Is Vedanta is the conclusion of the Vedas or is it one of the six philosophies derived from the Vedas? What exactly is their mutual relationship?

From Karuna Sindhu P

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
I had heard that Vedanta is the end of Vedic knowledge so in that sense it is higher than Vedic knowledge but you explained in your Isopanishad class first class that Vedanta is one of the six schools of philosophy that has evolved from the four Vedas so it seems that Vedas are higher and Vedanta is lower so what exactly is the relationship between Vedas and Vedanta answer to understand this relationship first of all we have to understand the difference between a book and a philosophy sometimes we may say that Bhagavad Gita is a book of philosophy or Srimad Bhagavatam is a book of philosophy yes it is true that these are books of philosophy but philosophy is also a systematic body of knowledge which addresses the fundamental questions of life so now if I look at the Srimad Bhagavatam what is the philosophy of the Srimad Bhagavatam the Bhagavatam is not structured like a philosophy course what is the answer to this question what is the answer to this question why is there a problem of evil in this world what is God’s relationship with the world so now these questions are definitely answered in the Bhagavatam but they are answered in different places some questions are answered in Bhagavad Gita some in Kapila’s teachings some in Narada’s teachings to Vyasa so like that they are answered in different places the problem of evil is addressed in the conversation between Bhoomi and Dharma or it is addressed elsewhere in Yudhishthira Krishna why his devotees suffer so it is addressed in various places so a book contains philosophy but the philosophy in the book may not be immediately self evident that’s why even in our presentations when we want to teach Bhagavad Gita we start with an introductory course for example we may have some course on which we talk about the law of karma and that law of karma is implied in the Bhagavad Gita but it is not explicitly explained because in that culture that explicit explanation was not required and Bhagavad Gita did not focus on that its subject was more about what is the right action one should do so like that Vedas are books, they are literature and Vedanta is a philosophy so now what is considered revealed is the Vedas so in that sense we could say the Vedas are higher because the words of the Vedas shabda brahman bhavam vidhi so the Vedas come shabda brahman there are various places where it is said like that that that the Vedas come from the supreme lord now after the Vedas have emerged and the Vedic texts are available as well as the Vedic hymns are there in the memory of the people now what do they mean so to understand that meaning the Vedas are studied by the various sages and then different sages they came up with different understandings of what is the actual meaning of the Vedas so when we say that there are the four Vedas over here so the four Vedas can be said like one body of knowledge one set of literature now what is their meaning so there are these six systems of philosophy which claim to be explanations of the Vedas which claim that this is the teaching of the Vedas so some thinkers say that Sankhya is the teaching of the Vedas some others say that Nyaya is the teaching of the Vedas so like that different people, different thinkers have come up with different philosophies which they substantiate based on the Vedas now Vedanta sutra is a book and Vedanta is a school of thought Vedanta and Vedanta sutra are not exactly the same Vedanta is a school of thought, it is a philosophy and Vedanta sutra is a book so Vedanta sutra is a book which is foundational for Vedanta but Vedanta and the school of thought also has two other pramanas it is based upon Sankhya so there is Shruti, Smriti and Nyaya Shruti is the four Vedas themselves Smriti is the Puranas especially the Bhagavad Gita which is contained in the Mahabharata and then the Nyaya is the Vedanta sutra so that means we have three things now we have the Vedas, then we have the Vedanta sutra and then we have Vedanta so now Vedanta often, the way Srila Prabhupada uses it he often uses it as equivalent with Vedanta sutra, the book but in a sense it is Vedanta means the end of knowledge so in Vedanta sutra which is a foundational book for the school of thought called Vedanta in Vedanta sutra the statements of the Vedas, especially the Upanishads are analyzed critically and exhaustively this statement is there, what does this mean and then from the context from the language from the knowledge of the overall philosophy the meaning is given so now while giving this meaning various other schools of thought are evaluated and refuted so Vedanta sutra basically takes the teaching of the Vedas, especially the Upanishads which are the philosophical part of the Vedas and explains their meaning and while explaining their meaning if other schools of thought have given alternative meanings, those meanings are refuted and the correct understanding is explained so in this way Vedanta sutra is considered to be the end of Vedic knowledge in the sense that different people speculated differently of what might be the meaning of the Vedas but the same person who wrote the who put the Vedas in written form that same person is the Acharya of Vedanta but different schools of thought are different Acharyas, for example Kapila is the Acharya of prominent Acharya of Sankhya and like that there are different sages who are Acharyas for different schools of thought but they are all claiming their authority based on the Vedas but that same author has written Vedanta sutra and Yasadeva quotes the Vedas and also refutes other explanations of those Vedas and establishes Vedanta as the conclusive understanding of the Vedas so in that sense Vedas are like the source texts they are the final repositories of authority but based on the repositories of authority what is the conclusion that conclusion is given in a book called Vedanta sutra and that conclusion is itself a system of knowledge, a school of thought and that is called as Vedanta and it derives this name Vedanta the end of Veda because after exhaustive analysis of the content of the Vedas this conclusion has been arrived by the same author who wrote the Vedas and in that sense it is the authoritative conclusion and of course Chaitanya Mahaprabhu would explain that the same Yasadeva also made that conclusion more explicit and more clear in the Srimad Bhagavatam that’s why it is called as the commentary on the Vedanta sutra that is of course a different subject but suffice it to say that the relationship between the Vedas and Vedanta or Vedanta sutra is rather than thinking of which is higher and which is lower we can think in terms of our source texts and the understanding of those texts as given by the same author so which is more authoritative both are considered authoritative but the Vedanta sutra is the conclusion of the Vedas given by the same author same author and then the body of the school of thought, the body of knowledge that is taught in the Vedanta sutra is called as Vedanta Thank you.