Bhedabheda Vedanta
from 700 c.; older than Advaita in some accounts
The self is both different from Brahman and not different, and the correct answer is to stop demanding that it be one or the other.
- Active
- from 700
- Where
- Northern India
- Also
- भेदाभेद Bhedābheda
- Status
- living
- Tradition
- Indian
The claim
Difference and non-difference are both real and neither is reducible to the other. The wave is the sea and is also this wave, and no amount of argument makes one of those false.
What it held
Bhedabheda may be older than Advaita — Bhartrprapancha, whom Shankara argues against, held a version of it, and some scholars read the earliest Vedanta as bhedabheda by default.
The position refuses the choice the other schools insist on. Advaita says difference is apparent. Dvaita says it is ultimate. Bhedabheda says both difference and identity are real, in the same relation, and that our demand for one or the other is a demand the world does not meet.
The standard analogies are the sea and its waves, and fire and its sparks. A wave is not something other than the sea, and it is also not the sea — and neither of those statements is a concession or a manner of speaking.
The obvious objection is contradiction, and it is the objection Shankara and Ramanuja both press. The Bhedabheda answer is that difference and non-difference hold in different respects, or that the relation is genuinely sui generis and cannot be analysed into anything more familiar. Whether that is a solution or a refusal is exactly what the argument is about.
Chaitanya's later achintya bhedabheda — inconceivable difference and non-difference — makes the refusal explicit: the relation is real and beyond conception.
How it argued
Commentary defending both terms simultaneously, with analogies chosen so that neither reading can be dismissed as figurative.
What it was arguing against
Advaita's reduction of difference to appearance and Dvaita's elimination of identity.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether it is coherent at all. Every rival school says it violates non-contradiction, and the Bhedabheda replies about differing respects have not satisfied them.
Common misconceptions
That it is a compromise between the other two. Chronologically it is at least as old as either, and it is a positive claim rather than a splitting of a difference.
How it began
Early Vedantic commentary, probably before Shankara's systematisation, and represented by Bhartrprapancha, whose work survives only in Shankara's refutations.
What became of it
Living, most visibly in the Chaitanya tradition, where the inconceivable form of the doctrine is central.
Lasting influence
Bhaskara, Nimbarka, Vallabha and Chaitanya each developed a version. Through Chaitanya it reached a very large devotional movement.
Why it still matters
It is a serious test case for whether a metaphysics may assert a relation that resists analysis, which is a live question about primitive relations generally.
Put another way
A wave, which is the sea and is also this wave.
Where to start
Bhaskara, in a study edition — the arguments only make sense against Shankara's, so you need both.
The surprising bit
Chaitanya's version simply builds the difficulty into the name: achintya, inconceivable. The doctrine says outright that the relation cannot be thought and asks you to hold it anyway.
In their own words
The relation is one of difference and non-difference, as between the sea and its waves.
Inconceivable difference and non-difference.
Connections
- Answers
- Advaita Vedanta
- Opposed by
- Advaita Vedanta, Dvaita Vedanta
The verdict
The Vedanta that declines the choice everyone else insists on, and has been accused of cheating ever since.