This is from G. Kamesh.
Truth must be the same for everyone, especially for enlightened ones like Buddha, Shankara,
Ramanuja and Madhva.
However they seem to have their own version of it.
If Advaita is the truth, shouldn't all enlightened persons profess it?
Good question.
It's good that we are ending on this question.
So the truth must be one.
There must be one reality.
We are all part of this one reality.
So if enlightened persons have accessed this truth, they have become enlightened about
this truth, shouldn't they give one account of it?
And look at the difference.
It's well chosen.
Madhva, Madhvacharya, who lived about 800 years ago, the great commentator in the dualistic
Madhva Vedanta, the Dvaita Vedanta tradition.
What did he find?
He's enlightened.
What did he find?
There is God.
God exists.
For him God is Vishnu or Narayana.
And that God is supremely independent, Svatantra.
And all of us are dependent, all living and non-living things are dependent on that God,
Paratantra.
And there is a clear difference between God and us.
We are not one.
We are different.
That's why dualism.
That's why Madhva's iconography will always show him like this.
Not victory.
That means two.
There are two realities, dualism.
Then along comes Ramanuja, who is supposed to be enlightened also.
And this great master, the commentator on the Vishishtadvaita tradition, Sri Vaishnava
tradition, he says, no, no, no, not separate, not two.
We are all part of one unity.
So God is the cosmic sum total of all living and non-living things.
So this entire universe is like the body of God.
We are all one.
Yes, there are differences.
Just like in your own body, the legs are different from the tummy and the tummy is different
from the hands and hands from the head.
But they are all part of an organic unity which you call the body.
And you feel like one.
Similarly, there is one organic unity in this universe, which is God or Brahman.
And we are all parts of that.
We are parts of a divine, parts of a divine whole.
Like a bonfire, Upanishad says, a bonfire is burning, thousands of sparks emanate from it.
Each spark is coming from the same bonfire, but the spark by itself is not the bonfire.
Then comes Shankara and says, yes, that ultimate reality is there.
And you and that ultimate reality are one and the same.
No two, no part and whole.
You are that ultimate reality.
There is no whole and part relationship.
You are Brahman.
And then Buddha, who was before all of them, he said, none of this is true.
There is no God, there is no permanent Self and He is also enlightened.
How?
I think for that we have to go to Sri Ramakrishna.
In the Indian tradition it is accepted from thousands of years.
The truth is one and the sages speak of it variously.
It is written there.
From the Rig Veda, the oldest text in Hinduism, Rig Veda, Ekam Sad Viprabhahudavadantya,
truth is one, the sages speak of it variously.
In the Shiva Mahamstotra it is said, the three Sankhyas, Yoga, the Pashupati Mata, the Vaishnavas,
all of these are different paths.
They all lead to you, my Lord, as different rivers, when they are way to the same ocean.
In different places you will find.
In Jagannath Puri, which I am familiar with, I grew up near that, so where God is worshipped
as Jagannath.
Jagannath literally means the Lord of the world.
But it became the English word Jagannath.
You see in the dictionary, because of the car festival, so Jagannath comes out once
in a year on a chariot, huge, giant wooden chariots, which are as big as these brownstone
buildings and the images are installed there and they go for a little spin around the town
once a year.
And millions and millions of people come there.
So when the first British colonizers came and they saw this and they asked, what's that?
And the people there must have said Jagannath.
And they were more interested in the giant chariot and said, so that's Jagannath.
So that's what became the word Jagannath in the English dictionary.
Now in this very Hindu deity, Jagannath is nothing but Krishna.
So in this very Hindu deity and all the rituals are very Hindu, Hindu pujas, rituals, absolutely
orthodox Hinduism.
One of the hymns to Jagannath which is chanted daily is that which the Shaivas worship as
Shiva, the Devis as the Divine Mother, the Buddhists as emptiness, the Vaishnavas as
Vishnu is what we worship here as Sri Krishna Jagannath.
So imagine, Buddhists also find a place there.
So this sentiment was always there in Hinduism and Sri Ramakrishna very specifically emphasizes
this day and age, jato mat tato pat, as many faiths so many paths.
But how is that possible?
His question is how is this possible?
How if truth is one, how can you have such multiple, not only multiple, conflicting accounts?
How?
The reason is this, think about it.
Truth is one but suppose it is beyond language, you can't express it through language.
Upanishad says, avang manasa gocharam, beyond thoughts and concepts, beyond language.
No particular theology or philosophy can adequately describe it because language fails to do that
and concepts fail to express it.
Then what can you do?
You can do one of two things.
One is you can be very precise and logical and say all of these are wrong.
I can show you each of these philosophies fails to capture the truth.
That's what Nagarjuna did nearly 2000 years ago, moola madhyamaka karika,
the foundation of the school of emptiness basically in Buddhism.
And the other way round is all of them are true but they are not true by themselves.
They all express different paths and different aspects of an infinite reality.
Can you think of the ultimate reality as so capacious that you can approach it as Jagannath,
as Krishna, as Christ, as Shiva, as the formless Allah, as the emptiness of the Buddhist,
the clear light of the void, pure consciousness of the Buddhist?
Can you think of the ultimate reality in all of these ways?
It's like the old Indian tale of the five blind men who went to touch an elephant
and each described the elephant as someone who touched the leg of the elephant,
someone who touched the trunk said it's like a pipe,
someone who touched the big ear of the elephant said it's like a big fan,
someone who touched the tail of the elephant said it's like a rope.
Now they were not wrong, but they were partially correct.
That's another way of looking at it.
This is a limitless reality.
One of the things Sri Ramakrishna hated was people trying to limit the nature of God,
saying that God is like this, as my book says, as my teacher says and that's it.
Everything else is wrong and you should all come to my path.
No, Sri Ramakrishna said never limit God.
Who are you to limit God?
So the ultimate nature of reality is so capacious, all of these, they work,
they take you to that reality, all of these approaches.
So Madhva's dualistic approach takes you to realisation,
so does Ramanuja's approach, so does Shankara's approach,
so does Buddha's approach and all the other approaches.
One of Shankaracharya's disciples, Sureshwaracharya, a great disciple of Shankaracharya,
has a beautiful verse in which he says,
by whatever path seekers attain enlightenment,
all those paths of the past and the present and all those which are to come are welcome.
So yes, the answer to that is the ultimate nature is so capacious
that all of these descriptions, if you ask Nagarjuna, they are all wrong.
If you ask Sri Ramakrishna, they are all right.
And they are both saying the same thing, they are both expressing the same thing.
But the fact is they all work and they will take you, they are like paths.
These descriptions are not the end.
They will take you to that realisation and set you free from suffering
and give you limitless fulfilment.