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Visistadvaita Vedanta

Absolute monism as expounded by Sankara? i.e. Advaita? or non-dualism notes that the universe is not ultimately real but a phenomenal appearance of reality. The ultimate reality is absolutely one in the sense that it does not admit of any kind of differentiation either internal or external.

Visistadvaita or qualified non-dualism notes that the Ultimate reality, though one is not without differentiation, since such a transcendental undifferentiated being is inconceivable and also logically untenable. There are three fundamental realities i.e. Isvara (God), cit (soul) and acit (matter) that are attributes of the one absolute reality or Brahman.

Ramanuja was the foremost exponent of this philosopy and although he did not use the term Visistadvaita in any of his works, the term was later adopted on the basis of the definition offered by Vedanta Desika in his work Nyaya Siddhanjana.

Visitadvaita the term means oneness of the organic entity and is generally rendered in english as qualified monism or pan-organismal monism. An expression that better approximates the concept of Visistadvaita is pan-en-theism which refers to the view that 'deity as eternal is distinguishable from and independent of any and all relative items and yet as an actual whole it includes all relative items.

The distinctive feature of Visistadvaita is its conception of reality (Tattvam)


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