/lit/ - Literature

>>21059164
>I am wondering if there are any notable rebuttals of advaita vedanta and self realization and Eastern spirituality in general from a Christian perspective.
No, such attempts invariably amount to a combination of sentimentalism, sophistry and various fallacies including but not limited to: strawmen, non-sequiturs and false dichotomies

/thread

>>20959664
> this third position is achieved thru a contradiction, so still violates the lnc
No it’s not, you still have not demonstrated any contradiction. Every time you try to allege that there is a contradiction you commit the petitio principii fallacy by trying to argue that its a fallacy *because* there can only be being and non-being; which is exactly the point you are being asked to prove so to simply assume that as your argument is circular and fallacious. There *isn’t* any way to show a contradiction in it without relying on circular reasoning, which is why its impossible to refute.

>if there's no chain of causation, then shankara's whole argument in favour of brahma is refuted
No it’s not, because it doesn’t logically follow from causality being unreal that illusions and changing contingent things can exist spontaneously since existence, self-sufficiency and causation are all three different things, there is no logical connection that would substantiate that conclusion which is actually illogical and totally sophistic. Even though causal relations are not ultimately real since maya is a wholly contingent illusion that lacks any sort of self-sufficiency it depends upon Brahman being present all the same. Contingency is not the same thing as causation either.

>you end up in a buddhist point of view of universe
that view falls apart into an untenable regress, aside from the Buddhist schools that have Vedanta-like view where the Absolute is the substratum of samsara and provides for it.

>Then in this case your nirvana ‘emerges
no, because nirvana is not part of phenomena, nirvana is imanent in every aspect of phenomena, just like every process has imanent negation in them
is Nirvana immanent in samsara as something that is the same as samsara or something that’s different from samsara? If your answer is the first then you arrive back at the same contradiction of ascribing two contradictory attributes to the same thing, if your answer is the second your original position that they are non-different is falsified and you are forced to abandon it

>then there is no contradiction in saying falsity is neither of those two
>it is, becasue of what that negation entails
Incorrect, because all your examples of this use a binary example instead of a triad like the triad advaita is talking about so your example doesn’t correspond to what you are trying and failing to refute; so it doesn’t prove anything

>In all the eastern and southern regions the tÏrthikas (non-Buddhists) prospered and the Buddhists were going down . . . there lived two brothers who were the acaryas of the tÏrthikas. One of them was called Dattatrai (Dattetreya). He was specially in favour of samadhi. The second was Śaṅkarācārya, who propitiated Mahadeva. He chanted spells on a jar placed behind a curtain. From within the jar emerged Mahadeva up to his neck and taught him the art of debate. In Bhamgala he entered into debates. The elders among the bhikshus said, ‘It is difficult to defeat him. So acarya Dharmapala or CandragomÏ or CandrakÏrti should be invited to contest in debate.’ The younger panditas did not listen to this and said, ‘The prestige of the local panditas will go down if a debater is brought from somewhere else. We are more skilled than they are.’ Inflated with vanity, they entered into debate with Śaṅkarācārya. In this the Buddhists were defeated and, as a result, everything belonging to the twenty-five centres of the Doctrine was lost to the tÏrthikas and the centres were deserted. About five hundred upasakas (buddhist monks) had to enter the path of the tÏrthikas.
- Taranatha (1575–1634), “dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i chos bskor gyi byung khungs nyer mkho” (History of Buddhism in India)

>>20320321
>The Mulamadhyamakakarika just can't be refu

Except for the part about Nagarjuna's denial of the reflexivity of consciousness leading to an infinite regress that makes knowledge impossible

And except for the part about how Nagarjuna is unable to demonstrate the emptiness of consciousness since according to his own admission consciousness cannot examine itself or have awareness of itself and hence cannot detect its own alleged emptiness

And except for the part when Nagarjuna tries to refute the existence of akasha his argument presupposes the denial of real things having extension, even though this claim cannot be considered proven until the existence of akasha as ubiquitous and indivisible has been disproven, i.e. he puts the cart before the horse and uses the circular reasoning fallacy.

And except for the part where Nagarjuna claims to refute his opponents without advancing any empirical propositions which are not accepted by them, but this is not true in fact and he asserts dogmatically the empirical proposition that perception is marked by conceptualization which falsifies

And except for the part when samsara and nirvana are equated by Nagarjuna it violates the law of non-contradiction by ascribing two mutually exclusive statuses to the same thing at once (suffering vs absence of suffering); and if in an attempt to rescue this from contradiction one says the suffering is just an incorrect view of nirvana, then this suffering has to be different from nirvana which falsifies the original thesis, or if this isn't done then it continues to violate the LNC. And if you try to back away from this and say they are equated conditionally while ultimately Nagarjuna takes no position on their sameness or difference, then this isn't even Buddhism anymore and is a heresy since Buddha identifies skepticism and having 'no views' and 'no positions' as a heresy and as not his teaching in the Samaññaphala Sutta of the Digha Nikaya

>>20286035
>they indicate Brahman to us using analogies
>that shouldn't be possible since brahma=A and the vedas=B and according to your own logic A=/=B
No, it's entirely possible, because an analogy is a form of a comparison, the thing you use as an illustration in an analogy is always necessarily different from what you are making the analogy about in the first place. If they were the same you wouldn't need to make an analogy but would just say they are the same.

Furthermore, the Upanishadic analogies, lessons etc function so as to eliminate ignorance and false understandings of what is our self vs non-self etc, and since it is these wrong understandings that are the immediate cause of people not fully realizing their own Self/Atman, when these false understandings are removed through fully understanding the import of the Upanishadic text then the Atman-Brahman is automatically disclosed and fully revealed to us as our own Self without any further action being required.

>>that is revealed supernaturally to sages in every universe cycle including this one.
>in order for this to be possible a bridge that link A with B is needed
No, that's wrong, since the lessons of the Vedic teaching is not Brahman itself but is just part of the information already pre-encoded into maya by default, it's part of the pattern that characterizes maya. When Brahman casts maya as falsity, that itself already includes the Vedic teaching being a part of maya and it appearing in every maya-universe-cycle.

>>20258999
>and in his history of Buddhism Taranatha records that Shankara defeated Buddhists and converted the monks at their monasteries through this
Taranatha speaking on the unsurpassable Shankaracharya (pbuh):

In all the eastern and southern regions the tÏrthikas (non-Buddhists) prospered and the Buddhists were going down . . . there lived two brothers who were the acaryas of the tÏrthikas. One of them was called Dattatrai (Dattetreya). He was specially in favour of samadhi. The second was Śaṅkarācārya, who propitiated Mahadeva. He chanted spells on a jar placed behind a curtain. From within the jar emerged Mahadeva up to his neck and taught him the art of debate. In Bhamgala he entered into debates. The elders among the bhikshus said, ‘It is difficult to defeat him. So acarya Dharmapala or CandragomÏ or CandrakÏrti should be invited to contest in debate.’ The younger panditas did not listen to this and said, ‘The prestige of the local panditas will go down if a debater is brought from somewhere else. We are more skilled than they are.’ Inflated with vanity, they entered into debate with Śaṅkarācārya. In this the Buddhists were defeated and, as a result, everything belonging to the twenty-five centres of the Doctrine was lost to the tÏrthikas and the centres were deserted. About five hundred upasakas (buddhist monks) had to enter the path of the tÏrthikas.
- Taranatha, “dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i chos bskor gyi byung khungs nyer mkho” (History of Buddhism in India)

>>20222222
witnessed

>>20180386
you've made this same thread multiple times and it's still retarded. the gita is an aryan text, written by the conquerors who subjugated those street-shitting aboriginals and created a magnificent civilization. it is the very modern disease, which you are so proud of that it causes this prejudice, that made indian culture to degnerate into what it is today.