What Sparked This Post
I was listening to a chanting of the Bhagavad Gītā online and stumbled upon a site that offered loose interpretations of each verse from multiple Vedantic traditions. (see references below)
Take this verse from the Gītā (6.30):
“He who sees Me in all things, and all things in Me…”
Three masters, three lenses:
- Śaṅkara (Advaita): “Me” is your own Self — awareness appearing as all forms.
- Rāmānuja (Viśiṣṭādvaita): “Me” is Nārāyaṇa — the Supreme Person, of whom all things are a part.
- Madhva (Dvaita): “Me” is the eternally distinct Lord — seen and loved as Other.
Same verse. Same reverence. Different truths? Or different reflections of the same?
Something about it caught me off guard. Here were three supposedly realised teachers — Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, Madhva — interpreting the same verses in radically different ways. And yet, all three traditions endure. All three teachers are venerated. All three, it would seem, got “there.”
It got me thinking, not about hermeneutics, the rules of interpretation and which of them is “correct”, but about the larger question. If all three “got there” — if they transcended the ego — then maybe the deeper question isn’t whose interpretation is correct, but:
Which path dissolves your ego fastest?
Dvaita’s devotion. Viśiṣṭādvaita’s surrender. Advaita’s inquiry. Different maps, different moods — but maybe the same destination: the undoing of the false “I.”
It’s tempting to argue over which path is superior. But superiority to what end? The real measure is: what helps dissolve your ego?
- For the devotional heart (Dvaita / Viśiṣṭādvaita): Surrender feels natural. Love flows easily. Why complicate it?
- For the rational mind (Advaita): Clarity is love. Logic is the doorway. Sentiment muddies the waters.
Perhaps all that’s really being claimed is fitness for a particular seeker’s constitution.
🪷 “The ‘I’ casts off the illusion of ‘I’ and yet remains as ‘I’. Such is the paradox of Self-realisation. It is beyond expression by words. It is beyond speech, beyond thought.”
— Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talk 28
That quote slices straight through. So if all three traditions can lead to ego-transcendence, then the claim of universal superiority for any one of them feels a bit misplaced. And if Śaṅkara got there through inquiry, and Rāmānuja through surrender, who’s to say one saw “more truth” than the other?
Maybe “levels of truth” are just mind games after the ego is gone.
What It Stirred in Me
Ramana’s clarity is arresting. Advaita’s map makes sense to me. And yet — I notice that what Advaita points to doesn’t feel as self-evident as it seems it should.
To be Ramesh requires no reminder. It just is. But the truth that I am Awareness — not this body-mind — doesn’t yet feel like that.
Maybe śravaṇa and mananam haven’t seeped deep enough. Maybe I’m still circling around.
So the gaze drifts — not in distraction, but in sincere curiosity: What lets this seeing become living?
Not a Call for Pluralism
This isn’t a celebration of “many paths, one truth.” Nor is it a comparison of traditions.
It’s a personal reflection: that until this truth becomes self-evident, as natural as identity itself, I’ll stay open to listening — not indiscriminately, but attentively.
I end with a pointer to a clear articulation, below, of this nuance between knowledge and realisation — beautifully explained by Sw. Sarvapriyananda in his talk on the Bhagavad Gītā 2.20–22:
📝 Note: This reflection is part of a broader inquiry into mistaken identity and the gradual undoing of the seeker-self. It builds on earlier questions about who we take ourselves to be — and what remains when even the path is seen through.
References:
- Interpretations drawn loosely from traditional commentaries: Bhagwad Gita 6:30
- Ramana Maharshi — Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi; Talk 28: ‘I’ paradox
- ➡️ Swami Sarvapriyananda – Gita Chapter 2, Verses 20–22 – Knowledge and Realisation
Simply Vedanta 