God and the World - Part 3

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 2 with the following:

 

(P.153) " The advaitic doctrine of Shankara is held today by most Hindu

professors but has never been accepted in India as a whole, and all the other

systems of 'advaita' oppose Shankara. This is very interesting in itself because

it shows that there is something lacking in Shankara. It is not satisfactory

when this world, ourselves and God are all ultimately lost in an

undifferentiated Absolute. Shankara's system is opposed by all the schools of

Vaishnavism which believe in a personal God. The first great School was that of

Ramanuja, who lived in Tiruchirapalli in south India in the eleventh century.

Over against 'advaita', the non-duality of Shankara, he proposed

'vishistadvaita', which is qualified non-duality. He held that the supreme

Reality is not simply a kind of impersonal or super-personal 'brahman'. It is

the personal God, Vishnu, and Vishnu is the supreme Lord, the great cosmic

Person. The world comes out from him and the world qualifies 'brahman', hence

the term 'vishishtadvaita', qualified non-duality. 'Brahman' is qualified by the

world in the sense that, for instance, there can be different colours of the

lotus, blue or yellow or red, but the same reality is present under all these

different accidents. Similarly, the one Lord is ever the same but he appears in

all the different forms of the world which qualify his being. "

 

Here now, is Part 3.

 

Enjoy!

 

violet

 

 

 

God and the World - Part 3

 

(P.153) Another illustration Ramanuja used which is more profound is that the

Lord is like the soul while the universe, including human souls, is as it were

his body. He controls this whole universe from within. He is at the heart of the

universe, at the heart of humanity, but they are, so to speak, part of himself.

They qualify his being so that he is modified by the universe and by souls. That

is not very satisfactory because it is really a kind of pantheism, though

Ramanuja always strove to uphold the transcendence of the personal God. (P.154)

Ramanuja held also that the world goes back into 'brahman', back to the Lord,

and then it comes forth again from the tendencies, the 'karmya', forces of

'karma', in it, so that the Lord does not really create the universe. Again this

doctrine of Ramanuja is beautiful in a way, with the personal God who is love

and grace and who is calling mankind to union with himself, but the Lord is

somehow qualified by the world and does not properly create it.

 

Ramanuja's teaching on this point was not considered satisfactory and in the

thirteenth century, Madhva put forward the doctrine of 'dvaita', duality. In

this, God, the world and the soul are all different but the world and souls

depend totally on God. God is 'svatantra', which means that he has his own being

in himself while the universe is dependent totally on God. That is an

improvement in some ways but it is too dualistic because God in this scheme is

not absolutely transcendent. The world and souls exist externally alongside God.

He controls them and they depend on him but they are not exactly created by him

and he is not therefore totally transcendent. So that again is not fully

satisfying.

 

In the further schools of Nimbarka and Caitanya there arose the doctrine of

'bheda-abheda'. 'Bheda' means difference and 'abheda' means non-difference, so

this suggestion is trying to solve the problem by saying that the Lord is both

different from the world and at the same time non-different. This is a paradox,

which in itself is perfectly legitimate. God is one with the world and yet he is

not one with the world. This difference in non-difference is said to be

'acintya' - inexplicable - and that is where the matter was left in the Vedanta.

None of these systems it may be said is completely satisfactory and yet each has

its own unique insight.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith), Pg. 153-154

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0