/lit/ - Literature

>>16039827
>>16037198
>It is our task as founders, then, to compel the best natures to reach the study we said before is the most important, namely, to make the ascent and see the good. But when they’ve made it and looked sufficiently, we mustn’t allow them to do what they’re allowed to do today. To stay there and refuse to go down again to the prisoners in the cave and share their labors and honors, whether they are of less worth or of greater. Then are we to do them an injustice by making them live a worse life when they could live a better one?
Although you've demonstrated your inability to actually come up with a sustained critique of Advaita written in your own words, you've shown dedication in repeating the 'Advaita is bad because it promotes abandoning society and the political realm to sin, ignorance, etc' allegation. It's really not true though. Shankara actually achieved more in his short life than Damascius did despite living for less than half the time that he did. Shankara went around establishing temples, writing, initiating people, spreading truth to people, participating in sponsored debates attended by intellectuals and royals. The temples and monastic order he founded survive to this day, and he helped reinvigorate Hindu philosophy. Damascius wrote some texts, got his school shut down and presided over the death of Neoplatonism as a living tradition. There is a long history of Brahmins of both the householding priestly type as well as ascetic monks acting as advisors and as spiritual leaders to the cities and kingdoms of India, so the notion that asceticism in Advaita conflicts with the Platonic concept of the enlightened philosopher guiding and providing illumination to the city is nonsense. The Advaitist monk Vidyarana who wrote the Advaita text Pañcadaśī was the patron saint and high priest to the founders of the Vijayanagara Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidyaranya