bheda-abheda

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This post is a partial reply to Aravind's post on 6/7/03 about Anand's (a Sri

Vaishnava) response to Tripurari Swami's brief critical comments of

Ramanujacarya's philosophy. The original post was called On Bhagavad Ramanuja's

siddhanta wrt Gaudiya Vaishnava siddhanta.

 

One problem that outsiders have in understanding our doctrine is the superficial

similarity in name to an bogus group of philosophies called "bheda-abheda".

Bhaskara was one prominent teacher of this. According to BNK Sharma, there was a

long line of such bheda-abheda commentators prior to Shankara. This confusion is

amply evident in Anand's post.

 

The bheda-abheda philosophies ignore the Lord's first statements in the

Bhagavad-gita chapter 2, that the soul is unchangeable, what to speak of having

the ability to become the infinite Lord. The modern Neo-Vedanta also runs into

this problem.

 

(I have mentioned the problems of Neo-Vedanta and bheda-abheda in an article

posted at

http://www.iskcon.com/icj/7_2/72surya.html )

 

In the purport to BG 2.12 Srila Prabhupada clearly indicates that Gaudiyas do

not accept the idea that the soul is literally a piece of God, in the same way a

piece of paper can be torn from a sheet and then joined again to its whole.

 

The "Mayavadis" that Srila Prabhupada criticizes include both classical

Advaitins as well as Neo-Vedantins whose viewpoints resemble at times the

bheda-abheda philosophy. Therefore, Anand's remarks such as the following one

does not apply to our philosophy:

 

"If the basic philosophy is that Both Difference and Non-Difference are equally

there..., then one as a mukta <with topmost jn~Ana> should be experiencing both

these contradicting things simultaneously

and not only one aspect individually - Is it not ?"

 

In summary, it is essential to understand that the relativistic problems of

bheda-abheda (and for that matter Jainism as brought up by Anand) are simply not

present in either Nimbarka's or our Gaudiya views in which the Lord, the jivas

and matter all understood as discrete eternal entities.

 

ys Gerald Surya