HINDUISM AND SANATANA DHARMA

What are the Different Schools of Vedanta?

The different schools of Vedanta vary around whether they consider the Divine Reality (Brahman) to be a pure unity, or whether there is some degree of duality between the soul and the Divine. All are spiritual philosophies emphasizing the Divine as the supreme reality. Advaita Vedanta or non-dualistic Vedanta, whose most important traditional teacher is Shankaracharya, teaches that the soul and God are absolutely one.

Visishtadvaita, or qualified non-duality, based on the works of Ramanuja, teaches that the soul and God are both the same and different. Dvaita, or dualistic Vedanta of Madhva, teaches that God and the soul though deeply related are different, like lover and beloved. Lord Chaitanya's school of Acintyabhedabheda accepts both difference and non-difference and says Truth is indescribable. There are several other schools as well.

All these systems accept the law of karma, the importance of surrender to God, ethical disciplines like non-violence, and the practice of various yogic and meditational methods. Even dualistic Vedanta is not dualistic in the sense of Western religions, which in the case of Christianity may require the resurrection of the physical body and the soul living in that body in Heaven worshipping God in the distance.

Dualistic Vedanta conceives the difference between God and the soul to be very subtle. All systems of Vedanta see the true relationship between God and the soul to occur only in Samadhi or a state of deep spiritual absorption which goes far beyond the limitations of the ordinary mind and senses, in which the physical body is all but forgotten. They all regard that we can experience God much more vividly than anything else we have ever known.

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