/lit/ - Literature

How would Plotinus (pbuh) refute Buddhists if he encountered them? Similar to Shankara? Or would you think his daimone would falter for a second and be taken in by the deliberate 'skillful means' lies that Buddhists trot out, like 'Buddha nature' and comparisons of their nihilism of 'emptiness' to actual apophatic theology?

>retroactively refutes Thomas Aquinas on the soul's relation to the body and metempsychosis

How can Christians compete?

Do not suppose that a man becomes good by despising the world and all the beauties that are in it. The Gnostics have no right to profess respect for the gods of the world above. When we love a person, we love all that belongs to him; we extend to the children the affection we feel for the parent. Now every Soul is a daughter of the Godhead. How can this world be separated from the spiritual world? Those who despise what is so nearly akin to the spiritual world, prove that they know nothing of the spiritual world, except in name.

Let any individual soul make itself worthy to contemplate the Great Soul by ridding itself, through quiet recollection, of deceit and of all that bewitches vulgar souls. For it let all be quiet; let all its environment be at peace. Let the earth be quiet and the sea and air, and the heaven itself waiting. Let it observe how the Soul flows in from all sides into the resting world, pours itself into it, penetrates it and illumines it. Even as the bright beams of the sun enlighten a dark cloud and give it a golden border, so the Soul when it enters into the body of the heaven gives it life and timeless beauty and awakens it from sleep. So the world, grounded in a timeless movement by the Soul which suffuses it with intelligence, becomes a living and blessed being.

The Spirit/Soul gives itself to every point in this vast body, and vouchsafes its being to every part, great and small, though these parts are divided in space and manner of disposition, and though some are opposed to each other, others dependent on each other. But the Soul is not divided, nor does it split up in order to give life to each individual. All things live by the Soul in its entirety; it is all present everywhere. The heaven, vast and various as it is, is one by the power of the Soul, and by it is this universe of ours Divine. The sun too is Divine, and so are the stars; and we ourselves, if we are worth anything, are so on account of the Soul. Be persuaded that by it thou can attain to God. And know that thou wilt not have to go far afield.

t. Plotinus

The man who indulges in impurity is like a person labouring under the dropsy. The latter is so much tormented by thirst, that the more he drinks the more thirsty he becomes. Such, too, is the nature of the accursed vice of impurity; it is never satiated. “As,” says St. Thomas of Villanova , ”the more the dropsical man abounds in moisture, the more he thirsts; so, too, is it with the waves of eternal pleasures.”

”Totum hominem,” says St. Cyprian, ”agit in triumphum libidinis.” (Lib. de bono pudic.) By lust the evil triumphs over the entire man, over his body and over his soul; over his memory, filling it with the remembrance of unchaste delights, in order to make him take complacency in them; over his intellect, to make him desire occasions of committing sin; over the will, by making it love its impurities as his last end, and as if there were no God.

>>13765732
Retaining it allows you to transmute it for yourself. Why do you think hermits and monks were completely abstinent? It gave them extreme control and constant joy. The only people to ever be free on this earth are those who rose above and conquered their sexual instincts.

St. Jerome: Nihil vilius quam vinci a carne.

Nietzsche: “The reabsorption of semen by the blood is the strongest nourishment and, perhaps more than any other factor, it prompts the stimulus of power, the unrest of all forces toward the overcoming of resistances, the thirst for contradiction and resistance. The feeling of power has so far mounted highest in abstinent priests and hermits (for example, amoung the Brahmans).”


You can hate humanity and still profit from semen retention.

So-called mystic and secretive initiations of neoplatonism are not rooted in platonism at all and hence are not neoplatonic sans their concurrent affiliations; they are inherently anti-truth. Plotinus would have destroyed the free masons and blinded them for their evil deeds. You are misled. Turn back before it's too late.

>Mate was philosophy/history double major
Double majors are pseuds. Neurotic.
>Had fugly but nice gf to talk to
Sign he wasn't able to control himself and took whatever was on the table.
>Unironically has 4.0 gpa and writing thesis combining both disciplines
Doubtful, although double majors tend to be retarded and have no graduate school ambitions and want to think they can shoehorn a dual undergrad major into selling themselves off to employers. Probably going to be burned out, on prozac.
>Unfortuanately is fat as fuck
A sign he wasn't intelligent to begin with. High IQ = higher energy brain = thin as a bone in spite of any excess caloric intake
>Decides to become aesthetic as hell
What?
>Breaks up gf and changes to engineering major
You mean, neurotic midiwt with no advanced planning skills suddenly decides to change his major, presumably because his GPA tanked and he had somewhat of a mental breakdown. A common feature of their lot.
>Has supreme autismo level of math abilities and excels
Engineering isn't impressive unless it's nuclear. Even that is rather limited, insofar as the major will only have say 24 core credits related to it, with the bulk of study being tangential, and if you are in the US, another year of general education credits. Bragging about any undergraduate degree is a sign of a pseud. Smart people always mock what they learned in school and credit themselves as being the proprietor of the whole ordeal of erudition rather "hard classes, I did smart things, i am smart!"
>Is aesthetic and fucks stacies regularly with ease
See the first post of this thread. Being a cumbrain is meaningless. If you haven't learned this by age 24, then you either are a virgin holding an idealized version of it it, and/or are a terminal stage cumbrain beyond repair where your entire neural circuitry is only buzzing with DUDE SEX.
>Does not read for pleasure anymore but banters about phil occasionally
He doesn't read for pleasure because reading no longer leads to pleasure because his ability to discern it
>>13657730
>Yeah it's not worth it for one stacy, but this fucker is with multiple stacies atm.
Unless he is procreating with them, he has done nothing but enslave himself further to carnal pleasure. Procreation itself is often just a plan B in life for intelligent people who realize their flesh slavery has ruined them and the best they can do is propagate and rear offspring, so as to make what they hope will realize a form of themselves in time. So, in a sense, this could be based (assuming he wasn't a neurotic midwit) if, if he gamed the welfare system, collected SSDI, and had all his live-in concubines do the same, and they pooled their resources together on a nice rural establishment and raised and taught the children their themselves. But, all it takes is one bad apple to spoil the entire bunch, so if one decides to take flight along with her children, there goes your income, and legitimacy to the rest.

God is Beauty

>>13621678
Sexual release causes biochemical changes in the body and semen is a rich fluid. Its loss is harmful. Being aroused is harmful. Doing it only serves to solidify habit, which leaves you a cumbrain forced to execute his biological programming daily if not more frequently. You're not gonna make it.

>>13616804
Irrefutably based and 100% Plotinuspilled.
Cumbrains are animals. This much is certain.

>>12477075

>knowledge is [...] in your brain

Leave.

>>12381755
>>12385426
>dude there's hundreds of gods how do I know which is real
Of all major religions, the God in Christianity is the only one that fits and is compatible with the definition of a philosopher's God in Platonist thought. Omnipresence and Omnipotence, and concerned with far more than just 'his people'.
Indeed, even the 'monotheism' of other religions is usually just simplified polytheism.
Not to mention, the countless pantheon of virtually all religions makes their deities in the image of corruptible man and animals, which in a sense denies their divine nature, At best, examining all doctrines, even the most obscure, you could narrow religion (or better said, conceptions of God) down to a handful of potentially valid ones.

I don't believe in God but this argument that "DUUUDE THRERES HUNDREDS HOW DO I KNOW WHICH IS REAL", is perhaps the most cringe-worthy thing I see here and is telling of incredibly low intelligence if they actually believe this, let alone think it was profound enough to unironically worth sharing this trite insight.
It's obvious that those saying it 1) did not start with the Greeks, and have little or no experience with philosophical concepts prior to the Enlightenment 2), are total brainlets.

>>12306018
You're the one who thinks the body is perfect. That sounds more religious to me than saying sexual actions precipitate consequences that if avoided can be beneficial.

>>12198489

THE ONE CANNOT BE GRASPED THROUGH LANGUAGE AS LANGUAGE ALWAYS BRINGS WITH IT THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN SUBJECT AND PREDICATE AND WITH IT DUALITY. THUS ONE SHOULD NOT SPEAK OF THE ONE

>>12189464
Based and nembutalpilled.

>>11913193
>Using this meme on /lit/
You need to go back. Immediately.

>>11907759
>That is, you must completely change your thought on a subconscious level if you want to change the way that you are.
This is extremely true and effectuating that change is very difficult.
When I would relapse into old habits, even after abandoning them for months, their imprint on thoughts throughout the day and then again on my dreams at night had were immense; and despite having overcoming them at one time, and knowing full well the harm, I would carry on simply because my immediate subconscious was again altered fundamentally. Reversely, when encouraged and again immersing myself in good material affirming the harm, the inclination toward these habits weren't as extreme, and again were able to be put to rest.

>>11626786
absolutely ἀηδία

>The lifestyle of Plotinus was celibate, and it is clear that he opposed orators who expressed sensual preoccupations
>Plotinus was not alone in rejecting the flesh: as is well known, this attitude was common in late antiquity. It is this enviroment which gives birth to Christian Celibacy
Chaste and breadpilled

>>11349277
>>11349528

>not reading the whole Enneads in Greek
Leave now.