Philosophy of Sri Madhvacharya – the Dvaita

Philosophy of Sri Madhvacharya – the Dvaita
 
Sri Madhvacharya, who lived during 1238-1317 in Karnataka, propounded the philosophy of Realism, the Doctrine of the Two i.e. Dvaita. It accepts two entirely separate substances, the independent reality (God) and the Dependent reality (the Jivas, Nature and other allied categories). Consciousness is always bi-polar. There must be a knower (Jnata) at one end, and an object (Jneya) at other end. The Dvaita is further elaborated through fivefold difference viz. Jiva and Jiva; Isvara and Jiva; Isvara and Jada or inanimate substance; Jiva and Jada: Jada and Jada.
 
The highlights of the philosophy are as under:
 Dvaita doctrine of Madhva has recognized ten ultimate categories as under:

1. Substance (Dravya) – It is the material cause of evolutionary transformation in the case of some entities like Prakriti and of emanation in others like Brahman and Jiva.
   1. God (Brahman or Vishnu) - Only Independent Substance possessing infinite auspicious attributes and having absolute control over the Dependent category, into which all other substances are grouped. The perceptive awareness of Jiva (Saksi) is selective and segmented. Only the Independent Being, known as Brahman, Vishnu, Narayana etc. and the first and foremost of His dependents, Sri or Lakshmi, regarded as His consort, can have that exhaustive and all comprehending awareness of all Dependent Beings which include all Jivas and unconscious objects (Prakriti). It is His awareness that is eternally supporting everything.
   2. Lakshmi – Though dependent absolutely, she has no bondage and its coeval with the independent Vishnu and is therefore called Samana (equal). Like Vishnu, she is all pervading and no material form, but can manifest in infinite forms. Vishnu has given her the place of His consort and bestowed on her cosmic powers.
   3. Souls (Jivas) – Among dependent entities, Jivas are centers of intelligence – conscious (Chetna) substance. 
   4. Avyakrtakasa – It is unmodified eternal space which enables the perception of directions (Dik) – east, west, up, down, etc. It is different from physical space (Bhutakasa), one of the five elements of Prakriti.
   5. Nature (Prakriti) – It is the insentient (Jada) stuff, the material cause out of which all creation (all objects of universe including the psycho-physical organism) proceeds at the will of Vishnu.
   6. The three Gunas – These are Sattva, Rajas and Tamas which the Vishnu projects out of Prakriti by His desire to create. From the combination of these Gunas, all the fourteen categories of creation (Mahat etc.) came into existence.
2. Attributes – These do not stand by themselves like substances, but depend on substances. Their number is countless and includes physical, mental and spiritual attributes, but exclude all the bad qualities.
3. Action (Karma) - It is neither a substance nor an attribute, but subsists in substance. These actions are meritorious (Punya) and sinful (Papa), and are responsible for the pleasing and painful experience of Jiva.
4. Universal (Samanya) – The class grouping of a large number of similar entities based on the property of resemblance, is universal.
5. Difference (Visesa) – Substances have self-linking capacity with attributes. Based on the attributes, substances are distinguished. Difference is an invariable attribute of substances forming its very nature.
6. Qualified (Visista) – The subtraction or addition of any Visesana will produce a new Visista (Qualified whole).
7. Fraction (Amsi) – The incarnation of God are called Svarup-amsa or a fraction of potency. The Jiva is called a Bhinn-amsa or potency in separation.
8. Power (Shakti) – Power or capacity is four types
9. Brahman’s capacity is beyond comprehension of human beings;
10. Induced capacity in consecrated images;
11. The supersensory power of talent in causes to produce effects;
12. The power of words to convey meanings.
    1. Resemblance (Sadrsya) – the resemblance is recognized as separate category.
    2. Negation (Abhava) – There are four kinds of Negation:
13. Pragabhava – the perception of the non-existence of a pot before it is made.
14. Pradhvamsabhava – the perception of absence of a thing after it is destroyed.
15. Anyonyabhava – Reciprocal negation e.g. table is not chair.
16. Atyantabhava – it is absolute non-existence like a barren women’s son or the horn of a hare.

 
Supreme Being (Brahman):

1. Vishnu - Vedas, the revealed scriptures have fully confirmed and established the concept of God. Furthermore, Vedas have established the functions, nature attributes and His place in human’s life. Madhvacharya identified Him on Vedic authority with Vishnu known also by several other names like Narayana, Isvara, Bhagavan, Purusottama, Krishna etc.
2. Saguna - He has no particular material form but can manifest in any form, being a center of all force, power, will, auspiciousness, goodness, beauty, grace, responsiveness etc. He is far better described by a term like Saguna (Person with a character, responsiveness and full of auspicious attributes) than by Nirguna (an impersonal, amoral and irresponsive) being). He stoutly maintained that He is a being with character (Saguna), and is in that sense personality. He described as Nirguna and Nirvisesa, it means only that nothing about Him is a product of Gunas, or constituents of Prakriti (material nature), and that His form, qualities, powers etc. are not of a material character as known to us. They are transcendental and spiritual.
3. Sat-Chit-Ananda and Ananta - Veda describe Him as Sat-Chit-Ananda and Ananta, it means that these are His essence and being. He is both knowledge and knower, Bliss and Blissful. He has no physical body of matter. The substance of His being is Chaitanya and Ananda (Consciousness and Bliss). They are His attributes too. Supreme and Independent Being is very credible.  He is Satyam (Truth), Jnanam (Knowledge), and Anandam (Bliss) in an infinite degree (Anantam).
4. Independent - Brahman, the Independent Being, and Jivas, Prakriti and other eternal and non-eternal entities are dependent beings.
5. Omnipotent and omniscient - He is omnipotent and omniscient and all-pervading. He resides in everything and directs them, He is unaffected and unsullied, and He is Amala or one without any impurity.
6. He is more significant to the Jivas as the one who distributes to him welfare and suffering according to the efficiencies of his karmas.
7. Acintya-sakti - His inconceivable power (Acintya-sakti) known as Maya functions in two ways. It performs all the cosmic activities of creation, sustentation, and dissolution. It also covers up the spiritual nature of Jivas and involves them in Samsara.
8. Redeemer - His grace on Jivas and lifts him from Samsara. He is thus Redeemer who sheds His grace on the devotee. Grace is thus one of His most important attributes, making Him very significant to the Jiva. He alone can break the bonds of karma and deliver the Jiva from Samsara, because even bondage has been imposed by Him on the Jivas.
9. Creator- Creatorship of Brahman implies that He is the master of the eight cosmic processes – creation, sustentation, dissolution, control, enlightenment, obscuration, bondage and release.
10. Perfect - God is the quintessence of all perfection and is free from all imperfections.
11. Contrary attributes - Many contrary attributes also can simultaneously manifest in Him. For example, His anger towards Hiranyakasipu manifests simultaneously with His gracious love for his devotee son Prahlada. His contradictory characteristics like minuteness and enormity, lightness and heaviness, to be known and to be unknown, can all co-exist in him without contradiction. So it is said in Upanishads; ‘Anor aniyan mahato mahiyan, Amasya janto nihito guhayam’ – smaller than an atom and bigger than biggest, the Atman resides in the cavity of the heart of beings.

 
Jiva (Individual soul):

1. Jiva is defined as center of I-sense which is endowed with consciousness and will - the powers to know, to act and to enjoy. It is intuited by the Saksi (witness) as distinct from the body and mind. It is multiplicity with individuals having distinct features which are never repeated. For numerical multiplicity without qualitative multiplicity is no multiplicity at all.
2. Every Jiva is in essence a distinct being with limited consciousness and bliss but the measure of these in each one of them varies. As a consequence there is a hierarchy of Jivas, each with its own uniqueness which holds good both in bondage and liberation. This is an important point on which Madhva’s realistic doctrine differs sharply from that of Ramanuja. In the latter’s system, except in respect of the Nitya-Vibhutis (the eternal companions of the God), all Jivas are, in their essence, a uniform type of conscious monads.
3. The Atman is self-luminous. In the Advaita the self-luminosity of the Atman means that it is a subject-objectless entity – Pure Consciousness. Without being a subject that is a knower and an object that is known. Madhva rejects such a concept, as an entity without a subjective or objective reference will only be a non-luminous one. The Atman is self-luminous as it is knower with an inherent capacity to know itself as well as others. But this capacity, though inherent in it, is derived from the only Independent Being, the Para-Brahman. Being a Reflection (Pratibimba) of God, the Jiva gets a very coloring of some of His attributes like self-luminosity and bliss.
4. Jivas are free to work according to their innate nature and their accumulated karma, good and bad.
5. Jivas are countless, and both in bondage and liberation each Jiva keeps up his     difference from others both in individually and character (Svarupa-bheda). In most of other systems of Vedanta, it is not so. Ramanuja admits plurality of souls in both bondage and liberation but denies qualitative difference in the state of release. Due to uniqueness of each Jiva, their gradation and classification into three groups logically follows. According to madhva, in liberation also this variation exists. But in Ramanuja’s system, the Jiva in liberation attains to equality with Brahman in knowledge and bliss, but not in power, as Brahman alone has the power of creation. Madhva rejects such a theory on the ground that variations in Jivas in bondage remain unexplained under this theory. An initial intrinsic difference alone can account for variations in bondage and this must of necessity be extended to the state of liberation too. This difference consists in the basic potencies inherent in their very being.

 
Prakriti:
Prakriti is dependent on Brahman. (As against, Samkhya’s philosophy that Prakriti is absolutely independent entity and philosophy of Advaita that world is only provisional reality which is sublated when the Truth is realized.).
 
Space and Time:
Both unmodified space and Time are not perceived through any of the sense organs by the Saksi (witness), the intuitive power of the Atman, directly. In deep sleep when all the senses and mind are absolutely at abeyance, the saksi intuits bare ego, bare time and bare bliss. As no sense experience is there, it cannot be an ordinary perception and for that reason, not an inference. The evidence of Saksi alone certifies it. Both time and space are infinite but also infinitely divisible.

1. Space contains everything and makes movement possible. According to Madhvacharya, there are two kinds of Akasha (Space) – the Avyakritakasa (uncreated eternal and unmodified space), and Akasa forming one of the five elements evolved out of Prakriti. Avakritakasa are coeval with Brahman like Prakriti and the Jiva.
2. Time conditions and regulates the generating growth and dissolution of everything.

 
Avidya or Ignorance:
The sense of an independent self-centered existence is called Avidya, the Svarupajnana (the ignorance of one’s nature). It is the basic cause of the Jiva’s involvement in the miseries of Samsara consisting in repeated births and deaths. The locus of Avidya is said to in Jiva.
Reference: Bhakti Schools of Vedanta – by Swami Tapasyananda, Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai.