A DISCURSIVE SUMMARY OF THE VISISHTAADVAITA VIEW (PART 1 of 6)
Based on Sri Vedanta Desika’s “satadushanI” and the Sri Vishnu Sahasranaama
— By M.K.Sudarshan
The question before us: “If Brahman has no attributes (Nirguna brahman), how is the Advaitin’s statement to be reconciled with the “anantha kalyana guna-s” of Brahman posited by the Visishtaadvaitin?
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Let this be clear: Sri Ramanuja in his magnum opus “Sri Bhaashya” (commentary on the Brahma Sutras) and his disciple Sri Vedanta Desika, in his own famous work “Satadushani“, are the principal formulators of the position of Visishtaadvaita Vedanta on the question of Nirguna and Saguna Brahman. They did not seek to “reconcile” their position vis-a-vis the Advaita Vedantic position on the matter of the Upanishadic Brahman being “attributeless” i.e., bereft of all “guNa-s”, not to speak of fulsome “kalyaana (auspicious, perfect)” attributes. Ramanuja and Vedanta Desika, in fact, asserted that Brahman cannot ever conceivably or logically be “nirgunan” — certainly not by ontological nature and perhaps by intuited “nirgunan” by characteristic only. Their position is not reconciliatory but categorical and they have based their positions firmly on the authority of “sruti” and “smriti” “vaakya-s” as well as well-reasoned interpretation of the “brahma-sutra-s”.
This topic is an extremely philosophical one. It involves some at least some level of acquaintance on the part of the student, if not good understanding of Vedantic metaphysics, epistemology, formal logic, semantics, and hermeneutics. I am not a qualified philosopher… not in the formal sense, anyway … and so what I am going to explain in this series of essays to follow should not be regarded as my own thesis. It would be foolhardy and dishonest of me to claim here any degree of subject-matter expertise. What I shall be offering instead is only a paraphrase of what I have myself studied and learnt from that excellent dissertation on the subject-line by the eminent scholar, (late) Sri. S.M.Srinivasa Chari in his book “Advaita and Visishtadvaita” (Motilal Banarasidas Publishers) . In the 5th chapter in his book, titled “The Doctrine of Nirguna Brahman”, Sri SMS Chari has comprehensively explained the Advaita Vedanta position on the Nirguna-Brahman concept and why Visishtaadvaita Vedanta holds it to be illogical and untenable from the standpoint of the Upanishad and Brahma-Sutra “vaakya-s”.
The subject is profound, its concepts are difficult to grasp, and the arguments flying about back forth between the Advaita and Vishishtadvaita proponents are indeed very formidable to comprehend for ordinary intellects unschooled in the traditional intellectual disciplines of “tarka“, “meemaamsa” and “vyaakarana“. I shall endeavor therefore to do my best in presenting the subject through paraphrase and summation. But should any reader, midway, find my expositions to be in any way inadequate or unsatisfactory, he or she should please go straight to the original texts themselves and find answers to questions there. The reader could begin with SMS Chari’s book itself and then proceed gradually to journey forth even further to the ultimate sources of Sri Bhaashya of Ramanuja and the Satadushani of Vedanta Desika.
Besides wanting to simply share with readers what I as a student of Vedanta have been able to understand about this fascinating question of philosophy, the only other purpose of my penning this series of essays is to seek a measure of my own level of comprehension of it. In that humble spirit of learning, I shall try to answer the various issues before us in as simple and intelligible a manner as I possibly can, based on what I have learned and studied.
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My “maanaseeka-guru” (late) ‘Vaikunta-vaasi’ U.Ve. Sri Mukkur Lakshminaraismhachariar (1944-2000 CE) while expatiating on this topic in some of his widely acclaimed public discourses used to cover it in 3 cogent and lucid steps:
1. He would first address what is meant by “Guna” in the true Vedantic sense.
2. What is meant by “Brahman” in the sense in which the Upanishads have conceived it to be.
3. What is the polemical exchange between the Advaita and Visisishtaadvaita schools of Vedanta on the issue whether Brahman is without Guna or abounds in glorious Guna.
I propose to structure my own series of essays on this subject in the same manner as my venerable maanaseeka–guru did.
About 1. and 2. above, it would be unnecessary for me to unduly belabor the concept of Guna. Still, there should be no harm I believe in recapitulating the salience of the concept of Guna as a matter of prefacing my presentation here. The heart of the matter is, of course, only in the item 3. above. It is”technical stuff”, and it is tough and a lot of it is taught and learnt in Vedanta academic institutes and punditry circles in India and abroad. It is tough because it involves knowing and understanding a great deal of tarka, meemaamsa and vyaakarana and both schools of Vedanta have engaged in them since the times of Sankara, Appayya Dikshita, Ramanuja and Vedanta Desika — who are all acknowledged giants and stalwarts in their respective schools of Vedanta.
It is not all that easy for laymen and laity — amongst whom I humbly regard myself as one — to appreciate the lofty, and at times, abstruse issues of metaphysics, dialectics, and formal logic in which the two schools, and their proponents, engage in and defend their respective “darsana-s”. Feeble minds cannot sometimes even fully comprehend what these doughty debaters are talking about when they distinguish (sometimes hair-split and logic-chop too!) between nirguna and saguna Brahman — the Godhead that is held by one school to be “attributeless, formless, nameless, inconceivable Reality” and, in contrast, by the other school, is held to be “full of the most auspicious and wholesomely good attributes” that can possibly ever be conceived by Man.
While Advatins and Visishtaadvaitins all do somewhat agree in their respective positions upon the true nature of Guna and as well as upon the nature of Brahman itself, what they however wholly disagree upon is whether that very same Brahman is “guna-ful or guna-less”! That disagreement may strike many thinking persons — I confess it does strike me at least to be so, and I can say with all due modesty that I am not an unthinking person — as nothing more than disagreement over whether the glass is half-full or half-empty of water … or as mere semantic disagreement over Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
To decide for oneself the question whether Brahman is nirgunan or sagunan, it would require one to firstly know what Brahman is, would it not? But then Knowledge of Brahman is said by the Upanishads to be entirely experiential and never intellectual. The Taittiriya Anandavalli begins in fact by saying this:
“He who knows Brahman which is Reality, Knowledge and Infinity, knows it to be hidden in the cave of the heart”.
So, when Brahman lies hidden inside the cave of the human heart and can only be known through experience not thought, then why and how do the two schools of Vedanta consider it fit and purposeful effort at all to go on debating ad infinitum about a matter purely intellectual?
What purpose does the attempt to find an answer for the question really serve?
Why not just leave it all to the individual soul to experience for itself and realize on its very own the truth about nirguna or saguna Brahman all by itself?
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The problem with such questioning is that there can be no conclusive answer for it based on pure cerebration or reasoning. Metaphysical concepts remain inscrutably metaphysical …. and one cannot arrive at answers for metaphysical questions through any amount of physical exertion of the human intellect or intuition.
“Sruti“ is thus the sole and final authority in all such spiritual matters and hence the question whether Brahman is saguna or nirguna will have to be ultimately decided only on the strength of the scriptural texts (the Vedas).’
As S.M.S. Chari in his book “Advaita and Visishtaadvaita” explains it so well:
(QUOTE) “But here we are faced with a difficulty. There are scriptural texts which speak of Brahman as devoid of qualities (Svetasvatara, Mundaka, Chandogya and Brihadaaranyaka Upanishads, for example), while there are also texts which openly declare Brahman to be qualified by numerous attributes (e.g. the very same sources quoted above with Taittiriya Upanishad too).
“How are we to overcome such a conflict?
“There are two ways to resolving it.
“One is to accept the validity of both the texts and interpret them in such a way that the apparent conflict does not arise at all. This is the method adopted by the Visishtaadvaitin.
“The other way of solving the difficulty is to ascribe a superior validity to one of the two conflicting texts and deny the other as non-authoritative. The Advaitin who does not agree with the former method adopts this latter (method). Both the texts, he contends, cannot be maintained to be equally valid since they refer to an existent “siddha vastu”. Obviously, one of them has got to be negated as invalid.
“Of the two conflicting texts, saguna and nirguna srutis, which of them are of greater validity?” (UNQUOTE)
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When we read the above and properly understand what the issue is here between the two contending Vedantic schools, we will not fail to realize that this great debate between them is not so much about the nature of Brahman itself, being either saguna or nirguna, as it is about which set of scriptural texts in the Upanishads are more valid than the other.
Therefore, it is extremely important to first understand that the motion being debated is wholly in the domain of hermeneutics only; and it is not really about the direct, subjective experience of the reality itself called Brahman. This is really a contest between scholars and professional exegetists… and not really between seekers, saadhakaas or upaasakaas, spiritual mystics…. And if that fact is internalized by all of us, we will never allow ourselves to be swayed, while engaged in the study of this contentious matter, by any strong feeling likely to be aroused in our minds by narrow sectarian persuasion, passion, or conviction in favor of either one argument or the other of the two Vedantic schools.
The real search for Brahman by the individual soul (jeevaatma) can be carried out only in, and through, a journey on a road less travelled — of “svaanubhavam” (Direct Individual Experience) — than the one undertaken on the more familiar, far less difficult, and oft-trodden road of scriptural knowledge sought to be gained through scholasticism.
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(to be continued in the next essay/blogpost)
Sudarshan Madabushi