ADVAITA-VEDĀNTA Skt.; one of the three systems of thought in Vedānta; its most important representative is Shankara. Advaita-Vedānta teaches that the manifest creation, the soul, and God are identical. Just as particle physicists have discovered that matter consists of continually moving fields of energy, so the sages (rishis) of Vedānta recognized that reality consists of energy in the form of consciousness (chit) and that human begins perceive a gross universe by means of gross senses, because of identification with the ego-limited body. That which is real and unchanging is superimposed in the mind (vikshepa) by the notion of an ever-changing manifest world of names and shapes (nāmarūpa).
Shankara’s best-known example is the piece of rope that in the dark is taken for a snake. Anxiety, repugnance, heart palpitations are induced by a snake that was never born and never will die, but that exists only in one’s mind. Once the rope is recognized under light as a rope, it cannot turn back into a snake. The initial error involves not only nescience of what is, but also the superimposition (vikshepa) of a notion that has nothing to do with what is. Advaita teaches that we in our ignorance continually superimpose the idea “snake” (the manifest world) on the “rope” (brahman). In a Skt. verse, Shankara says: “May this one sentence proclaim the essence of a thousand books: Brahman alone is real, the world is appearance, the Self is nothing but brahman.”
VISHISHTĀDVAITA-VEDĀNTA (Viśiṣṭadvaita-Vedānta), Skt., qualified nondualism, from advaita: “not-duality, nondualism,” and vishishta, derived from vishesha: “particularity, specificity”; Advaita-Vedānta with a quality, to wit: that of plurality, the view that the world is founded on a spiritual principle (brahman), from which the individual soul and inanimate nature are essentially distinct. The founder of this branch of Vedānta, Rāmānuja, focuses attention on the relationship between God and the world. He espouses the view that God is real and independent, but emphasizes that individual souls and the world are equally real but not independent, since their reality resides fully in, and is dependent upon, the reality of God. Personal values are subordinate to the impersonal supreme reality, but for the lover of God (bhakta), truth, beauty, and goodness possess a reality that cannot be reconciled with the impersonal abstraction of advaita. This discord led Rāmānuja, who was himself a bhakta, to establish Vishishtādvaita-Vedānta.
DVAITA-VEDĀNTA Skt., from dvaita: “duality,” Vedānta; the third of the major philosophical schools of Vedānta, developed by Madhva, who set his dualism (dvaita) against Shankara’s Advaita-Vedānta. Dvaita-Vedānta, or Dvaitavāda, teaches that God and the individual soul are eternally separate and that the world is not illusion (māyā) but reality. The One and the many are eternally distinct from each other. Between the two schools of Dvaita and Advaita lies Rāmānuja’s Vishishtādvaita-Vedānta.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
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