Vedānta II: Rāmānuja and Madhva

Lesson 11 named three Vedāntas and said the disagreement was over what an identity-statement does when its two terms are not on the same footing. Lesson 50 gave the first reading from its own author. This lesson gives the other two from theirs.

Rāmānuja does not read tat tvam asi in isolation. In the Vedārthasaṃgraha he places it in a series, and the company he keeps it in is the argument.

He quotes tat tvam asi and ayam ātmā brahma — the sentences of Lesson 11 — and immediately beside them the antaryāmin passage:

ya ātmani tiṣṭhann ātmano 'ntaro yam ātmā na veda yasyātmā śarīraṃ ya ātmānam antaro yamayati sa ta ātmāntaryāmy amṛtaḥ