considered to be (proto)-volitional acts. This point is particularly explicit whenever Mīmāṃsā authors make fun of the claim of “desireless actions” and claim that in order to undertake any action one needs desire (rāga) or aversion (dveṣa). The term desire (rāga) has a strong emotional connotation and includes one’s strong attachment to something or inclination towards it, and the same applies to aversion (dveṣa).
Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors inherit the Mīmāṃsā model and can therefore state that the liberated subject will continue to experience emotions.

The picture is however further complicated by the fact that Viśiṣṭādvaita authors need more emotions than the couple desire-aversion. Since they do not find in Mīmāṃsā the conceptual resources to deal with complex emotions such as desperation, which is essential for their soteriology, they turn to aesthetics. This discipline had evolved complex theories of emotions based on its original link to theater and to the psychology of actors and audience. Already in its foundational text, the Nāṭyaśāstra, there was a clear distinction of fundamental emotions, linked with their physical epiphenomena (such as goose bumps or blushing) and with the kinds of auxiliary emotions for each of them. Since the Nāṭyaśāstra is meant for theater professionists, it also discusses how to solicit such emotions —something of key importance for thinkers aiming at using emotions for soteriological purposes. The interaction of aesthetics and soteriology is paramount in another school of Vedānta, namely the Gauḍīya Vedānta founded by Caitanya and developed by Jīva and Rūpa Gosvāmin.

This does not mean that all emotions are necessarily good. The emotions which are praised are, chronologically speaking, dejection and desperation and then confidence, love (ranging from friendship to passion and awe) and possibly compassion.

Dejection and the absolute desperation in one’s ability to improve one’s condition are absolutely needed at the start of one’s spiritual path. In fact, as long as one thinks to be able to achieve something, no matter how small, one is unconsciously doubting God’s omnipotence and locating oneself above Him. Paradoxically, one’s extreme dejection and the feeling that one will never be saved, since one is not even worthy of begging God for help, are therefore the preliminary step for God’s grace to take place. One’s feeling of extreme distance from God is therefore way closer to Him than the self-conscious confidence of a person who were to think that they are a good Vaiṣṇava.

Once God’s grace has touched one, one feels blissed and joyfully responds to God’s grace with an emotional overflow of confidence and of love. The hymns of the Āḻvārs, which have been recognised as being as authoritative as the Veda for Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, display a vast array of love. One can love God with maternal love (vātsalya), looking at Him as if he were the young Kṛṣṇa. One could also love God with admiration, looking at Him as the ideal king Rāma, and so on. This vast array is less variegated in the reflections of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta philosophers, who rather focus on their feeling of reverence and awe for God. For instance, Tamil and Maṇipravāḷa texts insist on one’s being a slave (aṭiyēṉ) of God.

The interesting element here is that this feeling is not instrumental to the achievement of God’s favour. One does not present oneself as a slave in order to secure God’s favour and then be able to raise to a higher status. By contrast, one’s ideal condition, the liberated state one strives to reach is exactly permanent servitude (as described in Veṅkaṭanātha’s Rahasyatrayasāra).

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.

In the following, I will first deal with the tenets of the school in its mature form, as found in the writings of Veṅkaṭanātha, and then show how the situation I had just depicted has not been the only one throughout the complex history of the school.

Ontology
The school’s ontology is perhaps its most distinctive contribution. The VV accepts both monism and direct realism. The monist aspect has to do with the fact that the brahman is conceived as the only independent entity. It exists in a way which even transcends the opposition between being and non-being (sat-asatoḥ param, in Rāmānuja’s parlance). Conversely, the world as we know it is, against Advaita Vedānta and Buddhism, real and not illusory, so that our cognitions of it are epistemologically sound. Yet, the world exists insofar as it is a specification of the brahman. The brahman is the whole of which any element of the world, conscious beings and inert matter, are an attribute. Therefore, the brahman exists in a specified (viśiṣṭa) manner. This ontological Weltanschauung rests on the negation of a strict distinction between substance and qualities. Unlike in Nyāya, VV considers qualifications to be qualifiers not because of their own nature, but only according to the changing point of view. For instance, a given form qualifies a body, which, in turn, qualifies a self, which, again, qualifies the brahman. The only thing which cannot qualify anything else, since it is itself the ultimate point of rest of all qualifications is the brahman. In this sense, the bodies of conscious beings are at the same time qualifications of their selves (which can therefore make them act) but also, ultimately, of the God-brahman (which can, through them, experience the world).

Theology
The VV’s ontology is distinguished from pantheism because of two reasons: 1. The brahman goes, as already hinted at, also beyond being. 2. The brahman is conceived not just as an impersonal Being, but rather as a personal God. In this sense, the VV finds a philosophical way for incorporating the religious dimension of bhakti into an onto-theology of Vedāntic type. The brahman is therefore declared to be equivalent not to a generic omniscient God, but rather with a personal form of God, called Viṣṇu, Kṛṣṇa or Nārāyaṇa.

God is invariably a cogniser. Knowledge is considered a substance, as in Vedānta and against Nyāya, but Yāmuna defines God’s knowledge as dharmabhūtajñāna `knowledge which has become a characteristic’, thus highlighting how knowledge behaves as a quality of God. Moreover, the two are said to be inseparably connected and cannot be known one independently of the other. In other words, God could never be imagined to be without cognition, whereas cognition needs a knower. It also invariably needs an object (i.e., it is intentional), against the Advaita Vedānta idea of a content-less awareness as the nature of brahman.

Such a personal God can be reached through a personal kind of devotion, called bhakti, which is the culmination of the previous salvific ways taught by Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā, namely karman (ritual acts) and jñāna (knowledge of the self).

Free will
Due to the personal nature of God, His co-presence in each body does not mean that human and other conscious beings are not free. Rather, they are the ones who carry the moral responsibility of their acts, just like the co-owner of a field who decides to sell it and just seeks for the other co-owner’s consent carries the responsibility for the selling (the simile is Rāmānuja’s). This freedom is the direct result of God’s free decision to restrict His possibility to hinder or alter their decisions.

Epistemology
The VV school adopts the Mīmāṃsā epistemology. Therefore, it accepts the intrinsic validity of cognitions as a basis for the reliability of the Vedas and of other sacred texts and recognises perception, inference and linguistic communication as the main instruments of knowledge. As for inference, it denies the possibility of inferring a God, who can only be known through the sacred texts. Veṅkaṭanātha reframes linguistic communication as the communication coming from a non-faulty source, thus accommodating both sacred texts (which have no source at all, since they are not authored) and worldly communication if coming from reliable speakers.

History of the school
As already hinted at, the school has experienced a complex evolution. The teachers recognised as its first exponents are Nāthamuni (–970? according to K. Young) and his grand-son Yāmuna (967–1038 according to Mesquita 1973). Of the first, no works are extant, but out of their titles one can speculate that they dealt with Yoga and Nyāya. Later hagiographical sources credit him with the finding of the Divyaprabandham. Yāmuna’s works are partly extant and attest of a complex and brilliant mind, who probably moved from Nyāya (his early work are open to the possibility of inferring the existence of God) to Vedānta. The next teacher, Rāmānuja (traditional dates 1017–1137), is usually considered the founder of the school as it is known today and is clearly a Vedāntin (his main works are a commentary on the Bhagavadgītā and his opus magnum, a commentary on the Brahmasūtra called Śrī Bhāṣya). However, in Rāmānuja’s works there is hardly any mention of Pañcarātra and no mention at all of the Divyaprabandham and of its contents. The tradition recognises Pirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ, the author of the first commentaries (in Tamil) on the Divyaprabandham as Rāmānuja’s direct disciple and he is surely the first one to introduce Rāmānuja’s theology in the interpretation of these poems. The confluence of the two Vaiṣṇavisms (Rāmānuja’s Vedāntic one and the Divyaprabandham’s devotional one) finds a further point of balance in Veṅkaṭanātha (also known as Vedānta Deśika, traditional dates (1269–1370), who wrote in both Tamil and Sanskrit and tried to systematise the school’s various elements. The later interpreters of the school, however, considered him as the exponent of one sub-school (the Vaṭakalai) opposed to the other (called Teṅkalai and whose foundation was later attributed to Piḷḷai Lokācārua, 1205–1311).

cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog, where you can also read some interesting comments.