/lit/ - Literature

>>23178356
Buddhism and Hinduism both are indeed surprisingly similar in praxis and outlook, although they differ at their cores in their characterization of ultimate truth and reality. (One puts it in terms of negation of objectivity, inherent essence, or self-nature to anything, the other in terms of a transcendental non-dual all-pervading Self — Buddhism puts Voidness, Hinduism puts Brahman at the core of reality).

Buddhism could seriously be considered as largely a deconstruction and reconstruction of Indian yogic philosophy and practice, with different emphases and intellectual conclusions, but ultimately having a very similar (if not identical) end-state it claims practitioners can reach, along with similar practices to reach this goal. (Nirvana in Buddhism, Moksha in Vedanta). The practices and teachings of Buddhism will be very similar, pragmatically, to jnana yoga (the yoga of knowledge or intellect) as taught in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, as well as to the Samkhya school and Samkhya-inspired yogic philosophy. So it’s not surprising that from Dzogchen, you’ve moved to Vedanta and the Upanishads. These all have some very similar roots ultimately reaching back to Indian philosophy, and Dzogchen is extraordinarily similar to what’s to be found in texts like the Tejobindu Upanishad and Avadhuta Gita. All of them speak of an innate luminous clarity of awareness which can instantly show us “enlightenment” right here and right now. They all also put how this is to be “attained” in seemingly paradoxical ways, by speaking of or suggesting things like meditation-beyond-meditation, meditation-without-meditation, non-effort, effortlessness, complete rest from all goal-bound striving and action, even resting from the attempt to calm oneself and one’s mind with yogic practice, even resting from the attempt to find enlightenment, or even conceiving of “liberation” as a dichotomy with “bondage” and having the notion that one can be defined by either of these states. (Which is essentially also the Taoist concept of wu wei, non-doing, or wei wu wei, doing-without-doing). They also stress this state (or supreme truth) is non-conceptual and non-dual (beyond “this” and “that”, or “subject” and “object”, although again there is the key difference Buddhism characterizes this core truth as Sunyata and Vedanta as Atman=Brahman).

>I could try to reverse engineer an Upanishadic meditation practice, but I'm wondering if anyone here does something like that. Maybe I just need to reread Ramana Maharshi, but I want to try something more ancient, something about the solar Self.