Śankara vs Rāmānuja vs Caitanya vs Abhinava Gupta vs Rāmakrishna

Usually, after a slew of lectures on Sri Caitanya and Tantrik Vaishnavism, which we tend to do around Gaur Purnima, we like to bask in the afterglow by simply comparing Caitanya's philosophy to the other schools that we tend to study in our community. In last year's talk called Nārada vs Caitanya vs Rāmakrishna on Bhakti Philosophy we specifically compared the different schools based on their points on Bhakti in theory and practice. In this talk, we take a more philosophical, metaphysical and soteriological and maybe even more general, "birds-eye-view" approach to some of these schools differ from one another. This video might even be a good introduction for some of these schools and their basic claims about Reality!
But first, we have a discussion on why intellectualism is so important in spiritual life!

And like we were saying in the last video:

it's very good to do this kind of comparative work because then we can appreciate the special features that make each tradition special while recognizing the underlying spirituality unity in which all traditions are established! Also in prevents us from becoming dogmatic or "one-sided" in our approach!

May we all attain to mental and emotional flexibility/dexterity that our spirituality may shine forth with ever-new freshness!

Jai Gaur! Jai Nitai! Jai Nārada! Jai Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa Deva Ki Jai!

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