saattvika tyaagam

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Ashish Chandra wrote:

> I believe reading somewhere that Sri Ramanujacharya's Guru was an Advaitin
> and that the Acharya's Shikshan was in the Advaita tradition. However, he
> went on to establish the Sri Vaishnava tradition.

I'm sure Shri Ramaswamy can shed more light on this but I believe the
Ramanuja is considered the greatest exponent of Vishistadvaita but not its
founder and he had contact with earlier teachers of that tradition as well
as his Advaita teacher.

> How do we discern from
> this what his duty was? Clearly, the concept of Moksha in Vishishtadvaitam
> is different from Advaitam's. How could he (Sri Ramanujacharya) have known
> that Vishishtadvaita was better for him? Which probably means that the
> search for "wisdom" exists in man alone. Tradition can at best complement
> it. So we should explore our own failing which other traditions can be
> sought out. Is this a correct interpretation of the history of such things ?
>

Personally I think anyone who goes against his Guru is commiting a grave
sin but no doubt Ramanuja had his reasons for doing what he did.  But even
though it may disagree with the Smarta sampradaya on important subjects,
Shri sampradaya and other astika sampradayas share a lot in common.  They
all base their stand on Brahma sutras, Gita, and Upanishads etc.  It's
only in the South of India there is such sharp seperation between the
sampradayas it seems.  My first teacher belongs to Swaminarayana
sampradaya which accepts the Shribashya as it's philosophical base (and he
worships Ganapati Bhagawan as his ishtadevata) and I didn't have any
problems with learning from him.  This is quite normal in our neck of the
woods.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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