One of the branches of Vedanta, the
philosophical school purporting to
reveal the ultimate meaning and purpose (anta) of the Vedas, the oldest and
most authoritative Hindu religious
texts. Vishishthadvaita’s greatest figure
is the eleventh-century philosopher,
Ramanuja, who was central to its formation, although he was building on
earlier work. Ramanuja was convinced
that Brahman or Supreme Reality was a
personal deity, rather than an impersonal abstract principle, and he was
also convinced that devotion (bhakti)
was the most important form of religious practice. Vishishthadvaita
Vedanta, his philosophical position,
stressed both of these convictions and
thus opposed the position of the
Advaita Vedanta school, founded by
the philosopher Shankaracharya.
The Advaita school upholds a
philosophical position known as
monism, which is the belief in a single
impersonal Ultimate Reality, which they
call Brahman. For Advaita proponents,
reality is “nondual” (advaita)—that is,
all things are nothing but the formless
Brahman, despite the appearance of difference and diversity in the perceivable
world. For the Advaitins, this assumption of diversity is a fundamental misunderstanding of the ultimate nature of
things and a manifestation of avidya.
Although often translated as “ignorance,” avidya is better understood as
the lack of genuine understanding,
which ultimately causes human beings
to be trapped in karmic bondage, reincarnation (samsara), and suffering.
Since for the Advaitins the real problem
is this mistaken understanding, this
means that realization (jnana) was the
best spiritual path to gain final liberation (moksha).
According to Ramanuja’s formulation, the material world and selves have
real and independent existence,
although their existence is ultimately
rooted in God, whom he identifies as
Vishnu. The world comes from God in a
process of evolution adapted from the
Samkhya model, but since matter is
unconscious, it is both similar to and
different from God. In the same way,
human beings share similarity to God in
having God as their source, and difference from him in being subject to ignorance and suffering. For Ramanuja and
his followers, God is not identical to
Selves or the world, all of which are perceived as having real and independent
existence. This doctrine of identity and
difference makes the perceivable world
real, in a sense that the Advaita proponents would never admit. This same
contention of simultaneous identity and
difference distinguishes Ramanuja’s
position from that of a later thinker,
Madhva, whose Dvaita Vedanta stressed
the great gulf between God and all other
things. Given this difference in capacities between deity and devotee (bhakta),
Ramanuja and his followers have
stressed bhakti as the most efficacious
means to salvation. Even after liberation
the souls retain enough of a distinction
758
Vishakhadatta
from God to make devotion possible;
liberation is seen not as loss of identity,
but as eternal communion with God.
For further information see John
Braisted Carman, The Theology of
Ramanuja, 1974; and Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore
(eds.), A Sourcebook in Indian
Philosophy, 1957.