Teach me about Vishishtadvaita.

[Spirit Seeker]

Hi can anyone give me a brief summary of the beliefs & fundamentals of Vishishtadvaita ?

Any links or sources would be great too...

[Spirit Seeker]

Still seeking to learn here if anyone is willing.

[Viraja]

I downloaded the e-book quoted in http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1007 message #3 by Saidevo ji. I have been wanting to learn about Vishishtadvaita too for sometime now, this book seems comprehensive.

[philosoraptor]

An excellent book written just for beginners is A Dialogue on Hinduism by V.N. Gopala Desikan. It is published by the Vishishtadvaita Research Centre. It is written in a very simple Q&A format which covers all the essentials in a very easy-to-understand, yet reasonably comprehensive format. Unfortunately, like many of VRC's books, you probably won't be able to find it on Amazon. You may need to locate their contact info yourself or try various Indian booksellers like exoticindia, dkagencies, or printasia.

Another good book is Visistadvaita by A.S. Raghavan. This was published by TTD in 1985, and so it may no longer be in print. It is more in-depth than the Dialogue book but reasonably comprehensive. I wish it quoted shruti more, but since its aim is to educate on the fundamentals of visistadvaita rather than refute other systems, it still does a good job.

You can also check Amazon.com for any of S.M.S. Chari's books. He is a scholar who has written books for a more scholarly bent, but he is an insider to the tradition. There is a Bhagavad-Gita translation with Ramanuja's commentary published by Ramakrishna Mission and translated by Swami Adidevananda. It is a decent effort, but the translator could probably have done a better job making the commentary more digestible to the average reader.

There are also 2 sets of 108 E-books published on the internet, but these are mostly for insiders and may not be basic enough for an outsider to understand. Still, they are free. I checked my links to the websites and they appear to be down. Will repost them if I find the new locations.

[Viraja]

Philosoraptor,

So both the books are out of reach unless we can find them after some research? I noticed the book I downloaded from the other link is about 600 pages long, I would love to have a smaller book, actually it need not have to take that many pages to learn the basics of VA principle, IMO. Any shorter version for easy read to begin with, will be much appreciated.

[satay]

namaste,
I actually love Dr. Chari's books. I find him to be a reasonable, logical person and he has a great writing style.

I agree with you re Adidevananda's translation. It is a bit dry for a casual/average student like me.

You can also check Amazon.com for any of S.M.S. Chari's books. He is a scholar who has written books for a more scholarly bent, but he is an insider to the tradition. There is a Bhagavad-Gita translation with Ramanuja's commentary published by Ramakrishna Mission and translated by Swami Adidevananda. It is a decent effort, but the translator could probably have done a better job making the commentary more digestible to the average reader.

[Viraja]

I just ordered 'Fundamentals of Visistadvaita Vedanta' by S.M.Srinivasa Chari through AbeBooks for $18 (free shipping). At Amazon, the same book costed $48! I don't understand this price difference, both are new books. Anyway, eagerly looking forward to understand Visistadvaita..

[philosoraptor]

I just ordered 'Fundamentals of Visistadvaita Vedanta' by S.M.Srinivasa Chari through AbeBooks for $18 (free shipping). At Amazon, the same book costed $48! I don't understand this price difference, both are new books. Anyway, eagerly looking forward to understand Visistadvaita..

You are obviously not familiar with the age-old tradition of "price-hiking" for imports. :-)

By the way, among those free SV E-books were some books by Saroja Ramanujam on Bhagavad-Gita and Brahma-Sutras. Both looked really interesting, but sadly there are too many interesting books on my short-list at the moment. If anyone has read them, I would be very interested in getting their opinion. Dr. Ramanujam is apparently both an academic and an insider to the tradition with approval of its acharyas.

[philosoraptor]

I forgot to mention another invaluable source of information are the English discourses of Sri U. Ve. Velukkudi Krishnan Swami, available at www.vedics.org. Some of them are available for free from pravachanam.com (search under English).

[philosoraptor]

You might also find this site useful:

http://www.ramanuja.org/intro.html

It's one of the original Sri Vaishnava web sites, back from the days when the internet was relatively new.