Vedanta's schools read the same three texts and reach opposite conclusions
Is your soul identical to God, or forever distinct? Vedanta, the most influential school of Hindu philosophy, answers both ways. Every branch works from the same three scriptures, yet the famous non-dual version that Westerners know best is actually a minority view; most schools centre on devotion to Vishnu.
The name means the end or conclusion of the Vedas and first referred to the Upanishads, which came last in several senses: they were the final writings of the Vedic age, the peak of its philosophy, and the texts studied in the ascetic stage of life. Vedanta is also called Uttara Mimamsa, the latter or higher enquiry, in contrast to an earlier school that dealt with ritual. Where that school asked how to perform sacrifice, Vedanta asks how humans relate to the absolute.
All branches share a canon of three sources: the Upanishads as revealed scripture, the Brahma Sutras of Badarayana as the reasoned synthesis, and the Bhagavad Gita as remembered tradition. Major teachers from Shankara to Madhva wrote commentaries on all three. They also agree on rebirth, on the goal of release from it, and on scripture as the only reliable guide in spiritual matters. Ramanuja justified that last point by arguing that theories built on human reasoning alone can always be toppled by someone cleverer.
The disagreements are deep. Shankara's Advaita holds that the self and Brahman are identical, and distinguishes a higher Brahman beyond all qualities from a lower one with attributes, the personal God of worship. Ramanuja's qualified non-dualism rejects that attributeless absolute: souls differ from God yet belong to him as an organic whole. Madhva's Dvaita keeps God and souls separate, and even denies that Brahman is the material stuff of the world, treating it only as its efficient cause.
Advaita stresses knowledge over devotion, and it drew Western attention through the 14th-century thinker Vidyaranya and modern figures such as Swami Vivekananda and Ramana Maharshi. Yet most Vedanta traditions are Vaishnava and put devotion first. For those Krishna-centred schools, the Bhagavata Purana matters so much that Vallabha added it as a fourth foundational text.
Source: Vedanta
