Liberation
What is liberation?
Liberation is freedom from bondage.
All three traditions treat it so, though they differ in what brings that freedom about and what it reveals about the self, as the accounts below show.
How each commentator reads it
The eternal, unconditioned nature of the Self as it always already is, revealed rather than newly produced: the cessation of Nescience alone, not the effect of any action or accumulated merit, not embodied, not subject to gradation, and not the result of a process of becoming. Liberation is not different in kind from Brahman itself: release is nothing but being Brahman.
Read Śaṅkara’s interpretation →Final release attained through the grace of the Supreme Self, with sustained meditation and disciplined action forming part of the path while the individual self remains distinct.
Read Rāmānuja’s interpretation →Final release is the soul’s entry into the Lord, granted by His grace in consideration of devotion and knowledge, in which the soul remains distinct and enjoys bliss and all that it desires. The released are graded: they take their places nearer to the Lord in the order of their rank and knowledge, differ from one another in bliss, and do not all attain rulership or equal power.
Read Madhva’s interpretation →About the evidence
This comparison draws on two passages from Śaṅkara, one extended, closely read passage from Rāmānuja, and one short passage from Madhva, whose account of release rests on further passages read for the vocabulary and not yet included here. It clearly establishes each tradition's basic account of liberation, but it does not yet cover embodiment, the self's exact condition after release, return or non-return to further existence, the workings of karma, or the fuller relation between the released self and Brahman. This is a close reading of selected evidence, not a complete survey of any tradition's teaching. The passages compared here come from different parts of each commentator's work, read closely for what each says about liberation on its own terms, not as responses to a shared sūtra.