Disappearance Day of Sri Ramanujacarya, 2025

Friday, 07 February 2025 [Mayapur, West Bengal, India Time]

Disappearance Day of Sri Ramanujacarya

Śrī-sampradāya:

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “The Rāmānuja-sampradāya, they are called Śrī-sampradāya. They worship Lakṣmī-Nārāyaṇa. Everyone worships the Lord and His potency, spiritual potency. Just like we worship Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa, similarly, the Rāmānuja-sampradāya, they worship Lakṣmī-Nārāyaṇa or Sītā-Rāma. So we should follow the sampradāya. Sampradāya-vihīnā ye mantrās te viphalā matāḥ.”

(Lecture on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 7.9.18, Feb. 25, 1976, Māyāpur)

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “Thus although the energies of the Supreme Personality of Godhead interact within the cosmic manifestation, each keeps its separate individual existence. Merging in the material or spiritual energies, therefore, does not involve loss of individuality. According to Śrī Rāmānujapāda’s theory of Viśiṣṭādvaita, although all the energies of the Lord are one, each keeps its individuality (vaiśiṣṭya).”

(Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi-līlā 7.121, Purport | 1973 Edition)

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “We Gaudiya Vaisnava follow Srila Ramanuja’s philosophy almost in the same manner. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu gives the identification of jiva soul as the eternal servant of Krishna and is situated as marginal potency of the Lord based on the philosophy of acintya-bheda bheda-tattva. This is almost similar to Visistadvaita vada. Vaisnava philosophy is now being pushed on all over the world under the Hare Krishna movement, and we feel Sripada Ramanuja a great support for the Vaisnava philosophical understanding. It is like a combination of nyaya sruti and smrti prasthans.”

(Letter to: V. S. R. Chakravarti, Nov. 22, 1974, Bombay)

Rāmānujācārya’s Viśiṣṭādvaita-vāda:

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “The Lord is the reservoir of all cosmic manifestation, animate and inanimate. The advocates of Viśiṣṭādvaita-vāda philosophy explain the Vedānta-sūtra by saying that although the living entity has two kinds of bodies–subtle (consisting of mind, intelligence and false ego) and gross (consisting of the five basic elements)–and although he thus lives in three bodily dimensions (gross, subtle and spiritual), he is nevertheless a spiritual soul. Similarly, the Supreme Personality of Godhead who emanates the material and spiritual worlds is the Supreme Spirit. As an individual spirit soul is almost identical to his gross and subtle bodies, so the Supreme Lord is almost identical to the material and spiritual worlds.

The material world, full of conditioned souls trying to lord it over matter, is a manifestation of the external energy of the Supreme Lord, and the spiritual world, full of perfect servitors of the Lord, is a manifestation of His internal energy. Since all living entities are minute sparks of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, He is the Supreme Soul in both the material and spiritual worlds. The Vaiṣṇavas following Lord Caitanya stress the doctrine of acintya-bhedābheda-tattva, which states that the Supreme Lord, being the cause and effect of everything, is inconceivably, simultaneously one with His manifestations of energy and different from them.”

(Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi-līlā 2.37, Purport | 1974 Edition)