/lit/ - Literature

>>18896633
Read the Bhagavad-Gita first, then, after that your picture, Shankara’s Upanishad commentaries are actually a good place to begin if you are already familiar with Hindu philosophical vocabulary, if you have no grasp of it, start out with something like Hiriyanna’s The Essentials of Indian Philosophy’ or Dasgupta’s ‘Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophy’ that provides an overview. I also recommend Guenon’s ‘Intro to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines’ to provide an interesting counter-perspective to some of the narratives about Hinduism in western scholarship. Guenons book “Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta” is also good as a crash course for reading Shankara’s commentaries.

Its a good idea to begin by studying Vedanta since relative to other schools they generally devote the most attention to thoroughly analyzing the Upanishads, and then from there branching out to the writings of earlier schools like Samkhya-Yoga and later developments like philosophical Tantric treatises, bhakti-movement, various poet-saints etc.

It makes sense to begin with Advaita Vedanta because of its influence and how later schools respond to it as part of a broader intra-Hindu debate but aside from that the next best place to start is Vishishtadvaita. For the primary source Advaita literature I recommend reading first a short introductory text like Atma-Bodha or Ashtavakra Gita, then all of Shankara’s Upanishad commentaries, his Gita bhasya, and his Brahma Sutra Bhasya in that order, and then his remaining works in any order. The ‘Vedanta Paribhasa’ is an important late-medieval work on Advaita epistemology and ontology that is pretty good that I would recommend as an interesting post-Shankara work. ‘Vedantasara’ is also a good medieval introductory Advaita text.

For Vishishtadvaita I would begin either with Ramanujas Gita bhasya or with the 17th century Vishishtadvaita overview text ‘Yatindramatadipika’ by Srinivasarya. Ramanuja never wrote Upanishad commentaries so if you want to read Vishishtadvaita-based Upanishad commentaries before or alongside Ramanujas works that analyze the Upanishads, you can read Ranga Ramanuja Muni’s Upanishad commentaries. Ramanuja’s “Vedartha Sangraha” should be read before his Vedanta-sutra bhasya. You also can read for context some translations of the works of the Pancharatra Vaishnavite sect out of which Ramanuja emerged like the Shandilya Sutras.

For Samkhya there is a book called “ The Samkhya philosophy” that combines many of the most important Samkhya texts and commentaries in one volume. Also get a copy of the Yoga Sutras.

For Shaivism, the Shaiva-Siddhanta, Pashupatas, Trika, Naths and Veerashaivas all have their own philosophical texts, poetry etc. The Trika or Kashmir Shaivists have the largest amount of translated works. For Shaktism there are various Shaktist Upanishads, Puranas etc considered important and Shaktist philosophers like Bhaskararaya.

>>18780304
meant to attach this image to this post

>>18289933
The Brahma Sutras, which are accepted by all Vedanta schools, say that Brahman is the impartial cause like the sun or rain and that fortune and misfortune in life are determined by one’s karma from past lives, this is compared to how the sun or rain provides nourishment to all plants alike but the possibilities of growth in each plant are determined by that respective seed. So people ultimately bear responsibility for what befalls them and not Brahman. Advaita Vedanta, but not all of the other Vedanta schools, adds the further point that good and evil are ultimately unreal constructs of the human mind or primordial spiritual ignorance (avidya) and that the ultimate reality of Brahman is non-dual and beyond such dual categories, and that the liberated/enlightened man realizes that the soul had never really suffered to begin with anyway but that the suffering was like an unreal dream, arising from a misidentification, as if you had been playing a video game and believing yourself to be the character you were playing, and felt his suffering and pain was yours when it never truly was.

>>18262837
spoiler: Vedanta solves it

>>16841935

Hinduism