/lit/ - Literature

>>13069539
In actually the world-view you describe is just someone who has a rough understanding of non-dualism but who is just too attached to human tendencies and cravings and desire for pleasure and amusements; as a result of which they try to bring their desires into the Absolute with them and then rationalize it as creativity, unsuccessfully. They deserve our pity and help though

>>12286538

The very possibility of B existing as other than A renders the infinitude of A impossible because B escapes it. An infinite God is mutually incompatible with creation existing as not-God even if bathed in and supported by God's energies etc. You (and Aquinas et al) are trying to reconcile the mutually incompatible by saying an infinite, immutable God can create ex nihilio AND God's eternal, immutable nature is not somehow modified into the temporary AND God creates this radical change without acting as though there was no casual relation. The whole thing is illogical on the face of it and collapses under its own contradictions.

>Indeed God is the source of things, but he is not their material cause- things are not made out of him. Rather, they are made to approach his infinite being in a limited way. God is in other words not a potency to be given form, but a final and efficient cause approached and reflected in a finite way.
This explanation does nothing to resolve the paradoxes pointed out above, you don't explain how or why they are made to approach his infinite being without one of the aforementioned contradictions coming into play.

>This is perfectly obvious when we consider the Aristotelian category which mediates between pure being and nothingness, that is, potency, which just is a finite ordering-towards being. Because potency exists only relative to act, it cannot ultimately be a causal partner with act- it must emerge from pure act ex nihilo.
Again, this resolves none of the contradictions inherent in your model where God is the first uncaused cause as opposed to co-existing eternally in time alongside God's effect/creation (also implausible btw). You say it must emerge from pure act but action is defined by, and is indeed impossible without the sort of change that compromises immutability.

>God has desire for something else, not through a lack in himself, but precisely in the love of himself.
Desire does not arise if there is no lack of the thing that is desired, desire cannot exist without the absence of the thing desired. It's a contradiction to say that God has desire but does not lack anything Himself. In order to desire a possession, act or outcome God would first have to first lack it.

>But Christianity says that God did reconcile what is finite and mortal to his eternity- not by compromising his own eternal nature, but by taking up finite human nature into his own internal Trinitarian dynamic.
Which can't exist in the first place as something separate to be reconciled to God (in your doctrine) without raising inexcusable contradictions with the starting premise of an infinite and immutable God.

>>11913402
reading the Bhagavad Gita on acid is unironically a good idea though

>>11631562
Well, like a lot of Jewish thought tzimtzum is a bunch of cluttered and contradictory nonsense. There are massive disagreements among Kabbalists themselves about what tzimtzum means and the exact course that it takes. They recognize it as paradoxical and there are a range of interpretations that some of them they take where God is still present or active in some way within the space he withdrew from which implies the the withdrawal was only in a conditioned way and not in an absolute sense. God would not really be infinite if it withdrew in an absolute sense from anything, because the fact that the previously non-existing space now existed would be a limit on God, simply stating that tzimtzum teaches He withdrew does not resolve this paradox. The notion of God contracting also contradicts divine simplicity. Attempting to resolve this led various many kabbalists and Jewish mystics to settle for an interpretation where there is not a literal space existing separate from God, Gaon's and Chabad's views being just two examples of this.

This is just an example of Jewish mysticism trying to grasp with the classic problem of the infinitive unchanging nature of God being at odds with the finite and transient nature of the phenomenal world that we participate in. I think Vedanta cut through the knot best by stating that the phenomenal world is only a conditioned reality within the all-encompassing unconditioned reality of God as a develop of one particular set of infinite possibilities contained within It, and that from the omniscient and unconditioned perspective of God Itself that conditioned reality does not exist.

>>11336195
>Why does limit exist then?

Again, it doesn't actually exist but it's natural that from our perspective that things might appear limited, because ours is a limited viewpoint. Advaita teaches that through craving for existence and attachment one gets bound up in the form of a living being, where one remains because of ignorance of the true nature of things and the karma that one generates through actions as a result of this.

>isn't Brahman pretty much the void?

The Buddhists conceive of the absolute as a void but not the Advaitins. Brahman is a positive force not a null or negative. Brahman is all-pervading consciousness.

>Why return to the womb?

Because it is limitless bliss compared to the existence of manifested beings and because its the natural way of things as they are meant to be. The fact that we have become ignorantly trapped in the viewpoint of manifested beings is a step-down from what things should be. One endures all sorts of harrows and suffering through transmigratory existence when one could instead know the bliss and peace that is Brahman.

>Unmoved and undistressed, realising that being, non-being and change are of the very nature of things, one easily finds peace. 11.1
>At peace, having shed all desires within, and realising that nothing exists here but the Lord, the Creator of all things, one is no longer attached to anything. 11.2
>Realising that misfortune and fortune come in their own time from fortune, one is contented, one’s senses under control, and does not like or dislike. 11.3
>Realising that pleasure and pain, birth and death are from destiny, and that one’s desires cannot be achieved, one remains inactive, and even when acting does not get attached. 11.4
>Realising that suffering arises from nothing other than thought, dropping all desires one rids oneself of it, and is happy and at peace everywhere. 11.5
>Realising, “I am not the body, nor is the body mine. I am awareness,” one attains the supreme state and no longer remembers things done or undone. 11.6

>>11336624
>We project our understanding upon the universe to understand its order. Thus we can perceive causality as occuring, but it is merely a projection - an illusion.

Yes, that was sort of my point which was why I used the word 'relative'. Sometimes you never know how in depth to go while explaining this stuff because some people are really unfamiliar with it while if you explain it in that level of detail to people who already get it than it can seem pedantic

>>11336624
>- it presumes logic as a reality instead of an instrument of the mind to understand and communicate between beings.

I agree, applying logic to Brahman is the wrong idea that the Sruti are very clear that Brahman is beyond logic, nevertheless they also teach that it is immutable, indivisible, at peace, tranquil, characterized by a harmony etc; from these previous points we can deduce that what seems to us to be disorder and chaos are not absolute.

>>11034819
This, read this if you want to get closer to understanding Hinduism and Hindu culture than you likely would otherwise. It's not much of a historical work but will completely change how you see India. It's free on archive.org

If you are interested in the early Vedic religion, read the Upanishads and then get into Vedanta, preferably after Guenon's book (this goes for understanding the doctrines rather than the history). With regards to specifically the history of it, Mercea Eliade covers some of it in his history of religious ideas. I would be advise recommending historical works written by people who have at least a little personal experience with it (like Eliade) because people who write purely from the academic and anthropological viewpoint often miss important stuff.

Reading books on the Indo-Europeans, (i.e. the wheel horse and chariot or the works of Dumezil) can help you understand the cultural group that the early Vedic religion emerged out of.

>>10643275

I would agree that he view certain sects of Judaism as valid traditions although at one point in "Intro to Hindu Doctrines" he attributes the relative absence of the genuinely metaphysical in Christianity to the fact that it's the product of the Jewish and Greek mind.

He writes about how there was an excessive 'religious' focus in Judaism to the detriment of the metaphysical (without necessarily saying it was entirely lacking). He also writes about how the Greeks were obsessed with aesthetics and external appearances and tended to humanize deities while losing track of the metaphysical principles for which they really stand for (outside of maybe mystery cults).

In the view he lays out he thinks these two factors led to the fact that Christianity is dogmatically 'faith-based' and to a lesser extent 'mystical' (mysticism being inferior to metaphysics in his view); and why it's really devoid of a comprehensive metaphysical teaching. Christianity combined Greek and Jewish thought and become something encumbered by the Form, dependent on faith and spontaneous mystical experiences, without any metaphysical tradition stemming from universal principles. Of course he notes exceptions but that's an accurate depiction of how he viewed modern Christianity, he viewed Medieval Christianity as better but still notes the inferiority of that to the genuinely eastern traditions.

So yes he viewed Judaism and even certain eras of Christianity as being legitimate representatives of the perennial Tradition but didn't hesitate to note their flaws in comparison to say Hinduism, Daoism, Islam etc.

>>9873526

Bhagavad-Gita