Vishishtadvaita Vedanta

Vishishtadvaita Vedanta is the philosophical form Ramanuja gave this tradition.

Vishishtadvaita reads them as distinct but inseparable, the world and the selves forming the body of brahman.

Ramanuja's Sri Bhashya rejects Shankara's Maya doctrine, holding the world to be Brahman's real body, not illusory appearance.

Ramanuja reads the sentence as identifying God as the self of everything rather than as denying that anything else is real, so the same words carry a qualified non-duality and not a bare one.

Vishishtadvaita reads Vedanta as qualified nondualism, the world and souls real modes of Brahman rather than illusory as in Advaita, a different account of the same core relation.

The acharya of the Sri Vaishnava tradition teaches, initiates and stands as the disciple advocate before God, an office of greater weight than teaching alone.

The eight-syllable mantra, and the school's account of it is that the soul it names is real and remains distinct.

Ramanuja's Sri Bhashya, the foundational commentary establishing Vishishtadvaita's qualified non-dual reading of this shared Vedanta text.

The Divya Prabandham, Tamil Alvar hymns Ramanuja treated as scripture equal to the Sanskrit Vedanta, grounds Vishishtadvaita's ubhaya vedanta method.

Ramanuja's Sri Vaishnavism, philosophically systematized as Vishishtadvaita, is where the debate over grace and self-effort was first fully worked out.

Paramatman, the supreme personal Brahman with real attributes, is Vishishtadvaita Vedanta's God, genuinely related to, not separate from, the world.

Vishishtadvaita, Ramanuja's qualified non-dualism, is this school's defining, denomination-naming doctrine.

Vishishtadvaita argues that negation cannot be the last word about Brahman. The formula excludes what Brahman is not; read as excluding all qualities it would leave nothing that scripture could be describing when it calls Brahman the ocean of auspicious qualities.

Non-injury is held in Vishishtadvaita.

The self is held in Vishishtadvaita to be real, eternal, atomic and plural: each soul is a distinct centre of consciousness and remains one after liberation.

Ignorance is held in Vishishtadvaita as real ignorance produced by karma, not as a cosmic power that makes the world unreal.

Devotion is the means of liberation in Vishishtadvaita, and the later tradition adds surrender as a means available to those who cannot sustain the discipline of devotion.

Brahman is held in Vishishtadvaita to be one and qualified rather than undifferentiated: souls and matter are its real and eternal attributes, related to it as a body is related to the self that has it.

Giving is held in Vishishtadvaita.

Dharma is held in Vishishtadvaita, and the school keeps ritual obligation binding on the qualified rather than superseding it.

The teaching lineage is central in Vishishtadvaita, and the succession of teachers from Nathamuni through Ramanuja is what the school's authority is carried by.

A chosen deity is held in Vishishtadvaita, and the choice is not open: Vishnu with Sri is the supreme reality and not one face among interchangeable others.

Knowledge is held in Vishishtadvaita and is not the means of liberation. Ramanuja treats the knowledge the Upanishads enjoin as a sustained loving recollection, which is devotion, so the path of knowledge is absorbed into devotion rather than standing beside it.

Karma is held in Vishishtadvaita as really binding the really existing soul, which is why release requires God's act and not only the soul's insight.

The world as God's play is held in Vishishtadvaita, and the play is with a real world rather than an apparent one.

The supreme person is held in Vishishtadvaita, and the identification of Brahman with a personal God possessed of infinite auspicious qualities is the school's central affirmation.

Moksha as eternal communion with a personal God in which the self remains distinct while wholly dependent.

Merit and demerit are held in Vishishtadvaita as really incurred and really requiring remission.

Periodic dissolution is held in Vishishtadvaita as a real contraction of the world into a subtle state within God, not as an end of its reality.

Collected absorption is held in Vishishtadvaita as a form of sustained loving recollection rather than as the dissolution of distinction.

Transmigration is held in Vishishtadvaita as fully real, since the world and the soul are real.

Latent impressions are held in Vishishtadvaita.

Being, consciousness and bliss are held in Vishishtadvaita as real qualities of a Brahman that has qualities, not as a definition of a Brahman that has none.

The great sayings are held in Vishishtadvaita and are read as coordinate predication rather than as identity: two terms with different senses are applied to one subject, which is the grammar on which the whole school turns.

The three strands are held in Vishishtadvaita as the constitution of a really existing matter.