Dvaita Vedanta
from 1250
God and the soul are permanently and gladly different, and the whole point of a self is that it is not God.
- Active
- from 1250
- Where
- Udupi, in coastal Karnataka
- Also
- द्वैत Dvaita
- Status
- living
- Tradition
- Indian
The claim
Five eternal differences: between God and self, God and matter, self and self, self and matter, and one piece of matter and another. None of them is provisional and none is dissolved in liberation.
What it held
Madhva takes the Vedanta texts and reads them as teaching difference, which requires considerable interpretive nerve since the tradition had been reading them the other way for centuries. His argument is that identity statements in the Upanishads are being forced, and that difference is what perception delivers and what the texts mostly say.
The five differences are held to be eternal. Liberation is not merger; it is the soul reaching its proper relation to God while remaining itself, and enjoying that permanently.
His most controversial doctrine follows from taking difference seriously all the way down. If souls are genuinely individual, they may differ in their natures — and Madhva holds that some are eternally destined for liberation, some for perpetual transmigration, and some for darkness. It is the only doctrine of eternal damnation in Hindu thought, and it has no parallel elsewhere in the tradition.
Against Advaita he presses hard on perception: if the world is unreal, the cognition that reports it is false, and a system that discredits its own evidence has nothing left to argue from.
How it argued
Commentary that reads the same texts as the Advaitins and reaches the opposite conclusion, plus a sustained realist defence of the reliability of perception.
What it was arguing against
Advaita above all, which Madhva attacks more sharply than Ramanuja does, and Buddhist accounts of the self.
Where it disagreed with itself
Whether the hierarchy of souls is defensible. Whether Madhva's readings of the Upanishads are interpretation or violence — his opponents said the latter and his followers said the texts had been misread for centuries.
Common misconceptions
That it is simply theism grafted onto Vedanta. The five-fold difference is a worked-out metaphysics with an epistemology behind it, and its criticisms of Advaita are technical.
How it began
Madhva grew up in coastal Karnataka in a Vaishnava devotional culture and is traditionally said to have been an unusually powerful man physically, which the hagiographies enjoy.
What became of it
Living, with an institutional base at Udupi and a continuous scholarly tradition.
Lasting influence
The Haridasa devotional movement in Karnataka. Its realism made it a resource for later critics of Advaita, including some outside the tradition.
Why it still matters
It is the strongest available argument that a monism which calls the world illusory cannot then rely on the world's evidence.
Put another way
Five gaps that no bridge is meant to close.
Where to start
A modern account of the five differences, then Jayatirtha for the arguments.
The surprising bit
His followers hold that Madhva was an incarnation of the wind god Vayu, and that he was the third such — the second being Hanuman.
In their own words
The difference between the self and the Lord is real, and eternal.
The world is real, for it is perceived.
Connections
- Answers
- Vishishtadvaita Vedanta
- Opposed by
- Advaita Vedanta
The verdict
The one Vedanta that insists difference is the point rather than the problem.