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Madhva and his School
CH. One of the important doctrines in which Madhva differs from others is that the experience in emancipation is not the same with all saints or emancipated persons. This view is supported by some of the Purāņas and also accepted by the Vaisnavas of the Gaudiya school; but the Rāmānujas as well as the Sankarites were strongly against it, and therefore the followers of the Rāmānuja school criticized Madhva strongly on this point. Thus Srīnivāsa Acārya wrote a separate prakarana work called Ananda-tāratamyakhandana. But a much longer and more critical attempt in this direction was made by Parakāla Yati in the fourth chapter of his Viyajīndra-parājaya. Both these works exist in manuscript.
In the fourth chapter of the fourth book of the Brahma-sūtra the question of how the emancipated ones enjoy their experience after emancipation is discussed. It is said here that it is by entering into the nature of the supreme Lord that the emancipated beings participate in the blissful experiences by their mere desire (samkalpa). There are however others who hold that the emancipated enjoy the blissful experiences directly through themselves, through their bodies, as mere attempts of intelligence. It is because in the emancipated state one is entitled to all kinds of blissful experiences that one can regard it as a state of summum bonum or the highest good. But the emancipated persons cannot have all the enjoyable experiences that the supreme Lord has; each individual soul is limited by his own rights and abilities, within which alone his desires may be rewarded with spontaneous fruition. Thus each emancipated person is entitled to certain types of enjoyment, limited by his own capacity and rights.
Again, in the third chapter of the third book of the Brahma-sūtra different types of worship are prescribed for different people: and such a difference of worship must necessarily mean difference in the attainment of fruits also. Thus it must be admitted that in the state of emancipation there are grades of enjoyment, experienced by emancipated persons of different orders.
This view is challenged by the Rāmānujas, who refer to the textual quotations of the Upanişads. The passages in the Brahmananda-vallī of the Taittiriya Upanisad, where different kinds of pleasures are associated with men, gandharvas and other beings, are not to be interpreted as different kinds of pleasures enjoyed by different kinds of emancipated beings. According to the Rāmānuja
