Sant Ramanuja.

Sant Ramanuja.(1017-1137). He lived for 120 years.
And called RAMANUJACARYA, OR ILAIYA PERUMAL (TAMIL: AGELESS PERUMAL [GOD]), South Indian Brahman theologian and philosopher, the single most influential thinker of devotional Hinduism. After a long pilgrimage, Ramanuja settled in Shrirangam, where he organized temple worship and founded centres to disseminate his doctrine of devotion to the god Vishnu. He provided an intellectual basis for the practice of bhakti (devotional worship) in three major commentaries: the Vedartha-samgraha on the Veda, the Shri-bhasya on the Brahma-sutras, and the Bhagavadgita-bhasya on the
Bhagavadgita.

According to tradition, he was born in Tamil Nadu state. He showed early signs of theological acumen and was sent to Kañchi for schooling, under the teacher Yadavaprakasha, who was a follower of the monistic system of Vedanta of Shankara, the famous 8th-century philosopher.

Ramanuja's profoundly religious nature was soon at odds with a doctrine that offered no room for a personal god. After falling out with his teacher he had a vision of the god Vishnu and Laksmi, and instituted a daily worship ritual at the place where he beheld them.

He became a temple priest at the Varadaraja temple at Kañchi, where he began to expound the doctrine that the goal of those who aspire to final release from transmigration is not the impersonal Brahman but rather Brahman as identified with the personal god Vishnu.

In Kañchi, as well as Shrirangam, where he was to become associated with the Ranganatha temple, he developed the teaching that the worship of a personal god and the soul's union with him is an essential part of the doctrines of the Upanisads on which the system of Vedanta is built; therefore, the teachings of the Vaisnavas and Bhagavatas
are not heterodox. He set forth this doctrine in his three major commentaries.

Like many Hindu thinkers, he made an extended pilgrimage, circum-ambulating from Rameswaram, along the west coast to Badrinath, the source of the holy river Ganges, and returning along the east coast.

Tradition has it that later he suffered from the zeal of King Kulottunga of the Chola dynasty, who adhered to the god Shiva, and withdrew to Mysore, in the west. There he converted numbers of Jains, as well as King Bittideva of the Hoysala dynasty. This led to the founding in 1099 of the town Melcote, and the dedication of a temple to Sampatkumara.. He returned after 20 years to Shrirangam, where he organized the temple worship, and, reputedly, he founded 74 centres to disseminate his doctrine.




The main religious inspirations are from the theistic tradition of the Alvar poet-saints and their commentators known as the Acharyas, who sought to combine knowledge with karma as the right means to liberation. There is also, besides the Vedic tradition, the religious tradition of Agamas, particularly of the Pañcharatra literature. It is within this old tradition that Ramanuja's philosophical and religious thought developed.

Ramanuja rejected Shankara's conception of Brahman as an indeterminate, qualityless, and differenceless reality on the ground that such a reality cannot be perceived, known, thought of, or even spoken about, in which case it is nothing short of a fiction.

In substantiating this contention, Ramanuja undertook, in his Shri-bhasya on the Vedanta-sutras, a detailed examination of the different ways of knowing. Perception, either non-conceptualized or conceptualized, always apprehends its object as being something, the only difference between the two modes of perception being that the former takes place when one perceives an individual of a certain class for the first time and thus does not subsume it under the same class as some other individuals. Nor can inference provide one with knowledge of an indeterminate reality, because in inference one always knows something as coming under a general rule.

The same holds true of verbal testimony. This kind of knowledge arises from understanding sentences. For Ramanuja there is nothing like a pure consciousness without subject and without object. All consciousness is of something and belongs to someone. He also held that it is not true that consciousness cannot be the object of another consciousness. In fact, one's own past consciousness becomes the object of present consciousness. Consciousness is self-shining only when it reveals an object to its own owner, the self.

Rejecting Shankara's conception of reality, Ramanuja defended the thesis that Brahman is a being with infinitely perfect excellent virtues, a being whose perfection cannot be exceeded. The world and finite individuals are real, and together they constitute the body of Brahman. The category of body and soul is central to his way of thinking. Body is that which can be controlled and moved for the purpose of the spirit. The material world and the conscious spirits, though substantive realities, are yet inseparable from Brahman and thus qualify him in the same sense in which body qualifies the soul. Brahman is spiritual-material-qualified.

Ramanuja and his followers undertook criticisms of Shankara's illusionism, particularly of his doctrine of avidya (ignorance) and the falsity of the world. For Ramanuja, such a beginningless, positive avidya could not have any locus or any object, and if it does conceal the self-shining Brahman, then there would be no way of escaping from its clutches.

A most striking feature of Ramanuja's epistemology is his uncompromising realism. Whatever is known is real, and only the real can be known. This led him to advocate the thesis that even the object of error is real--error is really incomplete knowledge--and correction of error is really completion of incomplete knowledge.

The state of moksa is not a state in which the individuality is negated. In fact, the sense of "I" persists even after liberation, for the self is truly the object of the notion of "I." What is destroyed is egoism, the false sense of independence. The means thereto is bhakti, leading to God's grace.

But by bhakti Ramanuja means dhyana, or intense meditation with love. Obligation to perform one's scriptural duties is never transcended. Liberation is a state of blessedness in the company of God. A path emphasized by Ramanuja for all persons is complete self-surrender to God's will and making oneself worthy of his grace.

In his social outlook, Ramanuja believed that bhakti does not recognize barriers of caste and classes. The doctrinal differences among the followers of Ramanuja is not so great as among Shankara's. Writers such as Sudarshana Suri and Venkatanatha continued to elaborate and defend the theses of the master, and much of their writing is polemical.

Some differences are to be found regarding the nature of emancipation, the nature of devotion, and other ritual matters. The followers are divided into two schools: the Uttara-kalarya, led by Venkatanatha, and the Dakshina-kalarya, led by Lokacharya. One of the points at issue is whether or not emancipation is destructible; another, whether there is a difference between liberation attained by mere self-knowledge and that attained by knowledge of God.

There also were differences in interpreting the exact nature of self-surrender to God and the degree of passivity or activity required of the worshipper.