/lit/ - Literature

>>12413922
>mired in philosophical schools before I have a good conservative estimation of the historical and linguistic development of the Vedic corpus first.

The reason Shankara/Advaita is often recommend is that in a way it represents the first emergence of a consistent Hindu textual tradition which regards itself as such and which survives in physical form down to the present time. The ancient/classical Indians kept much less detailed records than the Chinese (many texts/universities/libraries were also destroyed by invaders especially the Muslims beginning in the 12th century) and so there are large areas of ancient/classical Indian history where we don't know exactly what happened, how popular certain schools/sects where or when certain doctrines emerged or became popular.

Before the emergence of formal Vedanta schools in the early to mid 1st millenium AD we have many Hindu texts such as the Vedas, the Itihasa (Mahabharata+Gita and Ramayana), the Upanishads, the early texts of various Darshanas like Yoga and Samhkya and the various Puranas which combine myth/history/cosmology/metaphysics, many of which discuss the same sort of teachings of the later Vedanta. However, we have no understanding of how Hindus in the first millennium BC reconciled all these, which theological views dominated and so on, the writings of the pre-Vedanta schools like Samkhya mostly stuck to their special areas of interest and did not try to reconcile everything. Shankara (and later Vedanta teachers after him like Ramanuja etc) were the first people to attempt to provide a consistent interpretation of everything existing previously, in a sense each major Vedanta Acharya viewed themselves as the restorer of the tradition of correct interpretation of doctrine which had been lost due to time and disagreement etc. This is why on Adi Shankara's wikipedia page it says "He is credited with unifying and establishing the main currents of thought in Hinduism".

>>11227180
Read the primary texts, e.g. Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka, or his condensed version Tantrasara

>>11227229
already the 3rd most popular religion on earth and that's with barely any proselytism

>>11228605
Evola is not really a Traditionalist but someone who selectively coops their ideas while simultaneously holding many that fundamentally conflict with it (and I say that as someone who thinks some of his books are decent)

>>11016383
>Broadly true, false in details. Zoroastrianism is not exactly vedic. At least not in some pan-vedic sense.

I didn't say that it was, only that there was a clear cultural link that went from PIE traditions>Zoroastrianism>Judaism>Christianity/Islam

>Buddhism is almost anti-vedic as well. Despite any amount of broad stroke similarities, the tiny differences are rather important.

The surface differences conceal a huge amount of similarities, Buddhism can fairly be described as heterodox Buddhism. It borrows a huge amount of ideas from the Vedas and pre-Buddhist Upanishads. Coomaraswamy argues in 'Hinduism and Buddhism' that they teach the same underlying metaphysics but with a different emphasis which I agree with. Mahayana Buddhist ended up becoming even closer to it and being influenced by Shaivism and other Hindu sects.

>Daoism is different than Hinduism than Christianity etc.
There are a huge amount of parallels and similar ideas expressed in Daoism and Vedanta, and to a lesser extent Christ's parellels and Christian mystics. Read Guenon's 'Man and his becoming according to the Vedanta' if you don't believe me, almost every page is chock full of notes showing how Islamic, Daoist and even Christian texts often teach the same ideas expressed in Advaita Vedanta.

>If you're trying to revitalize the west like you say here:

Wasn't me who posted that but I agree its a good Idea

>then why are you pushing bad anti-western propaganda?

I'm not, just saying that modern western philosophy is mostly a dead end, I hope the west founds a new revitalized Christianity or Paganism, I think Neoplatonism and Medieval Scholasticism are examples of great western ideas. It's not anti-western to say that modern western philosophy is a source of trouble and ignorance and that the West should look back into it's own history to try to figure out how to solve the problems of the current era.

>Btw, did you know the vedas were not written by human hands and were actually conceived by the gods themselves?

The Sruti are indeed regarded as infallible in so far as they teach the Sanatana Dharma, the timeless perennial truth, not in the sense that every single word and letter was infallibly written by an anthropomorphic god

>>10785032

>I don't wish to prosletyze anyone into believing Hinduism over Christianity

The book doesn't try to do that and I am not by recommending it. Two thirds of it is discussing the principals of the traditional worldview and it's metaphysics, which is applicable to the other traditions like Islam, Daoism etc. A key tennet of the Traditionalist worldview is that there is a perennial truth described by all the traditions. Proselytism is a largely western concept useless to someone interested in traditional metaphyics which have a unity to them. The Hindu traditions are ones that more extensively delve into metaphysics and have a large corpus of texts which is why they are often the first to be recommended.

>but linear time and science are bad guys
Cyclical time is an essential element of understanding traditional civilizations as is letting go of the spook of scientism. If you want to begin to understand this stuff you need to temporarily let go of it even if it's just for the sake of more accurately understanding something to better formulate why you disagree with it. If you study this stuff still holding western modern conceptions it will go right over your head.

>outdated race science
Are you talking about where he mentions attitudes intrinsic to certain cultures or races? In case you weren't aware, similar to how the scientific consensus among intelligence researchers that there are average differences between the IQ of races, there is similarly a consensus that the research shows fairly consistent patterns of different behavior, life-styles and important life choices between different races, which points to different modes-of-thought and attitudes as behavior is the external result of these. Blank-slatism has been entirely disproven and cast aside among actual experts despite what the media portrays.

>>10775182

The demonic do things they should avoid and
avoid the things they should do. They have
no sense of uprightness, purity, or truth.

“There is no God,” they say, “no truth, no spiritual
law, no moral order. The basis of life is sex; what else
can it be?”

Holding such distorted views, possessing
scant discrimination, they become enemies of
the world, causing suffering and destruction.

Hypocritical, proud, and arrogant, living in
delusion and clinging to deluded ideas, insatiable
in their desires, they pursue their unclean ends.

Although burdened with fears that end only with
death, they still maintain with complete assurance,
“Gratification of lust is the highest that life can offer.”

Bound on all sides by scheming and anxiety, driven
by anger and greed, they amass by any means they can
a hoard of money for the satisfaction of their cravings.

-The Bhagavad Gita, section 16

>but-bu-bu eastern religions are actually liberal and progressive!

>>10594672

Not him but some great texts/authors are

Chinese:Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, Analects of Confucius

Buddhist: the discourses of Buddha (Bhikku Bodhi's translations are good), the Milinda Pañha, the heart sutra, diamond sutra, lotus sutra

Hindu: The Prasthanatrayi and the commentaries on them by Adi Shankara as well as his non-commentary works in particular Upadesasahasri, the Bhagavata Purana, The Yoga Vasistha, Ashtavakra Gita, the Shiva Sutras, Pratyabhijnahrdayam, Vijnanabhairava

Western: Plotinus, Eckhart, Philo, some western philosophers wrote certain texts that are in certain cases very much in line with eastern thought like Spinoza's ethics for example

Don't know as much about Sufism but Rumi is good

>>10556145

Because without initiation there is no guarantee that what is being transmitted are the genuine doctrines. Without initiation into a traditional teaching you are sailing into unknown waters and are entering a situation where doctrines may be changed entirely due to the mistakes and whims of unqualified people. Initiation helps preserve orthodoxy.

He felt the that metaphysics of traditional socites were similar in that many of them teach a non-dualistic view which goes beyond logic and has to do the realm of immediate and direct experiences of mystical truth where there is no distinction between knowledge and subject-of-knowledge, i.e. where you directly experience metaphyscial knowledge as reality in a way that goes beyond normal cognition or reflection.

>>10430461
>>10431142

I looked up what you mentioned and I think there is something to it but it seems overblown. I think the bigger issue is cult-like and seemingly megolomaniac behavior by Schuon.

Based on what I read Schuon in his 80's started his own Virgin Mary-based heterodox sufi sect and incorporated 'ceremonies' based on native american rituals where women and some teenage girl would dance around while they were all naked and then some would approach him and hug him. There isn't any description of anything else, the author of the peice I noted notes that he was so old he couldn't even get erections anymore. While he should have known better, keep in kind that Muhammad himself had penetrative sex with pre-pubescent girls (not to say that either of those are okay but objecting to nude women/girls hugging a nude 80-year man as a super bad thing seems like anglo puritan moralizing).

The bigger issue is the evidence Schuon went on an ego trip and started to refer
to himself in prophetic terms and talked about himself like he was an avatar or superhuman. That fundamentally goes against the traditional eastern mystical doctrines which overwhelmingly emphasize the unity of all beings and proscribe egotistical behavior.

And that's not to say that people who commit wrong doing are automatically disqualified as spiritual teachers. Gurdjieff and certain Tibetian lamas were known for eccentrice behavior and debauchery but still had very profound impacts as teachers. People are complicated beings and one can transmit spiritual knowledge without according in perfect accordance with it at all time.

With all that being said though based on what I read I get the impression that Schuon was a brillant man who as he got very old his mind weakened and his judgement worsened and he didn't realize he was acting in ways that were unwholesome.

>The whole 'Traditionalist' thing was a scam, don't bother.

The Traditionalist school of thought was and still is massively influential, is intellectually compelling and is above all interesting; individual failings by certain members of it notwithstanding. You can for the most part stick with Guenon and Coomarasay as they offer pretty much all you need to know insofar as traditionalism and after them there is really just the actual eastern texts themselves. The trads are not an end in themselves but just complement studying the actual texts and participating in religious groups and practices like meditation/yoga/prayer etc.

2000 years is nothing. Free yourself from the fruits of your actions, only then will you become liberated.