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Concept
Swaminarayan Sampradaya
Summary
The Swaminarayan Sampradaya, also known as Swaminarayan Hinduism and Swaminarayan movement, is a Hindu Vaishnava sampradaya rooted in Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita, characterized by the worship of its charismatic founder Sahajanand Swami, better known as Swaminarayan (1781–1830), as an avatar of Krishna or as the highest manifestation of Purushottam, the supreme God. According to the tradition's lore, both the religious group and Sahajanand Swami became known as Swaminarayan after the Swaminarayan mantra, which is a compound of two Sanskrit words, swami ("master, lord") and Narayan (supreme God, Vishnu).
During his lifetime, Swaminarayan institutionalized his charisma and beliefs in various ways. He constructed six mandirs to facilitate followers' devotional worship of God, and encouraged the creation of a scriptural tradition. In 1826, in a legal document titled the Lekh, Swaminarayan created two dioceses, the Laxmi Narayan Dev Gadi (Vadtal Gadi) and Nar Narayan Dev Gadi (Ahmedabad Gadi), with a hereditary leadership of acharyas and their wives, who were authorized to install statues of deities in temples and to initiate ascetics.
In Swaminarayan's soteriology the ultimate goal of life is to become Brahmarūpa, attaining the form (rūpa) of Aksharbrahman, in which the jiva is liberated from maya and saṃsāra (the cycle of births and deaths), and enjoys eternal bliss, offering sādhya bhakti, continuous and pure devotion to God.
While related to Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita, for which he stated his affinity, and incorporating devotional elements of Vallabha's Pushtimarg, Sahajanand Swaminarayan gave his own specific interpretations of the classical Hindu texts. As in Vishishtadvaita, God and jiva are forever distinct, but a distinction is also made between Parabrahman (Purushottam, Narayana) and Aksharbrahman as two distinct eternal realities. This distinction is emphasized by BAPS-swamis as a defining characteristic, and referred to as Akshar-Purushottam Darshan to distinguish the Swaminarayan Darshana, Swaminarayan's views or teachings, from other Vedanta-traditions.
Official source
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