Vaishnavism ISKCON

Vaishnavism is the branch of Hinduism in which Vishnu or one of his avatars is worshipped as the supreme God. Bhaktas of Vishnu are called Vaishnavites.

Branches

Major Vaishnava schools of thought:

• Vishishtadvaita, espoused by Ramanuja
• Dvaita espoused by Shri Madhvacharya
• Achintya Bheda-Bheda, espoused by Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu adhered by Gaudiya Vaishnavism. ISKCON is the most well known branch of this school.
• Shuddhaadvaita, espoused by Vallabhacharya
• Dvaitaadvaita, espoused by Nimbarka
• Advaita is a philosophy founded by Shankaracharya,in which Vishnu is ultimately an attributeless Brahman.

There are a lot of disagreements over who exactly is Vaishnava.There are basically two sides to this party.

1.Group which believes that Vishnu is the Greatest God and all other Gods and creatures are below him.All the sects mentioned above excepting the last fall under this Group.

2.The Group which believes that as no soul is actually created,every soul is ultimately one and the same.Hence each soul could be considered as equally divine.Thus Vishnu in the Saguna form ,is one whom in which all attributes are in harmony and perfection.As a nirguna,he becomes the state unblemished by matter and is attributeless.

Normally the word Vaishanva is referred to people of the first category alone, but there are a number of people in the second group, i.e., Smartas who worship Vishnu as their favourite God, Ishta Deva, and who could be termed as Vaishanavas as well.

Vishnu and Shiva are sometimes visualized as a single divinity named - Harihara.

It is also notable that the heroes of both the great India Epics, 'Ramayan' and 'mahabarat' (Rama & Krishna Respectively) are believed to be incarnations of Lord Vishnu.

Vaishnavism flourished in tamilnadu in south India, thanks to 'azhvars' a set of 12 people who with their devotional hymns spread the sect across common people. A collection of their hymns in Tamil is called 'naalayira thivviya prabhandam'. Some of the prominent aazhvars are Poigaiyazhvar, peyazhvar, periyazhvar, nammazhvar & Andal.

Vaishnavism grew in later years thanks to people like Ramanujar, Surdas, Tulsidas,Tyagaraja etc

For more information about the first category see Vaishnava Theology and Gaudiya Vaishnava Theology.

For information about the second category of people see Smartism and Advaita.

However, with the entry of other religions, Hindus of the country were forced to unite and the discriminations of Vaishnavism & Saivism became intellectual arguments rather than fanaticistic idealogies.

External links

• Dharma Central; site from a Western convert to Hinduism, specifically, Vaishnvaism
• http://www.divyadesamonline.com All about Sri Vishnu Temples and temples in India.
• http://www.vaishnava.com/aboutvaishnavism.htm
• http://www.dlshq.org/download/hinduismbk.htm#_VPID_73 (What are the Vaishnavas?)
• http://www.dvaita.org/docs/srv_faq.html (Who is Vishnu? and the nature of Him.)
• http://www.srivaishnavan.com/srivaishnavan/servlet/section
• Gaudiya Vaishnavism
• http://www.prapatti.com/index.html
• Krishna.com All about Krishna. Info, books, MP3s, images, radio. . .
• ISKCON.com Official ISKCON site.
• Pushtimarg.net An encyclopedia of Pushtimarg
• http://www.harekrishna.com/~ara/col/books/BG/tsem1.html
• http://home.att.net/%7Es-prasad/hindu.htm
• World Vaishnava Association An Umbrella Organisation of the Vaishnava faith
• VINA - Vaishnava Internet News Agency The Official News Site of the World Vaishnava Association
• http://sriranganatha.tripod.com/id63.html
• http://advaita-vedanta.org - A Good Source of Information on Adi Shankaracharya's Advaita.