What is Vaishnavism

In a few words

What the West calls Hinduism is really several great traditions living side by side. Some centre on Shiva, others on the Goddess, others on an absolute reality without form. Vaishnavism is the one that centres on Vishnu and His forms, above all Krishna and Rama. It is the largest of them all, followed by hundreds of millions of people.

What sets a Vaishnava apart is not a technique or a diet, even though they have both. It is a very specific idea: God is a person, every living being is an eternal soul, and between the two there is a relationship of love that can be revived. Reviving that relationship is called bhakti.

What Vaishnavas believe

• One God, and a personal one. He has a name, a form and a character. The many names (Krishna, Vishnu, Rama, Narayana, Govinda) are names of the same person.
• We are not the body. Every being is a soul (ātmā) that is never born and never dies, and changes bodies life after life.
• Actions have consequences. This is the law of karma, which ties the soul to the cycle of birth and death.
• The way out is devotion. The goal is not to dissolve into nothingness but to serve God with love once again.
• Knowledge is received. It passes from teacher to disciple in an unbroken chain (paramparā) and rests on the scriptures.

Their scriptures

Vaishnavas accept the Vedas and the Upanishads, but there are two books they read every day. The Bhagavad-gītā records the conversation between Krishna and the warrior Arjuna before a battle, and sums up the whole teaching in seven hundred verses. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (or Bhāgavata Purāṇa) is far longer and tells of God’s appearances in the world and the lives of His devotees; its tenth canto tells the life of Krishna.

The four schools

Vaishnavism is not an organisation but a family of lineages. Traditionally four schools, or sampradāyas, are recognised, each linked to a great teacher who systematised it:

All four share the essentials: God is personal and devotion is the path. They differ on philosophical nuances about how God, souls and the world relate to one another.

Gaudiya Vaishnavism

In 1486 Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu was born in Bengal. He taught that in this age the most direct way to approach God is to sing His names together (saṅkīrtana), and He opened it to everyone, regardless of caste or background. His followers consider Him Krishna Himself, who came to show how He is loved.

The tradition that comes from Him is called Gaudiya, after Gauda, the old name of Bengal. It belongs to the line of Madhva and has two features of its own: it sees Krishna as the original form of God, from whom all others come, and it places the chanting of the Hare Krishna maha-mantra at the centre.

How it reached the West

For centuries Gaudiya Vaishnavism hardly left India. In the 19th century Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura began writing about it in English; his son, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, asked one of his disciples to take it to the Western world. That disciple was A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, who in 1965, at almost seventy, sailed to New York on a cargo ship and the following year founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). This is what is known today as the Hare Krishna movement.

How to recognise a Vaishnava

• Tilaka: a mark of pale clay on the forehead, two vertical lines that meet above the nose. It marks the body as a temple of God.
• Tulasī beads around the neck: a thin necklace of sacred basil wood.
• The japa mala: a string of 108 beads, usually carried in a small cloth bag.
• Food: vegetarian, and offered to Krishna before it is eaten (prasādam).

Frequently asked questions