Jagat

Jai Radhe. So I spent most of the last two days studying portions of the two oldest Upanishads, the Chāndogya and Br̥hadāraṇyaka. These are the principal sources that go into the Vedānta, though some of the other Upaniṣads figure strongly. We have already seen the importance with which certain passages of the Taittirīya are for understanding the Vaishnava mindset. Nitai once pointed out something very significant -- that Hindu theism grew out of different roots than the Jewish monotheism. Philosophically, from the very beginning it had to accept the fundamental idea of non-duality and had to explain itself on that basis. That is why you get all the Vaishnava acharyas writing different "modified" non-dualities. Only Madhva bucks the trend, but you have to remember that ALL the Vaishnavas insist on the duality of worshiper and worshiped, part and whole, lover and beloved. So today is really kind of a lesson in how to interpret the non-dual texts in a dualistic fashion...