A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.20

c7.20

13. The relation of the Upanishads to the Brahmasūtras is no less interesting and no less important than the relation of the Upanishads to the Bhagavadgītā. In fact, the whole of the philosophy of the Vedānta in its various schools has been based upon these three foundation-stones, namely, the Upanishads, the Brahmasūtras, and the Bhagavadgītā, and thus it may easily be expected that the interrelation of the Brahmasūtras to the Upanishads from which they were derived must constitute an equally important problem. Bādarāyaṇa, the author of the Brahmasūtras, borrows so frequently and so immensely from the Upanishads, in fact, all his aphorisms are so much rooted in the texts of the Upanishads, that it would be impossible either to understand or to interpret the Brahmasūtras without a perpetual reference to the texts of the Upanishads. As to whether he taught the dualistic Vedānta or the qualified monistic Vedānta, or the monistic Vedānta, it is not our business here to discuss; but it must be remembered that each of the three great schools of Vedāntic philosophy, namely, the schools of Madhva, Rāmānuja, and Śaṅkara, interprets the Brahmasūtras as well as the Upanishads in its own way. The Śuddhādvaita, the Dvaitādvaita and other interpretations of the philosophy of the Brahmasūtras and the Upanishads are merely varied combinations of the ultimate positions reached in these three main systems of philosophy. Hence, when we have discussed how far the Upanishads sanction the difference between the Dvaita, the Viśiṣṭādvaita and the Advaita schools of philosophy, we have exhausted all the different fundamental conceptions of the Vedānta, from whose permutation and combination all the other systems are derived. And even while we are discussing these three main schools of Vedāntic philosophy, a number of fundamental propositions arise, difference in the treatment of which constitutes difference in the systems themselves. Thus the main problems which these philosophers have to answer are these: What is the nature of God? Is He different from, included in, or identical with the Absolute? In other words, are the theological conception of God and the philosophical conception of the Absolute one and the same? What is the relation of the Individual to the Universal Soul in these systems? Do these systems maintain the reality of creation, or, do they suppose that, after all, creation is only an appearance and an illusion? What is the doctrine of Immortality in these systems? What do these systems say about the immanence and transcendence of God? How can we define the Absolute—in positive terms, in negative terms, in both, or in neither? The answer to these and other problems of the same kind constitutes the *fundamentum divisionis* of the systems themselves. We shall see how the three great schools of Vedāntic philosophy find answers for these problems according to their different lights in the texts of the Upanishads.