/lit/ - Literature

>Besides the world which we can describe, there is another kind of world. All descriptions of reality are limited descriptions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to these descriptions and think that they are reality. That is a mistake because what is described is not the actual reality, and when you think it is reality, your own ideas are involved. That is an idea of self.
Shunryu Suzuki

>I, ever knowing the living beings who tread the path and those who do not, in response to those who may be saved, preach to them a variety of dharmas, each time having this thought:
>'How may I cause the beings to contrive to enter the unexcelled path and quickly to perfect the Buddha-body?'
Buddha, notice "variety of dharmas" and "contrive", appearing to imply 'upaya'. It is said the Buddha taught 84,000 dharmas. Buddhism teaches that realization is against contrivance and mental fabrications, and yet ordinary beings must come into contact with something constructed in order to be liberated from constructed phenomena.

Are debates between Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism debates between one side that is real and another that is false? Or are they both falsehoods that point in the direction of realization of truth? There are two fingers pointing at the moon and we are debating which is prettier.

Can all reality be described as self, or as non-self? The Buddha taught the Middle Way.
>"When I see a rainbow drawn in the sky
>I suddenly remember the union of appearance and emptiness.
>I have no fear of eternalism and nihilism."
Milarepa

Give me the best books about Shiva and Shaivism. The most descriptive, beautiful, and eye-opening. Thank you.

>>15696599
Shinto is too woven into Japanese culture and cannot be exported, if you want to build a pagan religious movement from the ground up in the west than unless you want some gay wicca new-age movement or something, then it seems your best bet would either be 1) Some sort of Neoplatonic revival, or 2) the importing or further developing of any of the various Hindu Tantric traditions into something which can be widely practiced in the west. The former has the benefits of already being a part of the heritage of western culture and is less 'out there' than Tantric stuff, but the latter has the benefit of actually being an alive tradition with lineages going back many centuries which one can still be initiated into and practice even without being born into the caste system, whereas the Neoplatonic line of initiation seems to have been erased from history.

Can anyone who has read multiple English translations of the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra tell me which is the best one? Wikipedia says there are at least 17