The dramatic story of how Ramanujacharya and Madhwacharya broke from Advaita and created their own philosophical highways

Sankaracharya’s Advaita once looked like the default highway of South Indian Vedānta. Then two brilliant students, separated by two centuries but united in their dissatisfaction, walked out of the Advaitic classroom forever.

Ramanujacharya left first, reportedly in tears over how his teacher described the divine. Madhwacharya followed later, rising mid-lecture to list thirty-two logical flaws in the system he was supposed to be learning. Each departure sparked a philosophical revolution that still reverberates today.

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Advaita’s Two Provocative Claims

Before we understand the rebellion, we must grasp what was being rebelled against. Advaita’s power lay in two foundational claims that struck at the heart of ordinary religious experience:

1. Non-difference (Abheda)

Imagine being told that you, your family, the chair you’re sitting on, and the entire universe are ultimately illusions, that only one undifferentiated reality exists. This is Advaita’s first bombshell, captured in a famous mnemonic that every philosophy student learns:

ब्रह्म सत्यं जगन्मिथ्या जीवो ब्रह्मैव नापरः।
brahma satyaṃ jagan mithyā jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ

“Brahman alone is real; the world is false; the individual soul is none other than Brahman.”

This is a complete reframing of reality that makes all apparent differences ultimately illusory.

2. Quality-less Brahman (Nirguṇa-vāda)

Ultimate Brahman has no positive attributes; words like ‘omniscient’ or ‘loving’ belong only to a provisional teaching level. Sankaracharya states this bluntly in his Brahma-sūtra Bhāṣya (1.1.2):

“निर्विशेषं ब्रह्म प्रतिपादयितुं शास्त्रम् आरभ्यते”
“nirviśeṣaṃ brahma pratipādayitum śāstram ārabhyate”

“Scripture begins in order to teach Brahman without any attributes.”

Together, these two claims felt like dynamite under devotion and daily reality. Ramanujacharya and Madhwacharya felt the blast in different spots.

The Moments the Students Walked Away

Ramanujacharya and the ‘Monkey-Rump Eye’

The breaking point for Ramanujacharya came during a lecture on Chāndogya Upaniṣad 1.6.7, which describes the divine’s eyes:

तस्य यथा कप्यासं पुण्डरीकमेवमक्षिणी
tasya yathā kapyāsaṁ puṇḍarīkam evamakṣiṇī

Yādavaprakāśa’s interpretation: “His eyes are reddish like the opening of a monkey’s buttocks”, treating the divine description as a crude earthly comparison.

Ramanujacharya’s interpretation: “His eyes are beautiful like the lotus that blooms at the touch of the sun’s rays (kapyāsa)”, seeing real divine beauty worthy of love.

For Yādavaprakāśa, this was just another example proving that all divine epithets are mere provisional analogies with no ultimate meaning. If the Divine was nirguṇa, calling its eyes a monkey’s rump or a lotus did not change anything.

Ramanujacharya wept. If God’s beauty was just an embarrassing figure of speech, if divine love was merely a provisional teaching tool, then devotion itself became meaningless. The nirguṇa-vāda doctrine had drained the divine of everything that made it loveable.

He left the school that day and never returned, later declaring that divine qualities are real, eternal, and worthy of love. It was Advaita’s attributeless Brahman, not its non-dualism, that wounded him most deeply and sent him off the philosophical highway to build his own road.

Madhwacharya and the ‘Thirty-Two Errors’

Two centuries later, young Vāsudeva (the future Madhwacharya) was studying the Advaita manual Vākyārtha-candrikā under Āchyutaprekṣa. Mid-lecture, he rose from his seat and systematically listed thirty-two logical flaws in the Advaitic system, chiefly that calling the world “false” undercuts perception, ethics, and scripture all at once.

His teacher, stunned by this unprecedented challenge, suggested the student compose his own commentary if he found the traditional one so flawed. Madhwacharya did exactly that, anchoring his entire system on eternal difference (pañca-bheda, the five permanent distinctions between God and souls, souls and matter, soul and soul, God and matter, and matter and matter).

It was Advaita’s sweeping abheda doctrine, its claim that all differences are ultimately illusory, that drove him out of the classroom forever.

How the Two New Roads Collide with Each Other

Fast-forward to these two mature systems, and the clashes between them become inevitable. Having both rejected Advaita for different reasons, Ramanujacharya and Madhwacharya’s traditions now find themselves in fundamental disagreement with each other, a perfect illustration of how philosophical positions, when pursued to their logical extremes, generate new conflicts.

The Positions of Each Tradition

According to Madhwacharya: Eternal damnation (ananta narakāvasthā) for some souls, and permanent gradations in liberation (tāratamya), even liberated souls experience different degrees of bliss based on their intrinsic capacities.

According to Ramanujacharya: Universal eventual liberation (sarva-mukti) where all souls ultimately reach the same supreme bliss in Vaikuṇṭha, though the path and timing may differ. As Nammāḻvār declares:

வைகுந்தம் புகுவது மண்ணவர் விதியே
vaikuntam pukuvatu maṇṇavar vitiyē

“It is the destiny of all earthly beings to enter Vaikuṇṭha.”

Viśiṣṭādvaita’s Critique of Dvaita: The Problem of Divine Partiality

Ramanujacharya’s Logic: If God truly possesses limitless compassion and auspicious qualities (kalyāṇa-guṇa), He cannot hand out unequal bliss forever nor condemn anyone eternally. A truly loving divine cannot systematically exclude certain souls from liberation. Final liberation must bathe every soul in the same ocean of joy.

समोऽहं सर्वभूतेषु न मे द्वेष्योऽस्ति न प्रियः।
samo’haṃ sarvabhūteṣu na me dveṣyo’sti na priyaḥ

“I am equal toward all beings; none is hateful to Me, nor dear.” (Bhagavad Gītā 9.29)

Ramanujacharya reads this literally: divine love cannot admit of permanent favorites or outcasts. Madhwacharya’s doctrine of eternal damnation (ananta narakāvasthā) contradicts the very nature of infinite compassion.

Dvaita’s Critique of Viśiṣṭādvaita: The Problem of Distinction Collapse

Madhwacharya’s Logic: If difference is ultimate, and Viśiṣṭādvaita accepts this against Advaita, then these differences cannot dissolve at the gates of liberation. Souls keep their natural “sizes”; bliss fills each to its brim, but volumes differ (tāratamya). Flatten that ladder and Advaita’s oneness sneaks back through the side door.

एको मनुष्य आनन्दः… ब्रह्मानन्दः
eko manuṣya ānandaḥ… brahmānandaḥ

“One measure of human bliss… [leading up to] the bliss of Brahman.” (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.8-9)

Madhwacharya reads this as a stepped ladder of pleasures that continues even in liberation. From his own Tattva-saṁkhyāna (v. 27):

पञ्चविधभेदः सदा सत्यः
pañca-vidha-bhedaḥ sadā satyaḥ

“The five differences are always true.”

The two schools agree that the world is real, the Lord supreme, and devotion essential. They duel only at the edges, eternal hierarchy versus leveled love, graded bliss versus equal liberation.

How Core Commitments Generate Conflicts

What emerges from this analysis is a fascinating pattern of philosophical genetics. Each school’s core commitments generate specific problems that drive them toward particular solutions, and into conflict with alternatives.

Ramanujacharya’s Core Commitment: Divine love must be real and universal (kalyāṇa-guṇa-pūrṇatva)

His thought process: If God truly possesses infinite compassion, mercy, and love as real attributes (not illusions), then these qualities cannot be partial or limited. A genuinely loving divine cannot arbitrarily exclude certain souls from grace forever. Therefore, Madhwacharya’s eternal damnation doctrine contradicts the very nature of divine love, it makes God’s compassion finite and preferential, which is impossible for a perfect being.

Madhwacharya’s Core Commitment: Difference must be ultimately real (pañca-bheda-satya)

His thought process: If we accept (against Advaita) that differences between God and souls are genuinely real, then these differences cannot be temporary or provisional. Real difference means permanent difference. Therefore, Ramanujacharya’s eventual unity, even qualified unity, is logically impossible. Any system that posits souls ultimately merging into the same state of liberation is crypto-Advaita, smuggling non-difference back through the side door.

Two students, two flash-points, two lifelong missions: one to save God’s beauty from philosophical abstraction, the other to save reality from conceptual dissolution. Their departures gave us three distinct paths, each illuminating different aspects of the divine-human relationship.

This analysis traces philosophical positions, not the greatness of the ācāryas themselves, we are far too small for such judgments. Each tradition has produced saints, scholars, and genuine liberation. I obviously find myself drawn to Emperumānār’s (Ramanujacharya’s) vision of divine love that cannot exclude anyone forever.