I don't know if everyone finds this thing as hilarious as I find it to be... But it kindah warmed my heart and reminded me that how media exaggerates the differences between us even though most of us including the religious types are pretty tolerant and seek coexistence with eachother.
So I helped finishing off the cake yesterday, because no non-veg (egg) on Vaikuntha Ekadashi.. 😅
I'm writing this right after squirming at my mom after finding out that it's gonna be uppitt for dinner after having avlakki for breakfast and lunch. Uppitt gang rise up :)
For the Āḻvārs the main reason seems to be that one is in the same world with one’s beloved One.
Veṅkaṭanātha adds some more theology to it, speaking of the fact that one does not only share sālokya ‘being in the same world [with God]’, but also paramasāmya ‘supreme identity [with God]’. This last state seems to violate exactly the residual dualism necessary in order to allow for love and service to God, and it is possible that Veṅkaṭanātha only included it because of the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad passage about it (nirañjanaḥ paramam sāmyam upaiti, 3.1.3).
Therefore, Veṅkaṭanātha explains that this paramasāmya is not tādātmya (as for the Advaitins), but rather sādharmya ‘having the same characteristics’. Still, the person having attained sādharmya is not equal to God in every respect. For instance, they cannot create the world. So, the sādharmya regards other aspects, most notably bhogasāmya ‘equality of enjoyment’ ( Jagadvyaparavarjam prakaranadasannihitattvaccha IV.4.17 . This is from Vedanta Sutra and found here - Vedanta Sutra Jagadvyaparadikaranam, basically explaining that jiva can never get power of creating and destroying the world and this is eternal difference between Jiva and Bhagavan. However bhogasamyam is there)
In other words, one enjoys all the blessing experiences of God in Vaikuṇṭha, although one does not have the same level of independent agency (but still a lot of freedom, according to Tattvamuktākalāpa 2.63).
The idea of equal enjoyment with God raises the problem of embodiment, since it seems difficult to imagine enjoyment without a body. Veṅkaṭanātha in the TMK says that in fact the soul can at their own will get a body, which is not determined by karman and is therefore not a vehicle of bondage.
Within the sādharmya there is also the attainment of omniscience, which in fact was the natural condition of the soul but was temporarily blocked by karman. (So, in Vaikuṇṭha you will finally be able to understand perfectly Tamil and Sanskrit and solve any philosophical puzzle you wondered about!)
Why should it not get boring at a certain point?
Veṅkaṭanātha does not directly address this question, but his Rahasyatrayasāra seems to point to the idea that one would be busy with a continuous flow of beautiful experiences, all connected with the fact that one is with nice people (the other liberated ones) and especially with the object of one’s love, Viṣṇu.
Jai Sita Rama
I’d like to hear about the story (with source if possible) for Vaikuntha Ekadashi.
The skanda, padma and brahmanda puranas describe mokshadaa Ekadashi on this day, and I didn’t see mention of the vaikuntha dvara. Would like to know more.
