Madhva is the founder of Dvaita, the "dualist" school of Vedanta, and his significance lies in how sharply he set himself against the dominant non-dualist reading of the Hindu scriptures. Where Shankara's Advaita taught that the individual self (atman) and ultimate reality (Brahman) are finally identical, and that plurality is illusion, Madhva insisted on a fundamental and eternal difference: between God and the soul, between one soul and another, and between souls and the material world.
God, identified with Vishnu, is a personal, independent reality on whom all else depends; souls are real, distinct, and eternally dependent, and liberation is not absorption into God but eternal loving service to him. Uniquely among the major Vedanta teachers, he taught a doctrine of the eternal gradation of souls, some ordained for liberation and, controversially, some for perpetual bondage. A vigorous polemicist and prolific commentator, he founded the Ashta Matha monasteries at Udupi in Karnataka, still active centres of his tradition, and his emphasis on a personal, worship-worthy God fed powerfully into the later devotional (bhakti) movements of the region.