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100 The Višistā-dvaita School
CH. attainment of the ultimate goal of life is devotion, which is produced as a result of the performance of scriptural duties and the emergence of self-knowledged. According to Yāmuna, yoga in the Gītā means bhakti-yoga. So the ultimate object of the Gītā is the propounding of the supreme importance of bhakti (devotion) as the ultimate object, which requires as a precedent condition the performance of the scriptural duties and the dawning of the true spiritual nature of the self as entirely dependent on God.
It is related in the Prapannāmsta that Yāmuna was anxious to meet Rāmānuja, but died immediately before Rāmānuja came to meet him. So Rāmānuja could only render the last homage to his dead body.
Rāmānuja? It has already been said that Mahāpūrņa (Nambi), disciple of Yāmuna, had two sisters, Kāntimati and Dyutimatī, of whom the former was married to Keśava Yajvan or Asuri Keśava of Bhūtapuri and the latter to Kamalākṣa Bhatta. Rāmānuja (Ilaya Perumal), son of Keśava Yajvan, was born in A.D. 1017. He received his training, together with his mother's sister's son Govinda Bhatta, from Yādavaprakāśa, a teacher of Vedānta of great reputation. The details of Yādavaprakāśa's views are not known, but it is very probable that he was a monist? Before going to study with different from Nārāyana, but always associated with Him. He thus tries to refute all the views that suppose Lakşmi to be a part of Nārāyaṇa. Lakşmi should also not be identified with mayā. She is also conceived as existing in intimate association with Nārāyana and, like a mother, exerting helpful influence to bring the devotees into the sphere of the grace of the Lord. Thus Lakşmi is conceived to have a separate personality of her own, though that personality is merged, as it were, in the personality of Nārāyana and all His efforts, and all her efforts are in consonance with the efforts of Nārāyana (parasparū-nukūlatayā sarvatra samarasyum). On the controversial point whether Lakşmi is to be considered a jira and therefore atomic in nature, the problem how she can then be all-pervasive, and the view that she is a part of Nārāyana, Venkatanātha says that Lakşmi is neither Jiva nor Nārāyana, but a separate person having her being entirely dependent on God. Her relation to Näräyana can be understood on the analogy of the relation of the rays to the sun or the fragrance to the flower.
st'a-dharma-jñāna-rairāgja-sādhya-bhakty-eka-gocarah nārājanah param brahma gitā-śāstre samudituh
Gitartha-samgrahu, verse 1. ? Most of the details of Rāmānuja's life are collected from the account given in the Prapannāmsta by Anantācārya, a junior contemporary of Rāmānuja.
3 Yadava held that Brahman, though by its nature possessing infinitc qualities, yet transforms itself into all types of living beings and also into all kinds of inanimate things. Its true nature is understood when it is realized that it is one
