/lit/ - Literature

Best introduction to Hinduism? All denominations welcome. I'm not looking to convert, I'm just interested in learning about this religion, its believes, and its practices.
I already have the Upanishads, but I feel like I needs some secondary literature also.

Yoga Sutras
Bhagavad Gita
Yoga Vasistha

>>16553365
Yoga Vasistha
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Shiva Sutras

>The Yoga-vasistha is throughout a philosophical work, in the form of popular lectures, and the same idea is often repeated again and again in various kinds of expressions and poetical imagery. But the writer seems to have been endowed with extraordinary poetical gifts. Almost every verse is full of finest poetical imagery; the choice of words is exceedingly pleasing to the ear. —Surendranath Dasgupta, A History of Indian Philosophy

>>16354959
94:3.3.Brahman-Narayana was conceived as the Absolute, the infinite IT IS, the primordial creative potency of the potential cosmos, the Universal Self existing static and potential throughout all eternity. Had the philosophers of those days been able to make the next advance in deity conception, had they been able to conceive of the Brahman as associative and creative, as a personality approachable by created and evolving beings, then might such a teaching have become the most advanced portraiture of Deity on Urantia since it would have encompassed the first five levels of total deity function and might possibly have envisioned the remaining two.

94:3.4.In certain phases the concept of the One Universal Oversoul as the totality of the summation of all creature existence led the Indian philosophers very close to the truth of the Supreme Being, but this truth availed them naught because they failed to evolve any reasonable or rational personal approach to the attainment of their theoretic monotheistic goal of Brahman-Narayana.

>>15212805
>Ashtavakra gita
The wise man has the joy of being complete in himself and without possessions, acting as he pleases, free from duality and rid of doubts, and without attachment to any creature. 18.87

The wise man excels in being without the sense of 'me'. Earth, a stone or gold are the same to him. The knots of his heart have been rent asunder, and he is freed from greed and blindness. 18.88

Who can compare with that contented, liberated soul who pays no regard to anything and has no desire left in his heart? 18.89

Who but the upright man without desire knows without knowing, sees without seeing and speaks without speaking? 18.90

Beggar or king, he excels who is without desire, and whose opinion of things is rid of 'good' and 'bad'. 18.91

There is neither dissolute behaviour nor virtue, nor even discrimination of the truth for the sage who has reached the goal and is the very embodiment of guileless sincerity. 18.92

How can one describe what is experienced within by one desireless and free from pain, and content to rest in himself - and of whom? 18.93

The wise man who is contented in all circumstances is not asleep even in deep sleep, not sleeping in a dream, nor waking when he is awake. 18.94

The seer is without thoughts even when thinking, without senses among the senses, without understanding even in understanding and without a sense of responsibility even in the ego. 18.95

Neither happy nor unhappy, neither detached nor attached, neither seeking liberation nor liberated, he is neither something nor nothing. 18.96

Not distracted in distraction, in mental stillness not poised, in stupidity not stupid, that blessed one is not even wise in his wisdom. 18.97

The liberated man is self-possessed in all circumstances and free from the idea of 'done' and 'still to do'. He is the same wherever he is and without greed. He does not dwell on what he has done or not done. 18.98

He is not pleased when praised nor upset when blamed. He is not afraid of death nor attached to life. 18.99

A man at peace does not run off to popular resorts or to the forest. Whatever and wherever, he remains the same. 18.100
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ashtavakra_Gita