Dvaita Vedānta

Dvaita (“duality”) is the school of Vedānta founded by Madhva (Madhvācārya, 1238–1317) in what is now coastal Karnataka. It is the most thoroughly dualist, realist and theistic of the Vedānta schools. Against Advaita Vedānta, it holds that the world is fully real, that the individual souls are eternally distinct from God and from each other, and that God — Viṣṇu — alone is independent (svatantra), while everything else is dependent (paratantra) on him for its existence, knowledge and activity. Its distinctive doctrines include the five differences, the innate gradation of souls, and the belief that some souls are eternally excluded from liberation. Dvaita gave rise to the Mādhva tradition, centred on the Kṛṣṇa temple at Udupi, and inspired the devotional poetry of the Haridāsa saints of Karnataka, such as Purandaradāsa and Kanakadāsa.

History

Madhva, according to his biography the Madhvavijaya by Nārāyaṇa Paṇḍitācārya, was initiated as a monk in the Advaita order, rejected its teaching, and wrote thirty-seven works, including commentaries on the Brahma Sūtras, the Gītā, ten Upaniṣads, the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. His successor Jayatīrtha (c. 1345–1388), the “commentator” (ṭīkācārya), systematised Madhva’s terse works, above all in the Nyāyasudhā. Vyāsatīrtha (1460–1539), adviser to the Vijayanagara emperor Kṛṣṇadevarāya, wrote the Nyāyāmṛta, a brilliant logical attack on Advaita that provoked Madhusūdana Sarasvatī’s Advaitasiddhi and a chain of replies lasting centuries. Rāghavendra Tīrtha (1595–1671) is venerated at his shrine at Mantralayam by millions. Vyāsatīrtha also inspired the Haridāsa movement, whose saints sang Dvaita theology in Kannada songs that are central to Carnatic music.

Metaphysics

Independent and dependent

The foundation of Dvaita is the distinction between the independent and the dependent. Viṣṇu (Nārāyaṇa, Hari, Kṛṣṇa) is the only independent reality: he exists, knows and acts by himself. He is full of infinite perfect qualities (guṇa-pūrṇa) and free of every defect (doṣa-dūra). Everything else — the souls, matter, time, even the goddess Lakṣmī, God’s eternal consort — is dependent. Dependence is total: souls exist, know and act only because God sustains and impels them. Even the Vedas are dependent.

The five differences

Reality is characterised by five eternal differences (pañca-bheda):

1. between God and souls;
2. between God and matter;
3. between soul and soul;
4. between soul and matter;
5. between one material thing and another.

Difference, for Madhva, is not a relation added to things; it is the very nature of each thing (dharmi-svarūpa) — to be a thing is to be different from everything else. Hence the Upaniṣads’ famous identity statements cannot mean literal identity. Dvaita reads tat tvam asi (“That thou art”) as sa ātmā-atat tvam asi — splitting the words differently to read “Thou art not that” — or interprets it as similarity: the soul resembles God in being conscious, as the reflection resembles the original.

Realism

The world is real and is known by valid means: perception, inference and scripture. Madhva defended a common-sense epistemology: knowledge reveals things as they are, and its validity is intrinsic. Error is real misperception of real things, not the appearance of something indescribable. If the world were illusory, as Advaita says, so would be the scripture that says so, and the teacher, and the student, and liberation itself.

God is the efficient cause of the world but not its material cause: matter (prakṛti) is a distinct, eternal reality that God shapes, as a potter shapes clay. This sets Dvaita apart from all other Vedānta schools, which make Brahman the material cause too.

The gradation of souls

Souls are infinite, atomic and eternal, and each has an innate nature (svarūpa) that is not acquired by karma but simply what it is. Madhva held that souls are of three kinds:

• mukti-yogya — fit for liberation (the gods, sages, the good);
• nitya-saṃsārin — eternally transmigrating, never liberated, never damned;
• tamo-yogya — fit for darkness, destined for eternal hell (andhatamas).

Even among the liberated, there is a hierarchy (tāratamya) of bliss, with Lakṣmī at the top, then the wind god Vāyu, then Brahmā and other gods, then humans. This is the most controversial element of Dvaita. Defenders explain that God does not cause the soul’s nature but reveals it; that each soul achieves the fullness of its own nature; and that the doctrine preserves God’s justice by grounding destinies in what souls are rather than in arbitrary choice. Critics have compared it with Calvinist predestination.

The path

Liberation is through God’s grace (prasāda), earned by devotion (bhakti), which must be grounded in correct knowledge of God’s supremacy and of the soul’s dependence. Knowledge, especially through study of scripture under a teacher (śravaṇa, manana, nididhyāsana), leads to devotion, which leads to God’s direct vision (aparokṣa-jñāna), which leads to grace and liberation. The mediator between God and souls is Vāyu, the life-breath and wind god, whom Madhva identified with Hanumān (in the Rāmāyaṇa), Bhīma (in the Mahābhārata) — and himself.

In liberation, the soul is never merged with God; it enjoys bliss according to its nature, in God’s presence, serving and worshipping him.

Dvaita versus Advaita

The war between Dvaita and Advaita is the longest-running controversy in Indian philosophy. Madhva called Advaitins māyāvādins and Śaṅkara’s teaching a demonic deception. Vyāsatīrtha’s Nyāyāmṛta (16th century) attacked Advaita’s central claims with Navya-Nyāya logic: that the world is “false” (mithyā) is either itself true — in which case something besides Brahman is real — or false, in which case the world is real. Madhusūdana Sarasvatī answered in the Advaitasiddhi; and replies and counter-replies continued for two centuries.

Dvaita in conversation

The two words to remember are independent and dependent: God alone exists by himself, everything else exists by him. And the most daring reading in Vedānta is Dvaita’s splitting of tat tvam asi into “thou art not that”.