Upanishads - Schools of Vedanta

Schools of Vedanta

The source for all schools of Vedanta are the three texts – the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahmasutras. Two different types of the non-dual Brahman-Atman are presented in the Upanishads:

• The one in which the non-dual Brahman-Atman is the all inclusive ground of the universe and
• The one in which all reality in the universe is but an illusion

The later theistic (Dvaita and Visistadvaita) and absolutist (Advaita) schools of Vendanta are made possible because of the difference between these two views. The three main schools of Vedanta are Advaita, Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita. Other schools of Vedanta made possible by the Upanishads include Nimbarka's Dvaitadvaita, Vallabha's Suddhadvaita and Chaitanya's Acintya Bhedabheda. The philosopher Adi Sankara has provided commentaries on 11 mukhya Upanishads.

Advaita is considered the most influential sub-school of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, though whether it represents the mainstream Hindu position has been debated. Gaudapada was the first person to expound the basic principles of the Advaita philosophy in a commentary on the apparently conflicting statements of the Upanishads. Advaita literally means non-duality, and it is a monistic system of thought. It deals with the non-dual nature of Brahman and Atman. The Advaita school is said to have been consolidated by Shankara. He was a pupil of Gaudapada's pupil. Radhakrishnan believed that Shankara's views of Advaita are straightforward developments of the Upanishads and the Brahmasutra and he offered no innovations to these, while other scholars found sharp differences between Shankara's writings and the Brahmasutra, and that there are many ideas in the Upanishads at odds with those of Shankara. Gaudapada lived in a time when Buddhism was widely prevalent in India, and he was at times conscious of the similarity between his system to some phases of Buddhist thought. His main work is infused with philosophical terminology of Buddhism, and uses Buddhist arguments and analogies. Towards the end of his commentary on the topic, he clearly said, "This was not spoken by Buddha". Although there are a wide variety of philosophical positions propounded in the Upanishads, commentators since Adi Shankara have usually followed him in seeing idealist monism as the dominant force.

The Dvaita school was founded by Madhvacharya. Born in 1138 near Udipi, Dvaita is regarded as the best philosophic exposition of theism. Sharma points out that Dvaita, a term commonly used to designate Madhava's system of philosophy, translates as "dualism" in English. The Western understanding of dualism equates to two independent and mutually irreducible substances. The Indian equivalent of that definition would be Samkya Dvaita. Madhva's Dvaita differs from the Western definition of dualism in that while he agrees to two mutually irreducible substances that constitute reality, he regards only one – God, as being independent.

The third school of Vedanta is the Vishishtadvaita, which was founded by Ramanuja. Traditional dates of his birth and death are given as 1017 and 1137, though a shorter life span somewhere between these two dates has been suggested. Modern scholars conclude that on the whole, Ramanuja's theistic views may be closer to those of the Upanishads than are Shankara's, and Ramanuja's interpretations are in fact representative of the general trend of Hindu thought. Ramanuja strenuously refuted Shankara's works. Visistadvaita is a synthetic philosophy of love that tries to reconcile the extremes of the other two monistic and theistic systems of vedanta. It is called Sri-Vaisanavism in its religious aspect. Chari claims that has been misunderstood by its followers as well as its critics. Many, including leading modern proponents of this system, forget that jiva is a substance as well as an attribute and call this system "qualified non-dualism" or the adjectival monism. While the Dvaita insists on the difference between the Brahman and the Jiva, Visistadvaita states that God is their inner-Self as well as transcendent.