/lit/ - Literature

>>11964788
If you want more Vedanta texts other than Shankara's the Yoga Vasistha and Ashtavakra Gita are both very good. If you are also interested in really intricate/profound metaphysical etc systems within Hinduism other than Vedanta there are some really interesting schools of tantra like Kashmir Shavism, two starter texts with that would be Vasugupta's Siva Sutras and Abhinavagupta's Paramarthasara. You can read the core texts of the other darshanas like Samkhya and Nyaya but those generally aren't as interesting IMO.

The Puranas are also interesting, they emerged later and still contain spiritual teachings but merged into a larger blend cosmology, mythology and history. Also there are various 19-20th century gurus/sannyasas whose talks were recorded and published like Nisargdatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi etc., their books are very profound. Also Kabir is good. Pic related you might enjoy too if you liked those authors.

>>11633289
While we are not the entire source in our present state as human beings, we (like everything else) are one with the source. Nothing can exist aside from the source, the infinite source contains it's own fruit within itself. Root and fruit, cause and effect, past and present, subject and object, these are themselves distinctions which can only exist within the finite of the manifest they have no meaning in the infinite and cannot exist in the infinite as anything other than distinctions characterizing conditional and limited realities that actualize (conditionally) within It, but the infinite in It's totality cannot be reached by these distinctions.

>finitude is still infinitely inferior in every multiplicative amalgamation of itself as finite thing (in comparison to the infinite)
yes

>and estranged
wrong

Vedanta teaches the first perspective within regard to the manifest vs the unmanifest, but both are still contained within the Para Brahman which is beyond both, which is where western theology tends to get confused aside from occasional mystics. The nil that is the worth of manifestation in comparison to the infinite does not change the fact that it cannot exist separably from the infinite as anything other than conditioned and lesser realities contained within It, because if the manifest were not contained within It but were separate (or estranged) then It would no longer be infinite.

>>11285168
I've read portions of both Spinoza and Plotinus but have more interesting and worthwhile things on my list to get to before I read them fully. It's true that Plotinus is closer in particular to Vedanta than Spinoza, the reason I didn't mention him is because in some ways I don't see him as belonging to Western thought that much as I do the other Greeks and later Europeans. Both him and Pythagoras are more eastern in a lot of ways, essentially like western Sramanics and there are unresolved questions about to what extent they were influenced by certain currents of thought from the east that made their way to the Mediterranean. I've enjoyed reading parts of the works of both Spinoza and Plotinus, Plotinus especially but I still see Vedanta and other strains of eastern thought as being superior (even if one accepts the view that they are different elaborations of the same truth which I'm not necessarily disagreeing with at this moment).

>>11108997
Kant was a brainlet, but ultimately if you try to rely on philosophy to escape the problems of philosophy you will never get anywhere

this was good.