Viśiṣṭādvaita

Viśiṣṭādvaita (“non-dualism of the qualified”, usually translated “qualified non-dualism”) is the school of Vedānta systematised by Rāmānuja (1017–1137), and the philosophical foundation of the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition of South India. It holds that reality is one — Brahman — but that this one is internally differentiated: it includes, as real and eternal parts of itself, the countless conscious selves (cit) and the unconscious material world (acit). Brahman is not a featureless absolute but a personal God, Viṣṇu–Nārāyaṇa, with his consort Śrī (Lakṣmī), possessed of infinite auspicious qualities. Selves and matter are related to him as a body is related to its soul: wholly dependent on him, controlled by him, existing for his purposes, inseparable from him and yet distinct. Liberation comes not through the realisation that one is God, as Advaita Vedānta taught, but through loving devotion (bhakti) and surrender (prapatti) to God’s grace, after which the liberated soul lives forever in his presence, in joyful service. Viśiṣṭādvaita gave philosophical form to the passionate Tamil devotional poetry of the Āḻvārs, and it remains a living tradition in the great temples of Śrīraṅgam, Kāñcīpuram, Tirupati and Melkote.

History

The Āḻvārs

The roots of Viśiṣṭādvaita lie not in Sanskrit scholasticism but in Tamil poetry. Between about the sixth and ninth centuries, twelve poet-saints called the Āḻvārs (“those immersed” in God) sang hymns of ecstatic love to Viṣṇu in the temples of the Tamil country. They included a king (Kulaśekhara), a former highway robber (Tirumaṅkai), an outcaste singer (Tiruppāṇ), and a woman, Āṇṭāḷ, who imagined herself as Viṣṇu’s bride. The greatest was Nammāḻvār (“our Āḻvār”), whose Tiruvāymoḻi (“Sacred Utterance”), 1,102 verses, is revered as the “Tamil Veda”. Their 4,000 verses were collected in the tenth century by Nāthamuni as the Nālāyira Divya Prabandham. Śrīvaiṣṇavism calls its scripture ubhaya-vedānta, “dual Vedānta”: the Sanskrit Upaniṣads and the Tamil hymns together.

The ācāryas

Nāthamuni’s grandson Yāmuna (Āḷavantār, 10th–11th century) began the philosophical defence of the tradition in works like the Siddhitraya, arguing for the reality of the self and of God. Rāmānuja, his successor at Śrīraṅgam, systematised it in the Śrī Bhāṣya (commentary on the Brahma Sūtras), the Vedārthasaṅgraha (“Summary of the Meaning of the Veda”), and a commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā. Vedānta Deśika (1268–1369), poet, logician and polymath, and Piḷḷai Lokācārya (1205–1311) and Maṇavāḷa Māmuni (1370–1443) were the great later teachers.

The two schools

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the tradition split over grace and effort. The Vaḍakalai (“northern”) school, following Vedānta Deśika, held that the soul must make an effort to reach God, like a baby monkey clinging to its mother (markaṭa-nyāya). The Teṅkalai (“southern”) school, following Piḷḷai Lokācārya, held that God’s grace does everything, like a mother cat carrying her kitten in her mouth (mārjāra-nyāya), and that God even “enjoys” the soul’s faults, as a cow licks its calf clean. The two schools are still distinguished by the shape of the sacred mark (nāmam) their members wear on the forehead.

Metaphysics

The three reals

Viśiṣṭādvaita recognises three kinds of reality (tattva-traya):

Īśvara — God, Brahman, Viṣṇu–Nārāyaṇa: the supreme person (puruṣottama), infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good and full of auspicious qualities (kalyāṇa-guṇas) — knowledge, power, strength, lordship, energy, splendour, and above all compassion and accessibility. His form is real and divine, made not of matter but of pure sattva.
Cit — conscious selves, infinite in number, atomic in size, eternal, essentially knowing and blissful; currently bound, liberated, or eternally free.
Acit — unconscious matter, the stuff of the world, real and eternal, evolving and dissolving in cycles under God’s will.

These three are distinct in nature, but cit and acit exist only as the modes (prakāras) or attributes of God. Hence “non-dualism of the qualified”: there is one reality, God, qualified by the selves and the world.

The body of God

Rāmānuja’s central idea is the body–soul relationship (śarīra–śarīrī-bhāva). He defines a body as “any substance which a conscious being can completely control and support for its own purposes, and which stands to it in an entirely subordinate relation”. In this sense, the selves and the world are the body of God, and God is their soul and inner controller (antaryāmin). He takes the idea from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, where Yājñavalkya describes the inner controller: “He who dwells in the earth, yet is other than the earth, whom the earth does not know, whose body the earth is, who controls the earth from within — he is your Self, the inner controller, the immortal” (3.7.3).

This allows Rāmānuja to read the Upaniṣads’ statements of identity without denying difference. When the Chāndogya says tat tvam asi, “that thou art”, “thou” refers not merely to the individual but to God as embodied in the individual — as “the king is in procession” refers to the king as embodied in his procession. Words that name things ultimately name God, their inner Self, just as the word for a body refers ultimately to the person who owns it.

A real world

Against Advaita, the world is real: it is God’s real body, transformed in creation from a subtle to a gross state (pariṇāma, real transformation, not vivarta, appearance). Brahman is the material and efficient cause of the world, yet God’s essential nature is untouched by its imperfections, as the soul is untouched by the infancy or old age of the body.

Brahman has qualities

When the Upaniṣads call Brahman “without qualities” (nirguṇa), Rāmānuja argues, they deny only bad qualities; for other texts affirm countless good ones. All knowledge, he argues, is of something qualified — even the knowledge “this is Brahman” distinguishes Brahman from other things. A wholly attributeless Brahman could not be known and would be indistinguishable from nothing.

The critique of Advaita

Rāmānuja’s Śrī Bhāṣya opens with a long refutation of Advaita, the “great prima facie view” (mahā-pūrvapakṣa), concentrated in the seven untenabilities (sapta-anupapatti) of the doctrine of māyā: its locus (whose is ignorance?), its nature (what is it?), its indescribability (a violation of logic), its proof (none exists), its concealing power (Brahman is self-luminous), its removal (knowledge of an attributeless Brahman is impossible), and its cessation (if real, it destroys non-duality; if unreal, it does nothing). See Śaṅkara vs. Rāmānuja.

The path

Knowledge, action, devotion

Rāmānuja reads the The Bhagavad Gītā as teaching a ladder: karma-yoga, selfless action, purifies the mind and leads to jñāna-yoga, knowledge of the self as distinct from the body and dependent on God; this matures into bhakti-yoga, devotion — which for Rāmānuja is not mere emotion but a continuous, loving meditation on God, “like an unbroken stream of oil”, intensifying until it becomes as vivid as direct perception.

Surrender

Since this path is arduous, God offers another: prapatti or śaraṇāgati, total surrender, open to everyone regardless of caste, sex or learning. Its classic text is the Gītā’s “final verse” (carama-śloka, 18.66): “Abandoning all dharmas, take refuge in me alone; I will free you from all sins; do not grieve.” Rāmānuja’s Śaraṇāgati Gadya is a prose prayer of surrender. Prapatti has six components: resolving to conform to God’s will, abandoning what displeases him, faith that he will protect, choosing him as protector, offering oneself, and helplessness.

Liberation

The liberated soul does not merge with God. It goes to Vaikuṇṭha, God’s eternal realm, where it possesses a divine body, knows itself as God’s servant, and enjoys his presence and the bliss of serving him forever. It shares God’s bliss and knowledge, but not his lordship over the universe. Liberation comes only after death; there is no jīvanmukti.

Rāmānuja and his tradition were remarkable in their openness. The Āḻvārs included outcastes and women; Śrīvaiṣṇava teachers honoured devotees of any birth; legend has Rāmānuja proclaim the saving mantra from a temple tower to all. At Melkote he is said to have admitted Dalits (“Tirukkulattār”, God’s own clan) to the temple. The tradition’s social radicalism was always in tension with Brahminical orthodoxy, but it laid the ground for the egalitarian bhakti movements of North India — Rāmānanda and, through him, Kabīr.