[Advaita-l] Comments of an ISCKON follower

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

Sridhara Swami was an advaitin but his view of Advaita is different from
the views of many contemporary  advaitins. For example, his view is Ishwara
is that He is absolute. He considered advaita siddhi to be different from
sayujya following Bhagavatam, which says that a devotee does not accept any
of the five kinds of liberation including sayujyam and attains the very
state or Vishnu. As you can see from Sri Sadananda's post, contemporary
advaitins equate sayujyam with advaita siddhi.

You have to take Sri Krishna Chaitanya's criticism of Sri Vallabha with a
pinch of salt. This account occurs in Chaitanya Caritamrta, written almost
100 years after his time. It does not occur in earlier contemporary
biographies.

On Saturday, March 17, 2012, abhishek sm <abhishek046 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also Sri Chaitanya regarded the BhavArtha dipika(a commentary on the
> Bhagavata purana) of Jagadguru Sridhara swami(an advaitin) as the
> best. Vallabhacharya ridiculed Swami Sridhara saying, "He writes
> whatever he understands at that point of time". Chaitanya is said to
> have given a brilliant purport- "I consider them among prostitutes,
> those who do not respect the swami"!! Although it implies to wives who
> do not respect their husbands(swami), it is an indirect reply to
> Vallabha. Whether this Vallabhacharya is the same Vallabha of
> Shuddadvaita or not is not clear.