qualified monists be like "the sparks come from the fire but they NEVER merge back into it"

he's big on saying "God never changes so we can't become God", but that's not the purport of true monists. we simply believe that everything is God aka all is pure consciousness, including us, and temporary conditioned existence in samsara is due to maya.

take that mimamsakan

this guy says he's a madhva-gaudiya but some of his views are strikingly like qualified monism

man i forgot that the bhagavata purana is written like this

this author is so insufferable

this book hasn't done much in terms of educating me, all its done is produced some banger hinduposts

damn that was kind of an effortpost

what a silly thing to call a high blunder! he is overplaying his hand here regarding sankara. i haven't read enough sankara but yes sankara would have believed in an unmanifest material creation that precedes manifest material creation. this is just pradhana, the essential undifferentiated root of prakriti which is co-eternal with purusha (purusha and prakriti are one, but lets be a dualist for a bit. samkhya 101). and if he said krishna transcends the unmanifest (sankara believed that nirguna brahman, attributeless and non-dual, is the ultimate true form of Brahman but he did certainly believe in a personal God/Ishvara and wrote quite stirring hymns and stotrams to Vishnu, Shiva and Devi. he just viewed a personal God as God viewed through the influence of maya, hence the term "mayavada". i don't believe this, i don't believe God is ultimately impersonal, i believe He is both impersonal and personal and transcends the duality of both.) sankaras just stating the obvious here. imo Krishna is God, He is Lord of and transcends pradhana which still lies as a potency "within Him" when the universe ceases to exist. just because sankara viewed Ishvara (a personal God with qualities and with a role of creating, maintaining, and destroying the universe) as a product of mayas illusion upon the jiva doesn't mean he should have necessarily viewed the root of material nature (also a product of maya, but then everything except Para Brahman is seen as maya in advaita vedanta) as on par with Ishvara. in other, somewhat reductive words, krishnas form is made of the most good "matter", but his being transcends it, being Para Brahman (as seen through the lens of maya). to explain further, sankara believed that Krishna and other avataras have bodies made of sattva guna, the view criticized by the author. this is in line with his belief that Ishvara is an illusory view of nirguna brahman conditioned by sattva guna.

i honestly don't see why viewing Gods being as transcendent and his form when he descends as material is so offensive. in guna theory, Gods form is still very special, because all matter is either a combination of gunas or in the case of the flesh human body, mostly composed of tamas guna with some rajas and sattva. only akasha (ether/space/sky, often compared to Brahman, i can explain why if youre curious) is mostly sattvic, and Gods form is said to be entirely sattvic, despite it being physical and tangible (when He wants it to be). so clearly, Gods form is special! why the outrage???

this is so silly. "God LITERALLY is a cowherd boy dark like a beautiful monsoon cloud with a peacock feather on his head". God has no "true form!" He/She takes many forms, whether created by Himself to educate humanity about His nature or in forms approved by Him that are dear to His worshippers.

i find this view of final beatitude to be incoherent. "being fit for liberation means realizing identity with Brahman" (strange for a madhvavada, because madhva said only vishnu is Brahman). this is true. however, he goes on to say that after identity with Brahman is realized, through devotional service (bhakti/seva), one attains eternal residence in vaikuntha/goloka, where one merely "associates" with God, ie is separate from Him. so are we Brahman, or separate from Brahman? also, note how he says "they don't fall down" and also "if they fall down".

conceiving creation itself as being a yajna is so quintessentially vedic and no doubt would be supported by mimamsakans. i prefer jnana yajna (the sacrifice of knowledge) myself!

i genuinely believe that God will correct mankinds errant beliefs about God and religion at some point.

the vedas (not taking about the upanishads) are very beautiful and definitely significantly divinely inspired but it really says A Lot that when modern hindus try to invoke the vedas its either "all the vedas are actually about different qualities of Vishnu" or its the hymn of purusha (forget what its called), which is the closest thing to being monotheist in the vedas while still being rather antiquated in its conception of God.

sorry everyone without this very specific belief, you merely *think* you are liberated. sorry Buddha, Sankara, etc.

for real though, some vaisnavas get so offended when you say avataras bodies are composed of sattva-guna and not "Brahman stuff". this is why calling avataras "incarnations" like in christianity is inaccurate. (sorry christians! your flesh isn't exalted anymore, but it will be in Vaikuntha). of course, Brahman is formless and transcends form, it is Gods will and His amazing qualities and amazing lack of qualities that give His form spiritual potency, not it being made of Brahman-stuff. call me a mayavada, i don't care.

"shunyavadas and mayavadas btfo" i guess. here you see that many vaishnavas are like many christians who say "if you don't believe in a personal God, you aren't a monotheist and won't go to heaven". but of course, this isn't true. saguna brahman and nirguna brahman are both Brahman, Brahman is partless and non-dual. not being like human beings who are solely "personal" as well as comprising both sat and asat, sarva and shunya is simply part of what makes God so wonderful. but yes, its easier to reach God through bhakti of saguna brahman than through jnana of nirguna brahman.

i can see how someone who approaches hinduism for the first time is turned off by all the (frankly incessant) references to Gods feet, and putting Gods feet on your head, but it just means God is so holy even "His feet" are holy, and putting someones feet on your head is an act of deference because then the lowest part of them is above you.

anthropomorphists who believe God has a "true form" that looks like a human being and that we are made in its literal image when God incarnates among aliens and appears as one of them

another hindu hot take. Brahma doesn't actually exist as described (Lord of creation of each individual universe and their protector, chief engineer, Lord of the vedas, progenitor of all progenitors and all mind-born sages), but the most notable secondary creator in each universe (vastly inferior to the Supreme Lord's capacity as mover of His energy-consciousness and sanctioner of all its vibrations and thus creator, sustainer, dissolver of all things) could be called "Brahma". likewise the longest lived and highest celestial (deva) could be called Brahma. also, "Shiva" and "Vishnu" just describe the Supreme Lord with different flavorings, it is silly to say God takes a firm triparte form or worse, that there is a trinity. (sorry christians!)

the counterargument to accusations of anthropomorphizing the divine by assigning certain feelings, form, gender, abode, etc that "actually the human is rooted in the divine, so its not strange that there is overlap" is incredibly insufficient