Viśiṣṭādvaita

I, the Lord of all, was not non-existent in the beginningless time before the present; rather, I was. And these field-knowers under your rule, with you at their head, were not non-existent; they too were. And I, and you, and all of us, will not be non-existent in the time to come, after this; rather, we shall surely be. Just as there is no doubt that I, the Lord of all, the supreme Self, am eternal, so too are you, the field-knowers, the selves, to be held eternal. Thus the Lord himself has stated that the difference of the selves from the Lord of all, and from one another, is real. For, in the very passage where, to a man deluded by ignorance and for the removal of that ignorance, the teaching of real eternality is given, the words 'I', 'you', 'these', 'all', and 'we' are used. If the difference of selves were merely adventitious, resting on limiting adjuncts, then, that difference being unreal, the pointing-out of difference at the very moment of teaching the truth would not fit. The difference of selves stated by the Lord is their own natural difference, and revelation too says so: 'eternal among eternals, conscious among the conscious, the one who, being one, grants the desires of the many'. The meaning is that, among the many eternal conscious beings, there is one conscious eternal being who grants their desires. On the view that the perception of difference is made by ignorance, the supreme Person, whose vision is of the highest truth and who has the direct realisation of the self as undifferenced, changeless, eternal consciousness, would have ignorance and its effects already removed; and so the perception of difference made by ignorance, and the teaching and other dealings that rest on it, would not fit him. Suppose it be said that, the supreme Person having attained the knowledge of non-duality, this perception of difference is a sublated remnant, like the continued appearance of a burnt cloth, and so does not bind. This does not hold. The cognition of water in a mirage, even when it continues after being sublated, is no cause of any activity such as fetching water; so here too the cognition of difference, sublated by the knowledge of non-duality, even if it continues, is, because of the certainty that its object is false, no cause of any activity such as teaching. And it cannot be said that the Lord, ignorant before, has a sublated remnant after learning the truth from scripture, for that conflicts with revelation and remembered scripture: 'who is all-knowing, who knows all'; 'his supreme power is heard to be manifold, and natural, the power of knowledge, strength, and action'; 'I know the beings gone by, and the present, and those to come, Arjuna, but no one knows Me'. Further, when the certainty of the self as non-dual stands while the cognition of difference continues, it must be told to whom the supreme Person, or the present succession of teachers, teaches the non-dual knowledge of the self that accords with their own certainty. If it be said that he teaches the Arjunas and the rest who appear as reflections, this does not hold; for no one who is not mad, knowing that the reflections of his own self appearing in a jewel, a sword, a mirror, and the like are not other than his own self, teaches any matter to those reflections. And the teachers cannot speak of a sublated remnant here, since the ignorance and the rest that causes the cognition of difference other than the self has been destroyed by the sublating knowledge of the non-dual self. In the case of the cognition of two moons a sublated remnant is fitting, because the real defect, the eye-disorder and the like that causes the cognition of two moons, has not been destroyed by the knowledge of the moon's oneness, and even continuing, it is, being sublated by a stronger means of knowledge, of no effect. But here the cognition of difference, with its object and its cause, being unreal, is destroyed by the knowledge of the true nature of the thing; so a sublated remnant is in no way possible. Therefore, if the Lord of all and the present succession of teachers have knowledge of the truth, the perception of difference and the teaching and the rest that are its effect are impossible; and if the perception of difference is present, then, the ignorance that causes it standing, they are ignorant, and so all the more no teaching is possible. Further, since by the teacher's knowledge of the non-dual self the ignorance of Brahman, with its effects, is destroyed, teaching directed at a disciple is purposeless. If it be said that the teacher and his knowledge are themselves figments, then, the disciple and his knowledge being figments too, that knowledge could remove nothing either. If it be said that, though a figment, it removes ignorance by being contrary to it, the same holds of the teacher's knowledge, so that itself would be the remover, and teaching would be wholly purposeless. Enough, then, of these unsound views, which are refuted.Ramanujacharya

Verse 2.12 grounds the threefold teaching that begins here: that there is an upaya, an upeya, and a nivartya; here, since the seeker has not yet grasped these natures, Krishna first awakens an appetite for them. To begin with, since the qualification of an aspirant to the supramundane is the recognition of the atman as distinct from the body, Krishna teaches it first, that this awakening of the desire for the atman may indirectly awaken the desire for its means. Hence Desika opens with prathamam. Shrinu is read not as a polemical address to a rival speaker but as eliciting attention; so the word indicates an opening for instruction. In the doctrine that the atmans are jivas and Ishvara, that which is most readily acceptable, namely their nityatvam, is taught first; this is what aham points at. Krishna's ego-sense includes his all-controlling sovereignty, hence sarveshvarah. The word tavat is the sign of agreement-securing. Atah param uses the prior context to extend its sense, and conveys the jatu of the previous line; apit-vasam brings out the construction in the negated half of the verse marked by the particle tu. Even where the line says na tvam neme, the kshetrajna-mode unifies them and shows that, from the Lord's standpoint, they all share the character of being his to govern; though the singular tvam and idam are used, the intent reaches to all kshetrajnas from Brahma onwards. The construction of na tvam neme janadhipah, supplying na tv eva, is: it is not that you, the parthas, were not, nor that these kings were not. Sarve vayam picks out, within the previously stated group of jiva and Ishvara, what needs to be agreed: aham ca; the eka-shesha rule of Panini 1.2.72 governs. Likewise for bhavantah. The fear that things as durable as mountains might at the end of vast time perish is set aside by api tu bhavishyama eva. Although the self-reference is, as it were, brought in as an analogy, it suggests the eternity and supreme sovereignty of the speaker; while in the analogy proper, the eternity of the others is rendered as a possibility. Since Ishvara is master of all who are present in the three times, how can he himself not be present in all three times; and how, being the ruler of all, can he be obstructed by any other; this is the ground. Ishvara is paramatma, the one whose pervasion is unrestricted by space, time, or self-nature; being all-pervading, he is destroyed by no pervaded thing; being the very inward Self of all, his presence in all times is established. To the doubt that one who is uncertain about the perceivable jiva, distinct from the body, would all the more be in doubt about the imperceptible Paramatma, Desika replies that Arjuna himself, being the speaker of 'purusham shashvatam divyam' at 10.12 and many similar lines, having heard the Lord's character from the great sages, having directly known the powers of Purandara's worlds, holds the highest devotion to teacher and Lord and the unwavering observance of varnashrama duties. His present confusion is not lack of conviction in the Lord; rather, in his terror at the breakdown of dharma, he doubts the atman as separate from the body or as eternal. The use of na pretya samjna'sti and similar shrutis only obscures the precise modes of the jiva, hence Arjuna's confusion. The phrase kshetrajna atmanah notes that just as, unlike the jiva, the qualities of the jiva are not present in the Paramatma, so the impermanence and the rest predicated of the kshetra are not to be feared in the jiva, who controls the kshetra. With this introduction in place, Desika now exposes the defects of mad-tailored constructions like a worn-out patchwork that have been advanced by other schools of interpretation, citing the analogy of one grain to test the whole pot. He first names the contradiction with the very opening of the shastra and the impossibility of the shastric activity itself. From the speech of the Lord, the all-sovereign and twofold-charactered one, indicated by 'aham,' a real distinction between Lord and jivas is established. If that distinction were not real, there would be a confusion of qualities. If, further, the real distinction among the atmans were not, then the very ordering of bound and freed, of pupil and teacher, would collapse. Since it is the Lord himself who has spoken, and not any wayside man, and since the testimonies 'tvam eva tvam vetha yo'si so'si' and 'so anga veda yadi va na veda' confirm that the Lord knows his own truth and that of the jivas as his very body, an apta is not himself swirling in error and so could not transmit erroneous teaching even if to instruct asuras as the Buddha-avatar might. Hence the moha-removing intent of the Gita-upanishad must be granted. The view that the plural in 'na tv eva' indicates difference of bodies but not of atmans, as Shankara holds, is countered: the very passage 'na tv eva aham' is not a mantra to remove confusion such that the difference-statement may be read as serving another purpose; it is itself a tattvopadesha. Aham indicates the inwardness of the self; tvam, the other facing self; ime, others facing away; sarve, the many united under a single condition; vayam, the manifold including the speaker. The locative 'iti vyapadesha' notes that nowhere is it said na aham or na tvam or na anya; no such retraction is performed. On the Bhaskara view that distinction is grounded in real upadhis, the same general objection holds, that is, the partial unreality of distinction remains a doctrinal hurdle, and the relevant scriptural witnesses tell against both views. Hence the witness from the Lord's own speech is preferred. Even the shrutis are eternal only in their authority as the Lord's command; in 'nityo nityanam' the construction is best taken to leave behind the inferred non-eternity of the jivas and to establish their eternality, their plurality, and their consciousness without remainder, in coordinate apposition. By the force of these four nominative terms together, this verse upsets the Bauddha and similar deniers of the atman's eternity, the schools that ground distinction in primal ignorance, the Vaisheshikas who hold consciousness to be incidental, and others who hold mere chit-shakti to be eternal. The single Ishvara, with eternal Brahma, Rudra, Indra, and so on, is shown to be temporally undifferentiated, against the proxy-Ishvara theory. Eternal consciousness, established by other shrutis, is signified. Adopting the principle 'yadagneyah' for paraphrase, Desika sees here a vishishta-vidhi: that the same Ishvara, worshipped through one's own karma, fashions for each what each requires. To finish the line of attack on Shankara, Desika now exposes the impossibility of upadesha at all on that view. Whether the Lord teaches by his own knowing or unknowing, his knowing being direct or based on hearsay, and whether the ignorance is removed thereby or not, every alternative collapses. If he teaches what he himself has not directly known, that contradicts paramapurushatva. If he teaches what he knows by direct vision and so by removing the ignorance, then the Lord himself once was in ignorance, which is absurd. Nirvishesha and kutastha and other terms are explained: nirvishesha, free of sajatiya, vijatiya, and svagata differences; kutastha, anchored in maya, or generic and changeless. Just as the immovable anvil produces transformations in iron, so this Brahman, while itself unchanging, is the seat of changes; hence its eternity, as the time-undetermined. Yathatmya here means as described; ayathasakshatkara, which others ascribe even to people like us, is excluded by yathatmya-sakshatkara-ukti. Ajnana, avidya; its effect, the bheda-bhrama. By 'adi' is included the actual practice of bringing-about. The whole conduct of upadesha rests on a manifold of objects: the matter taught, the words used, the eligible pupil, the teacher, the purpose. The seeing of difference is itself, on Shankara's view, the work of ignorance alone. So with the removal of ignorance and its effects, how can the chain of effects continue? A hundred faults rise: contradiction with one's own siddhanta, non-start of the shastra, absence of teaching, fruitless toil, contradiction with shruti. The further claim that, even after the knowledge of non-duality removes ignorance, the cognition of difference continues by mere samskara and yet does not bind, is rejected. The analogy of a burned cloth, that retains the appearance of cloth but cannot perform its function, is not apt; it gives a counter-example, not a defense. Once contradictory cognition has decisively shown the cognition of difference to be of an unreal object, it cannot, like the recognition of mirage-water, prompt action consonant with its content. So the residual cognition of difference, like the burned cloth, fails to produce its effects; and the supposed continuance has no fruit, which is self-defeating. The reply that ignorance, in scripture-only knowledge, is identical with its object and so is removed inhibits the saving knowledge of the difference between content and ignorance. Even the proposal of bound-residual-continuance regarding the Lord is undermined: if the Lord himself was once ignorant, he was no Ishvara; and if he is Ishvara, where does his shastric instruction come from? If, having been ignorant, he derived knowledge from a shastra, the regress demands a higher teacher; if the Lord himself fashioned the shastra, the cycle of beginningless Vedas and mutual dependence fails; if he recalled beginningless Vedas, the antecedent recall stays without a teacher. Hence the line 'yah sarvajnah' contrasts the omniscient and the omni-knowing, and the distinction is real. Thus the very ground for upadesha is impossible. Even today no teaching could obtain on this view, since teacher and pupil have always been wanting; hence the absurdity that even the current mathadhipati must starve for lack of disciples. To the option of unknowing-instruction-to-the-unknown, Desika replies that the speakers in our scripture were not in the dark, nor were they confused, nor pranksters, nor mere children. To whom would such teaching be addressed? To oneself in non-difference, with truth or untruth; to another in real or unreal difference. None survives. To one's own self truly different, the absurd doctrinal apatti; to oneself untrue, no teaching is possible. To another truly different, even bodily difference Shankara denies; to one merely seeming and untrue, the teaching would extend to barren-women's sons and reflections. To one truly other taught with reality, the very self-knowing of the teacher fails. So nothing supports the teaching-itself. The reflection-and-shadow analogy, that one may seem different by error and yet be recognized as non-different by the strength of the canceller, is shown to be sliding. It is not even an unmuddled person who teaches under this analogy, much less the Lord. To know non-difference and yet teach implies error in the teacher; and to teach one who knows is needless. Thus the analogy fails, the regress is unavoidable, and finally, since the cognitions that overturn difference are themselves dependent on those very prior ignorances, the analogy of two-moons and the rest cannot rescue. The realist comparison of pots and tea offers nothing here. The two-moon perception is itself rooted in defect; this defect, on Shankara's account, is just maya. To make the canceller and the cancelled both rooted in beginningless ignorance is to declare a perfect equality between them, so there is no telling which cancels which. To say defectiveness is unknown is to enthrone an unknown-source teaching that yet must validate its own object. Even the maxim by an unknown shukti, silver is cancelled does not require knowing the defect to cancel; the cancelled object is, in the case of dream-silver, the very locus, but here the difference is itself the supposed locus and its bounce-back has no foothold. To say that the difference is cancelled but its cause continues only postpones the problem: that cause itself is rooted in beginningless ignorance, and the cancelling cognition is not allowed to reach all the way down. The illustration of mirages does not help: there, the over-laid water is cancelled because it is not the basis of the perception; the substrate, mistaken for it, is real. But on Shankara's view, the basis itself is ignorance, and the cancelling cognition reaches every object other than non-dual Brahman, including the cause. Even the standard pratyaksha-and-other-pramana account fares no better. Considering all this together, Desika rejects each of the doctrinal moves: the analogy of two moons, the reflection, the bound-residual, the unknowing-teaching, the all-cancelling. He then closes with the gentle phrase 'iti kritam,' that is, enough has been said of these poor doctrines, leaving the reader to recall that the entire weight of objections worked out in the Sariraka-bhashya stands against the Bhaskara line as well.Vedanta Deshika (Venkatanatha)

All of these indeed worship Me alone, so they are noble, generous; for those who take anything whatever from Me are givers to Me of their all. But the man of knowledge is My very self, in My judgment, since the holding-up of his self depends on Me. Why so? Because this man, holding that the holding-up of his self apart from Me is impossible, has resorted to Me alone as the unsurpassed thing to be attained; so, without him, the holding-up of My own self too is not possible; therefore he is My very self. Not of those whose count is small, of the meritorious-born, is this the fruit, this taking-refuge in Me preceded by the knowledge of the truth of the self whose single savour is being subordinate to Me; rather.Ramanujacharya

The verse 'udarah sarva eva-ete jnani tv atmaiva me matam' completes the prior thought. 'All these are noble,' the four kinds, all of them; the verse foreswears the reading that the non-jnani three are unwelcome. The 'tu,' but, marks the further ranking: 'jnani tv atmaiva me matam,' the knower is, in my view, my very self. The 'atmaiva' is to be heard literally on the frame Desika reads, the visishtadvaita frame in which the individual self has the Lord as its inner self; in the case of the jnani, the inner relation has been recognised and lived, so the jnani has become the Lord's own, his very self in the sense of the field on which the Lord's inner-ruler-hood is steadily present. The 'asthitah sa hi yuktatma mam eva-anuttamam gatim,' he is steadily joined, having me alone as his supreme destination; the closing fixes the directionality of the jnani's movement entirely.Vedanta Deshika (Venkatanatha)

Toward all beings, abiding as god, animal, man, and unmoving thing, abiding in utterly higher and lower forms by caste, by shape, by nature, and by knowledge, I am the same in being one to be resorted to. No one is hateful to Me, none to be cast off as a thing to recoil from, with the thought 'this one, by caste, shape, nature, knowledge, and the rest, is low, so he is not to be resorted to'; and no one, by the excess of caste and the rest, is dear to Me, none to be drawn in, with the thought 'this one, by caste and the rest, is utterly high, so as joined with that he is to be resorted to'. Rather, those who, by an exceedingly great love for Me, since they gain no holding-up of themselves without the worship of Me, having the worship of Me for their single purpose, worship Me, they, whether high or low by caste and the rest, abide in Me, as it pleases them, as though endowed with qualities equal to Mine; and I too am in them as though they were higher than I.Ramanujacharya

The verse 'samo 'ham sarva-bhuteshu na me dveshyo 'sti na priyah, ye bhajanti tu mam bhaktya mayi te teshu cha-apy-aham,' I am equal in all beings; none is hateful to me, none is dear; but those who worship me with bhakti, they are in me, and I in them. The first half exhibits the Lord's ontological equality: no creaturely difference in the Lord's regard. The second half exhibits the mutual presence of the Lord and the bhakta: where the bhakti is, there the mutual presence is. Desika notes: the 'tu,' but, marks the qualification. The ontological equality is not a flat indifference; the indifference is in respect of the Lord's ontological standing toward all beings, but the bhakti creates a specific mutual inhabiting that the ontological equality does not preclude. The candidate who would draw the Lord into a special relation does so by his own bhakti; the Lord, on his side, is responsive to that bhakti, not arbitrary in his favour.Vedanta Deshika (Venkatanatha)

Doing, just as one's qualification allows, with an exceeding love, as the worship of Me, all the duties, of the form of the discipline of action, the discipline of knowledge, and the discipline of devotion, which are the means to the highest good, give them up, in the manner described, by the relinquishment of fruit, action, agency, and the rest, and dwell on Me alone as the one doer, the one to be worshipped, the one to be attained, and the means. This very thing is the scriptural relinquishment of all duties; learn My settled judgment on it, this very thing firmly established at the start of the chapter, from 'hear my settled judgment, best of the Bharatas, on this relinquishment; for relinquishment, tiger among men, is declared to be of three kinds' onward, through 'having given up attachment and the fruit, that relinquishment is held to be sattvic' and 'for one who carries a body it is not possible to relinquish actions without remainder; but he who is a relinquisher of the fruit of action is called a relinquisher'. 'I will free you from all sins': you, living thus, I will free from all the sins, gathered from beginningless time, of the doing of the countless not-to-be-done and the not-doing of the to-be-done, that obstruct the attaining of Me; do not grieve, do not make grief. Or else: since the discipline of devotion is to be accomplished by a person exceedingly dear to the Blessed One and freed of all sin, and since the sins that obstruct its undertaking are endless, and since the duties that are their expiation, done over an unmeasured time, are hard to cross, the Blessed Lord, dispelling the grief of Arjuna, who, considering his own unfitness for the undertaking of the discipline of devotion, was grieving, spoke: 'giving up all duties, go to Me alone for refuge'. Giving up all the duties, the expiations conforming to the manifold endless sins, gathered from beginningless time, that obstruct the undertaking of the discipline of devotion, the harsh penance, the lunar fast, the Kushmanda, the Vaishvanara, the Prajapatya, the Vratapati, the purifying offering, the threefold rite, the Agnishtoma, and the like, manifold and endless, hard for you, who abide for a measured time, to carry out; giving up all those duties, for the accomplishing of the undertaking of the discipline of devotion, take refuge in Me alone, the supremely compassionate, the refuge of the whole world without regard to any distinction, the ocean of tender love for those who take refuge in Me. I will free you from all sins, from all the sins that obstruct the undertaking of devotion of the own-form described; do not grieve.Ramanujacharya

The chapter's, and the Gita's, climactic verse. The verse 'sarva-dharmaan parityajya maam-ekam sharanam vraja, aham tvaa sarva-paapebhyo mokshayishyaami maa shuchah,' giving up all dharmas, take refuge in me alone; I will liberate you from all sins; do not grieve. This is the carama-shloka, the final verse around which the entire Gita has been arranging itself. Desika's reading (on the visishta-advaita frame) is precise: 'sarva-dharmaan parityajya' does not call for the abandonment of the prescribed dharmic action (which the chapter has just insisted on at 18.7-12, 18.47, 18.60), but rather for the abandonment of every other means of release that the candidate has been tempted to think of as his own contribution: the karma-yoga as a means of self-purchasing release, the jnana-yoga as the means of self-attained knowing, the various ascetic and ritual means, and even the dharmic actions themselves taken as the candidate's own credit-card against the Lord's expected payment. All such 'releases-as-the-candidate's-doing' are to be abandoned. The candidate is to take refuge in the Lord alone, as the sole sufficient source of release. The Lord, on his part, pledges: 'I will liberate you from all sins.' The candidate's part is the refuge-taking, the Lord's part is the actual liberation. The 'maa shuchah,' do not grieve, is the Lord's tender closing: the candidate need not carry the worry of his liberation on his own shoulders, since the Lord has taken it on. Desika's long discussion of the verse (the chapter's longest single passage in his commentary) covers the multiple alternative readings and their refutation: the kaivalya-arthi reading that takes 'sarva-dharmaan' as the prescribed dharmas literally, the advaita reading that takes the verse as enjoining a passive knowing, the karma-mimamsaka reading that preserves the dharmas as authoritative even after refuge. Each is refuted in turn. The right reading, Desika settles, is the prapatti-reading: the candidate takes the Lord as the sole refuge, the sole sufficient means of his release, with full inward giving-up of self-reliance on any other means. The dharmic actions continue (since the body must continue), but they are not the candidate's release-money; the release is the Lord's free gift, received by the candidate's refuge. The verse is the Gita's deepest teaching: not karma-yoga, not jnana-yoga, not even bhakti-yoga taken as a candidate-credit, but prapatti, the total reliance on the Lord. The dharmas are not denigrated; they are placed in their proper auxiliary role, with the release reserved as the Lord's free gift. The 'mokshayishyaami,' I will liberate, in the future tense, fastens the Lord's own future action: the liberation is on the way, not because of the candidate's earning it, but because of the Lord's promising it. The candidate, having taken the refuge, may take the Lord's pledge as the warrant. The 'maa shuchah,' do not grieve, then takes its full meaning: the candidate's anxiety about whether his own efforts are sufficient is set aside, since the sufficient ground of his release is the Lord's pledge, not his own efforts. Desika notes: the verse is the chapter's final and supreme teaching, the seal of the Gita. Every prior teaching of the chapter and of the Gita is to be re-read in its light: the karma-yoga of Ch.3, the jnana-yoga of Ch.4-6, the bhakti-yoga of Ch.7-12, the vakyartha-nishtha of Ch.13-17, all converge on this single verse. The candidate who lives this verse lives the whole Gita; the candidate who fails to live this verse misses the Gita's deepest point. The chapter, accordingly, places this verse not in the middle but near the close, as the final and most secret teaching.Vedanta Deshika (Venkatanatha)