Ramanuja's Summary of the Advaitin's Position - 1

Vidyasankar vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM
Fri May 2 19:40:20 CDT 2003


>> position. Sankara and his disciples never say that
>> some Sruti statements
>> are "more valid" than the others.
>>
>
>This is an extremenly important point, because if it's
>correct, then most of Ramanuja's "refutation" of
>advaita amounts to nothing more than misunderstanding
>of the advaitin's viewpoint.

This has been the position of a few modern scholars of the Vedantic
schools. Indeed, John Grimes of Michigan State University, who has a very
keen understanding of Advaitic texts, has an extensive discussion of
Ramanuja's "sapta-vidha-anupapatti" criticism of Advaita, and he says that
the Visishtadvaitins misunderstand key features of Advaita thought.

Vidyasankar

ps. I know that the different approaches taken to interpreting Sruti are an
age-old problem between the two schools, and that we are not going to
resolve any of the serious debating points between them on this forum.



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