Madhusūdana Sarasvatī - Journey From Dvaita To Advaita

Journey From Dvaita To Advaita

According to a story, MadhusUdana SarasvatI is said to have really gone to Navadvipa to meet Chaitanya, the great devotee of Krishna. But the MahAprabhu was no longer staying in NavadvIpa. So MadhusUdana turned his attention to studying Nyaya in the flourishing Navya Nyaya school. He studied works of Udayana such as the laxaNAvalI, the tattva-chintAmaNi of Gangesha and its commentaries. Soon MadhusUdana was recognized as a foremost scholar in Nyaya. He was also said to have been influenced by the wave of bhakti sweeping across Bengal due to Chaitanya. One story mentions that MadhusUdana had, at that time, accepted the bheda-vAda, the doctrine of difference. The realism of Nyaya seemed to provide a logical basis to bheda. He soon became keen on "disproving" advaita using all his skills in logic. But at the time, since he had not done an in-depth study of Advaita with the intention of learning the details of Advaita Vedanta in order to disprove them, he proceeded to the sacred city of Varanasi. There, he studied Vedanta under RAma-tIrtha. But as MadhusUdana studied Advaita more and more, he became convinced of the veracity of Advaita. He later confessed to his Guru, Rama-tIrtha, that he had originally come to study Advaita in order to refute it and whether there was there any prAyashchitta for him. RAma tIrtha is said to have asked MadhusUdana to accept sannyAsa as the prAyashchitta.

Regardless of whether these stories are true or not, it is true that a reading of the advaita-siddhi shows that MadhusUdana was enormously skilled in dealing with logic and dialectics. Note also that the naiyAyika, who is a realist to the core, is as much an opponent of the advaitin in debates as other realists such as the dvaitins. MadhusUdana was more interested in defending advaita and tackling the exegetical (interpretation of Vedanta) aspects.