The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s13.17

v2.c40.s13.17

It is these two aspects of the Upaniṣads which explain the two diverse interpretations which, as we have seen, Çaṅkara, following Gauḍapāda and some Aupaniṣada school on the one hand, and Bādarāyaṇa,⁴ doubtless with another Aupaniṣada school, on the other, placed on the Upaniṣads. The purely negative character of the universe of experience is insisted upon by Çaṅkara as a result of the stress laid on the unknowability of the Ātman, and its separation from all empirical reality, while Bādarāyaṇa takes the more simple view, which sees in the absolute a divine nature, and finds a place for the world and the souls beside that nature, though still in some degree pantheistically regarded as part of the divine. The result of true knowledge as the attainment of union with the supreme deity is thus much more easily brought into concord with the utterances of the Upaniṣads themselves. Moreover, the sense of devotion to the absolute was thus brought into accord with metaphysical reality and at the same time opportunity given to adapt the Viṣṇu worship of the masses¹ to the esoteric side of the philosophy of the Upaniṣads, a task carried out by Rāmānuja in his great commentary on the *Brahma Sūtra*.²