Category Archives: Vaiṣṇavism

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Individuality in Vaikuṇṭha

Do the inhabitants of Vaikuṇṭha have desires (or only God’s ones)? Veṅkaṭanātha’s Nyāyasiddhāñjana 174–6 seems to suggest that they can will:

In the same way, Ananta and Garuḍa and the other (permanently liberated souls) and the liberated souls assume this or that form based on their will.

(tathā anantagaruḍādīnāṃ muktānāñ ca icchākṛtatattadrūpam).

But their will, is it an individual will or the same will repeated for each of them? Possibly the latter. Let me explain by elaborating on a different topic, namely that of tedium in heaven.

Christopher M. Brown (Brown 2021) suggests that “our experience of boredom in this life is in fact reflective either of the timeboundedness of the goods that are central to human experience in this life […] or the nature of time as we experience it in this life” (p. 420). This is probably true, which tells us that the experience of superhuman beings in heaven is radically incomparable with ours. Can it be nonetheless desirable?

Brown does not address this concern directly, but tries to make examples of goods that could be experienced in heaven and that we can conceive as being goods, thus implicitly suggesting that heaven can be desirable. For instance, he speaks of “the natural human desire for knowledge of creatures is perfected in the greatest way logically possible” (p. 421). But is knowledge desirable per se? Don’t we prefer to gain knowledge? Don’t we enjoy the process of learning and discovering? Thus, the example of knowledge does not make sense as a case of a pleasure human beings can analogically relate to. Rather, it is a case of participating in God’s nature. And happiness in heaven is “excessive” according to Brown, who is here quoting Thomas Aquinas (who, in turn, seems to be pointing to something similar to what Veṅkaṭanātha had in mind). But if this all applies, people in Vaikuṇṭha or heaven are necessarily very different than people on earth (who had specific desires and limited knowledge). In which sense could they be said to retain their “personality”? And if this is not retained, how desirable can heaven be, for us, who are attached to our personalities? Brown addresses this concern indirectly (pp. 424–425) by suggesting that there can be radical changes in one’s personality while retaining one’s numerical identity with oneself (as in the case of Augustine’s conversion or in the case of people surviving a suicidal attempt and desiring to live). Brown then goes on interpreting Thomas as saying that grace does not destroy human nature, but perfects it, preserving personal identity through the transformation. At the end of the process, human beings (who cooperate with the action of grace) in heaven will be a deified nature and deified rational powers of intellect and will. Brown thinks that ordinary human beings can have a foreshadow of this experience through contemplation, that leads to a sort of timeless experience. A further evidence of this possibility is the life of saints, who seem to have experienced this sort of experiences within their earthly life. In other words, if many of us think that heaven (or Vaikuṇṭha) is unappealing, this might mean just that we are unprepared for it. Fortunately, this unpreparedness can be addressed (through a further rebirth or through purgatory). Should not it be possible to continue improving even in Heaven/Vaikuṇṭha? That would surely be an antidote to boredom, but it appears to clash with the idea of heaven/Vaikuṇṭha being a perfect world, a kingdom of ends.

As for Vaikuṇṭha and the risk of getting boring, possible solutions are:

1. Being in nityakaiṅkārya `perpetual service to God’ is your nature and this is intrinsically appeasing, so, there is no way it can ever get boring.

2. You share sābhogya `same experience’ with God, so there is dynamism implied (since you continue having interesting experiences).

Joining this with Brown’s discussion of tedium, the solution to the problem of boredom can consist in any of the following ones:

a. Ability to help others (including God Himself, as in 1. above)

b. Loss of identity (as implied by 2. above)

c. Gradual transformation of identity (as in Brown)

b. and c. are very relevant for us here. Even if people can retain their numerical identity with their lives on earth, are they still qualitatively distinguishable from each other? Are their thoughts distinguishable? Them not having distinguishable thoughts offers a neat explanation of their being perfect devotees and is completely compatible with omniscience. The risk of tedium would be eliminated through the fact that such perfect beings would have no independent desires and thus no independent feelings, including no boredom.

Summing up, one possibility is (with hypothesis b.) that boredom is impossible because there is no one experiencing it (but is it really something one can aspire to? and, more relevant, this cancels the possibility of service, which is clearly a building block of Vaikuṇṭha according to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors).

A different possibility needs retaining the variety of personalities even among liberated souls: the infinite variety of sensations (as in 1.). Would not they themselves become boring? No, if they are shared with dear people (hence the importance of a community in Vaikuṇṭha) and if one serves (since serving is one’s true destiny and since one is never bored of helping). Hence, again, the importance of a community and hence explained the insistence on other people welcoming one to Vaikuṇṭha. One will oneself soon be part of that group.

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Reconstructing Viśiṣṭādvaitavedānta: Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution

The book on Veṅkaṭanātha I am working on is an attempt of doing history of philosophy in the Sanskrit context, given that no agreed canon, chronology, list of main figures or main questions has been established for the history of Sanskrit philosophy. Therefore, in the Sanskrit context, doing history of philosophy does not amount to reconstruct some aspects within an established picture, but rather to understand what is the picture altogether. This also means that it is impossible or counter-productive to do history of philosophy in just an antiquarian way in the Sanskrit context.
The book also takes on the challenge of talking about Sanskrit philosophy without reducing it to ahistorical “schools” which are depicted as unchanging through time, so that while talking of Nyāya one can mix 5 c. CE sources with 11 c. ones. In contrast to this approach, the book focuses on the role of individual philosophers within such schools.

Accordingly, the book reconstructs the intellectual figure of Veṅkaṭanātha and his philosophical and theological contribution to what we now call “Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta”. Its main thesis is that Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as we know it now is mostly a product of Veṅkaṭanātha’s brilliant mind. He connected various texts and theories into a harmonious whole, so that readers and practitioners looking at the time before Veṅkaṭanātha now recognise them as pieces of a puzzle. Once Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution is in place it is in fact easy to look back at authors before him and recognise them as pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle. However, it is only due to Veṅkaṭanātha that the entire jigsaw puzzle exists and the various texts and ideas could have remained disconnected, or could have led to different developments without him. The book analyses Veṅkaṭanātha’s contribution in shaping the school, a con- tribution that goes so deep that it is hard to imagine Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta through a different lens. Veṅkaṭanātha’s synthesis was not, or not just, the result of a juxtaposition, but itself a philosophical enterprise. Veṅkaṭanātha re-interpreted a large amount of texts and ideas connecting them in a higher-order theory. In this sense, he is a philosopher doing history of philosophy as his primary methodological tool.

The book investigates this synthesis, its range and its theoretical foundations. In this way, it also attempts to reframe the usual understanding of Veṅkaṭanātha’s impact on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, shifting him from the position of a learned successor of Rāmānuja to that of a builder of a new system, with a different scope (ranging well beyond Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and incorporating much more into it) and possibly with a different basis. Consequently, this book deals with philosophical themes in connection with their intellectual development.

Among the tools used by Veṅkaṭanātha in crafting his synthesis, of particular interest is his emphasis on the unity of the system holding between Vedānta and another school, called Mīmāṃsā. This is a school focusing on the exegesis of the Vedas and therefore on epistemology, deontics, philosophy of language and hermeneutics. Veṅkaṭanātha borrowed from it the tools to reconcile sacred texts seemingly mutually contradictory, as well as a well- developed dynamic ontology and account of subjectivity. However, the Mīmāṃsā school was also atheistic and considered the Vedas to be only enjoying a deontic authority, not an epistemic one. Both claims (especially the first one) contradict basic tenets of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Therefore, in crafting a single system out of Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta Veṅkaṭanātha needed to find a way not to deny these claims while at the same time transcending them. Last, some readers not too familiar with Sanskrit philosophy might find a lot of topics Veṅkaṭanātha deals with “non-philosophical” or at least “non-philosophical enough”. For instance, why does he spend so much time on the injunction to learn the Vedas by heart? As an interpreter, I might have just used the debate in order to extract from it what is relevant for what is recognised today as “philosophy of action”, e.g.: Can someone be motivated to undertake an action whose results will only take place after years ? Does this even count as an action? What at all counts as motivation with regard to a course of action involving multiple years? Can a cost-benefit analysis still work in such cases? Which concept of subjectivity is needed for complex actions extending over multiple years? Alternatively, I might have just depicted the relevance of the debate in the historical setting in which it took place. In general, I gave hints going in both directions, but I primarily tried to reconstruct the debate in its own terms, because a global approach to philosophy means being open not just to new answers to old questions and to new questions within known fields, but also to altogether new fields of investigation. The unitary Mīmāṃsā system is in this sense a treasure house of ideas leading to a philosophy of exegesis and a philosophy of ritual.

Comments and criticisms, as usual, more than welcome!

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Workshop on Vaiṣṇava material culture

Workshop on Vaiṣṇava material culture (in South India)
(8—10 December 2021, virtually held per zoom)

Organisers: Suganya Anandakichenin, Elisa Freschi, Naresh Keerthi, Srilata Raman

(Photo by Suganya Anandakichenin)

Please register (with an email stating your interests and affiliation) by December the 1st at this address: elisa.freschi@utoronto.ca (places are limited, apologies in advance if your request cannot be accommodated)

Program:


8.12 (vegetable and edible substances)9.12 (ritual emblemes)10.12 (new lives of texts)
8:15—8:30welcoming address (Srilata)welcoming address (N+S)welcoming address (E)
8:30—9:00practical demo (Srinivasa Rajan Swami: “A look at the Araiyar’s outfit”)
practical demo (M.A.V. Madhusudanan Svāmī on śaṭharī)practical demo (Thillaisthanam Parthasarathy: “From traditional to contemporary: Srivaisnava wedding cards”)
9:00—9:45Srilata Raman “From Pāyasam to Puḷiyōtarai – Food in Śrīvaiṣṇava Domestic Culture”
Borayin Larios (The Divine Thief and the Solidification of Dairy: Kṛṣṇa’s Butterball in Mahabalipuram) Ilanit Loewy Shacham “The commentary in the hand of the ācārya”
9:45—10:30Andrea Gutiérrez “Feeding Aranganathar “Feeding Devotees:  Recovering Recipes from Medieval Temple Inscriptions at Srirangam”Suganya Anandakichenin “The worship of the Ācārya’s pādukās among the Śrīvaiṣṇavas”Harshita Mruthinti Kamath “Temple Poems on Copperplates: The Material Life of Annamayya’s Telugu Padams”
coffee break


10:45—11:30Naresh Keerthi “Goddess in a Flowerpot — Towards a Theobotanical Account of Tulasī”Ute Huesken “A god’s second life: Āti Atti Varatar Vaipavam”Jonathan Peterson (“Branding the Sensuous Body: Taptamudrā and Material Practice in Early Modern South Asia”)
11:30—12:15Vasudha Narayanan “Food for thought, Food for Body and Soul: Srivaishnava Temple Prasada”Marzenna Czerniak-Drożdżowicz “Material body of god’s representations – how to establish it and how to mend it”final round table
lunch break


12:30—13:15James Mc Hugh “Preliminary Thoughts on Betel (pān) in Hindu Vaiṣṇava Worship”practical demo (T.A.Chari and Malini Chari: “Gifting Rāmānuja’s vigraha”)

Discussants: Anusha Rao, Jesse Pruitt, Mirela Stosic, Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, Sathvik Rayala, Janani Mandayam Comar, Prathik Murali, Giulia Buriola

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Veṅkaṭanātha on the pedagogy of emotions

Veṅkaṭanātha recognises two soteriological paths, namely bhakti (restricted to only few eligible people) and prapatti (being the only one accessible to normal people). In both cases, how can one get there?

Prapatti, to begin with, cannot be sought for independently, because one only becomes eligible for prapatti only after having become aware of one’s desperation because one cannot ever be eligible for bhakti (not to speak of karma- and jñānamārga). Thus, one’s only way to reach prapatti is by means of trying to achieve bhakti and becoming aware of one’s inability to do so and therefore deciding to just surrender to God or His spouse.

Bhakti, in turn, has an intellectual aspect and an emotional one. On the one hand, it is defined by Rāmānuja as a continuous meditation on the real nature of God, and therefore needs a preliminary ascertainment of what this nature could be. On the other, it is based on a surplus of loving affection, one that will never be satiated, not even in Vaikuṇṭha. Therefore, since the time of Rāmānuja’s Śaraṇāgatigadya, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors have engaged in a pedagogy of emotions, one enhancing one’s raw emotions and transforming them into soteriologically-relevant ones. The former are temporary and might be about the wrong topic, the latter focus on God, and are able to last forever and become more intense with time. Veṅkaṭanātha tries to reach this level through his learned religious poetry, which is made to be listened/read, re-listened/re-read and pondered upon for a long time, since its many layers of theological meanings can only reveal themselves through a long perusal.

For instance, the detailed descriptions from head to toe (anubhava) of God’s body in various poems by Veṅkaṭanātha are meant to show how one can train one’s sense faculties to relish always more in their object, rather than being satiated by it. The same poems also underline the poet’s unworthiness, possibly so that the listener/reader can get a chance to contemplate their own unworthiness (for some beautifully translated poems by Veṅkaṭanātha, see Hopkins 2007).

Do you agree that emotions come at the end of one’s soteriological journey for Veṅkaṭanātha?

The theology of Vaikuṇṭha: Why should you want to be in heaven?

We all know so many clever jokes about how hell should be preferred “because of the good company” and about how boring should heaven be. Let me take the chance to focus on the Śrīvaiṣṇava heaven, i.e., Vaikuṇṭha, and see whether they apply also to it.

First, some history of the concept (move to next paragraph if not interested):
The name Vaikuṇṭha is used for both a particular form of Viṣṇu (with four faces) and for the Vaiṣṇava heaven. Please notice that we are not talking of one among many heavens, but the only and upmost one, where God’s bhaktas can live with Him. The first usage seemingly predates the other (since it is attested in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and in the KauśUp for Indra and in MBh and Harivaṃśa for Viṣṇu). Vaikuṇṭha for the place is attested in the Bhāgavata and in the works of the Āḻvārs.
Did the two usages influenced each other? Possibly, but I could not yet reconstruct the missing links (any help is appreciated).

Vaikuṇṭha is mentioned just once in the early three Tiruvantātis of the Divyaprabandha (or Tivyappirapantam), namely by the Āḻvār called Pēyāḻvār. The text is translated as follows by Eva Wilden (with Marcus Schmücker):

“As in all earlier times Vēṅkaṭam, the milk ocean [and] Vaikuntam were the temples for him who took [them and] dwelled there, [so now is] Kaṭikai, with lush flowers in long groves where a wealth of bees rises, the heavenly city for the young prince.”

In Tamil (separation among words and breaking of some sandhis mine, based on the book’s transcription):

பண்டெல்லாம் வேங்கடம் பாற் கடல் வைகுந்தங்
கொண்டங்கு உறைவார்க்குக் கோயில் போல் —வண்டு
வளங் கிளரும் நீள் சோலை வண் பூங் கடிகை
யிளங் குமரன் தன் விண் நகர். (2342)

Conceptually it is interesting to notice that Vaikuṇṭha is mentioned as the place in which Viṣṇu resided, like the milk-ocean and Vēṅkaṭam. Now, unless I am wrong, there is no (Skt or Tamil) mention of the devotees of God being able to reside in Vēṅkaṭam or in the milk ocean, so this first mention of Vaikuṇṭha seems to list only places of Viṣṇu, with no hint of the fact that one of them will become also the heavenly abode of His devotees.

A possible alternative reading is suggested by Eva Wilden herself, who, based on a linguistic problem, writes in a footnote:

“Slightly disconcerting in this verse is that we have one designation for the lord in line 2 which makes use of the honorific form (uṟaivārkku), while line 4 refers to him as a prince in masculine singular (kumaraṉ). We might consider reading uṟaivārkku instead as a slightly elliptical reference to his devotees who take (perceive; koṇṭu) Vēṅkaṭam, the milk ocean and Vaikuntam as his abodes and dwell there to do worship, but that, while working nicely for Vēṅkaṭam, is somewhat more difficult to imagine for the latter two places.”

I am not completely sure I can follow Wilden’s argument here, since I would imagine that the ideal place for the devotees to dwell and do worship were Vaikuṇṭam, but anyway, the suggestion is interesting, since it points to the possibility of reading the first part of the verse as describing the places in which the devotees visualise Viṣṇu.

Later on, the Āḻvārs discuss of Vaikuṇṭha as if it were the only place one might want to reach –no mention of liberation, either as an alternative (and possibly lower) goal or as identical with Vaikuṇṭha.

Why exactly is Vaikuṇṭha such a great place? As pointed out already, for the Āḻvārs the main reason seems to be that one is in the same world with one’s beloved One. Veṅkaṭanātha adds some more theology to it, speaking of the fact that one does not only share sālokya ‘being in the same world [with God]’, but also paramasāmya ‘supreme identity [with God]’. This last state seems to violate exactly the residual dualism necessary in order to allow for love and service to God, and it is possible that Veṅkaṭanātha only included it because of the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad passage about it (nirañjanaḥ paramam sāmyam upaiti, 3.1.3). Therefore, Veṅkaṭanātha explains that this paramasāmya is not tādātmya (as for the Advaitins), but rather sādharmya ‘having the same characteristics’. Still, the person having attained sādharmya is not equal to God in every respect. For instance, they cannot create the world. So, the sādharmya regards other aspects, most notably bhogasāmya ‘equality of enjoyment’. In other words, one enjoys all the blessing experiences of God in Vaikuṇṭha, although one does not have the same level of independent agency (but still a lot of freedom, according to Tattvamuktākalāpa 2.63).

The idea of equal enjoyment with God raises the problem of embodiment, since it seems difficult to imagine enjoyment without a body. Veṅkaṭanātha in the TMK says that in fact the soul can at their own will get a body, which is not determined by karman and is therefore not a vehicle of bondage.

Within the sādharmya there is also the attainment of omniscience, which in fact was the natural condition of the soul but was temporarily blocked by karman. (So, in Vaikuṇṭha you will finally be able to understand perfectly Tamil and Sanskrit and solve any philosophical puzzle you wondered about!)

Why should it not get boring at a certain point? Veṅkaṭanātha does not directly address this question, but his Rahasyatrayasāra seems to point to the idea that one would be busy with a continuous flow of beautiful experiences, all connected with the fact that one is with nice people (the other liberated ones) and especially with the object of one’s love, Viṣṇu.

Does it sound convincing? Or would one still eventually get bored?
Eternity is long… Yes, but one might also speculate that during cosmic dissolutions everything is reabsorbed in Viṣṇu, so that eternity is long but always interrupted. I will get back to this in future posts.

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The book I mentioned above on the Tivyappirapantam is available here.

I was prompted to write this post by a remark of Helen De Cruz.

(cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog)

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Inert and alive substances: Alternative classifications in Veṅkaṭanātha

In the Nyāyasiddhāñjana and the Nyāyapariśuddhi, Veṅkaṭanātha discusses some fundamental ontological topics in order to distinguish his positions from the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika position.

The Nyāyasūtra proposes a fundamental division of realities into dravya ‘substances’, guṇa ‘qualities’, and karman ‘actions’,1 with the former as the substrate of the latter two. This leads to two difficulties for Veṅkaṭanātha’s agenda. On the one hand, the radical distinction between substance and attribute means that Nyāya authors imagine liberation to be the end of the connection of the ātman ‘self’ to all attributes, from sufferance to consciousness. By contrast, Veṅkaṭanātha, would never accept consciousness to be separated from the individual soul and even less from God. The other difficulty regards the theology of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Since the beginnings of Pañcarātra, one of its chief doctrines has been that of the manifestations (vibhūti) of Viṣṇu, which are dependent on Him but co-eternal with Him and in this sense are unexplainable according to the division of substances into eternal and transient.

To that, Veṅkaṭanātha opposes more than one classification, so that it is clear that Veṅkaṭanātha’s main point is addressing the above-mentioned problems with the Nyāya ontology, rather than establishing in full detail a distinct ontology. For an instance of alternative classifications see, e.g., Nyāyasiddhāñjana, jaḍadravyapariccheda:

dvedhā jaḍājaḍatayā pratyak taditaratayāpi vā dravyam | ṣoḍhā triguṇānehojīveśvarabhogabhūtimatibhedāt || dhīkālabhogabhūtīravivakṣitvā guṇādirūpatvāt | jīvātmeśabhidārthaṃ tredhā tattvaṃ viviñcate kecit || (Nyayasiddhanjana 1966, p. 33).

“Substance is of two types, [according to this classification:] inert or alive, or [according to this other classification:] innerly [luminous] or what is its opposite. [Furthermore,] it is of six types, according to the division in [natura naturans having] three qualities, time (anehas) individual souls, God, the ground for [God’s] enjoyment (bhogabhūti) and [His] cognition. Some distinguish reality as of three types, in order to distinguish the Lord, the individual soul, and the self (as the material cause of the universe) because they do not want to include (lit. express) cognition, time and the ground for [God’s] enjoyment, since these have the nature of qualities”.

Bhogabhūti must mean, out of context, the same as vibhūti. My interpretation of ātman in jīvātmeśabhidartham is also based on context. Alternative suggestions are, as usual, welcome!

  1. There are in fact further categories, namely sāmānya ‘universal’, viśeṣa ‘individual’, and samavāya ‘inherence’. See for the fact that these latter categories have been added at a later stage of the evolution of the school. The Navya Nyāya school adds also abhāva to the categories. (see Eli Franco and Karin Preisendanz, “Nyāya-Vaiśeịṣika”, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy)↩︎

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Why is bhakti different than the other human purposes?

Vīrarāghavācārya on Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.2

Vīrarāghavācārya was a 20th c. Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin whose editorial and commentarial contribution to his school will remain impressive for many generations to come. Personally, I am particularly pleased by his attempts to think along the tradition in a creative way.

Within his subcommentary on Vedānta Deśika’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Vīrarāghavācārya is at times closer to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta than Vedānta Deśika’s pro-Mīmāṃsā attitudes. At other times, he just elaborates further on Vedānta Deśika’s hints. In one of such cases, he describes how the choice of words in Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.2 (codanālakṣaṇo ‘rtho dharmaḥ ‘Dharma is that goal which is known through Vedic injunctions’) was not at all casual. Rather, each word had a direct meaning and also further suggested something more. For instance, codanālakṣaṇa is not just the same as codanāpramāṇa, but rather suggests that the Vedic injunction also defines what dharma is. dharma is also to be interpreted etymologically as ‘instrument of dhṛti‘, where dhṛti means prīti ‘happiness’. Similarly, artha indicates that bhakti is the result to be achieved, consisting in pleasing God. Then he sums up:

Through the word dharma, which means instrument for dhṛti, Jaimini also suggests that this ritual action devoid of desire which is a purpose in itself (svayamprayojana) is different than the instruments for the results consisting in the four human aims, which are expressed with reference to their own contents (svaviṣaya) [only]. [He suggests it] because through this [word dharma] also pleasing the Revered one (bhagavat) is communicated (uddeśya).

dharmapadena dhṛtisādhanavācinā caturvargaphalopāyāḥ ye svaviṣayāḥ vācyāḥ tais saha anlat svayaṃprayojanaṃ niṣkāmakarmāpy asūcayat bhagavatprītes tatroddeśyatvāt.

In other words, bhakti points beyond oneself, to God, whereas all other purposes remain confined to oneself.

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Emotions in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta: the role of poems

As discussed in previous posts, emotions are intrinsic to the soul according to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and will therefore remain with them forever, including in the state of liberation. Moreover, emotions are also instrumental to reach liberation. Therefore, emotions are also part of an emotional pedagogy which is instrumental to the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta soteriology. How can this happen? Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophical treatises can speak about the importance of loving God, feeling desparate about one’s condition, etc., but this is not enough to induce such emotions. Therefore, at this point key authors of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta change role and start using poetry. Poetry is meant to induce, e.g., awe and love, for instance, through detailed descriptions of the beautiful body of God. In this sense, poetry is not a substitution of philosophy, but a continuation of philosophy on a level which would not be reached by philosophy.

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On the nature of emotions in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta: cognitions or volitions?

Are emotions (proto)-cognitive acts? We need to have already cognised a given thing in order to have an emotional response about it, but isn’t emotion itself also some sort of underdeveloped judgement about the thing? Isn’t a positive emotional response, for instance, a form of knowledge about the goodness of the thing it is about?

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.

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Emotions in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta philosophy: Distance and closeness

The main thing which stroke me when I started working on the theory of emotions in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta is that emotions can be useful and are not to be avoided. In other words, unlike some Sāṅkhya-Yoga philosophers, the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors do not think that one should aim at some form of ataraxìa. Why not? Because one needs emotions in order to start one’s path towards the good. Moreover, emotions are not just useful as preliminary steps, insofar as emotions are present also in the liberated state (again, unlike in the Sāṅkhya, Yoga and also Nyāya and Buddhist Theravāda schools).

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).