Avibhaga (non-difference or ontological participation) and anubhava (direct, lived experience) serve as complementary resources in classic Vedanta and its modern reinterpretations. These are evident in the works of Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, J. Krishnamurti, Rabindranath Tagore, and Dr S. Radhakrishnan, who offer approaches to address current issues of suffering, conflict, and existential disturbance. This paper argues that reading avibhaga as an ethic of relational ontology and anubhava as an epistemology of embodied knowing creates a practical philosophy - Practical Vedanta - that can realign the course of action and learning methods to focus on comprehensive human well-being. First, it reconstructs the conceptual core: avibhaga grounds intersubjective solidarity and reciprocity. At the same time, anubhava ensures the authenticity of one’s self-created values through transformative experience rather than a pre-given purpose, thereby creating one’s own meaning and identity through choices and actions. Second, it analyzes how this twin framework reframes four domains: gender justice (from hierarchy to relational dignity), education (from information transmission to formation of integral persons), social responsibility (from instrumental utility to participatory governance), and community engagement (from discrete interventions to embedded mutuality). Drawing on classical texts and contemporary scholarship in the broader context of ethics and education, the paper proposes actionable principles for curriculum design, community practice, and policy discourse that centre experiential learning, participatory governance, and ethical technologies. The result offers a theoretically solid yet practically focused perspective on how Vedantic insights can guide emancipatory and sustainable solutions for the challenges of the 21st century.
Dr. Kamala Srinivas (Thu,) studied this question.