‘Why Do We Still Sift the Husk-Like Upaniṣads?’

Abstract

Examining the Padyāvalī of the preeminent Gaudiya theologian Rupa Gosvami, Lutjeharms examines how Rupa creatively arranges both religious and non-religious verses by numerous poets into a dissertation that evinces intimate familiarity with Vedanta (particularly Advaita Vedanta), but ultimately establishes bhakti as being superior to Vedanta’s primary object, liberation. Redrawing the lines between Vedanta and Vaishnavism also affords Rupa the opportunity to distinguish Chaitanyaite theology from that of other Vaishnava sects like the Sri Vaishnava Sampraday, which had also wrestled with Vedanta in its own theological literature.