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Sat-Chit-Ananda, being, consciousness and bliss held as the nature of ultimate reality, carries a live tie of five distinct bodies each holding a variant, differently-accounted, stance toward it in this atlas: Dvaita Vedanta, Gaudiya Vaishnavism, ISKCON (Hare Krishna), Sri Vaishnavism and Vaishnavism generally. All five read the three terms as something a personal God possesses, not as a bare description of an attributeless absolute.

Qualities Two Traditions Trace to Krishna by Name

Gaudiya Vaishnavism and ISKCON both hold, in the atlas's own record, that being, consciousness and bliss are real qualities of Krishna specifically, not of a God left otherwise unnamed. Dvaita Vedanta holds the same three as real attributes of God in the dualist sense its own school argues for, and Sri Vaishnavism holds them as real qualities of a God who has, the atlas records, infinitely many more besides.

The Same Reading Named Across the Wider Vaishnava Family

Vaishnavism as a whole is recorded holding the identical position across its schools: being, consciousness and bliss as real qualities of a personal God. This is a specifically Vaishnava, personalist reading, and it stands opposite a second group of Hindu traditions the atlas records as holding the same three terms without treating them as qualities of a personal deity: Kashmir Shaivism, Shaivism, Shaktism, Shri Vidya, Smartism and Vishishtadvaita Vedanta each read sat-chit-ananda as a direct description of the absolute itself, of Shiva, of the Goddess, or, in Vishishtadvaita's case, of a Brahman the atlas records as holding qualities rather than none.

Where To Read More

• Sat-Chit-AnandaGod and Divine NatureThe doctrine itself, five bodies holding a distinct account of it
• Gaudiya VaishnavismHinduismReal qualities of Krishna specifically
• ISKCON (Hare Krishna)HinduismReal qualities of Krishna specifically
• Dvaita VedantaVedanta SchoolsReal attributes of God in Dvaita's own dualist sense
• Sri VaishnavismHinduismReal qualities of a God who has infinitely many more besides
• VaishnavismHinduismThe same personalist reading held across the Vaishnava schools generally