/lit/ - Literature

>>15090912
Śaṅkarācārya settled down onto his tigerskin run and faced Nagarjuna

"It's time to settle whose teachings are correct for once and for all" Śaṅkarācārya stated

"I agree, let us enter into a debate" Nagarjuna said. "But Śaṅkarācārya, we both accept that the phenomenal world is only conditionally real and lacks ultimate reality, you on the authority on the Upanishads and me on the words of the Tathagata, where is the disagreement?"

"Ah, but you see" Śaṅkarācārya interjected, "You reject that there is any existent higher reality and state that even Nirvana is sunyata or empty of essence and self-nature, whereas the Upanishads describe the ultimate reality Brahman as an infinite undecaying intelligence which is purnam (fullness), you also hold to the foolish anatta (no-self) doctrine which I have debunked in my popular writings repeatedly"

"But Śaṅkarācārya! The Tathagata refuted all doctrines of Self!" Nagarjuna shouted out

"That is incorrect my friend, he actually stated in one Sutta that the denial of the Self was an extreme of nihilism, but he didn't affirm the existence of the Self because he was trying to point to the apophatic Upanishadic Self by negation, you and all the other Buddhists sadly misunderstood him as teaching "no-self" despite that he condemned this in the Pali Canon as nihilism, anyways back to the subject at hand, your denial of the Self is foolish, like a man who says he is not wet while he is swimming in the ocean."

Śaṅkarācārya continued "If there is no Self then there is nobody to realize the truth of emptiness or Nirvana, there is no examples of illusions or emptiness being self-aware and conscious like we are, the Self as the luminous awareness which observes all of our thoughts and sensations stands self-proven and can only be denied by the dim-witted"

Nagarjuna protested "But Śaṅkarācārya, I don't mean emptiness as in nothingness, I mean emptiness as devoid of uncaused permanent existence, that is to say everything is a web of mutually-dependent relations such that nothing in the world has ultimate, independent or uncaused existence, you are misunderstanding what I mean"

>>14393661
if you read Shankara's commentaries he'll show you, that is if you have the intellectual capacity to understand them

https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf
https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-vol2.pdf

>>14218368
>But once you reach moksha it becomes totally unreal?
Moksha remains real, because Moksha is synonymous with liberation, which is the real nature of the Atma. Shankara explains in his works that anything which belongs to sphere of action can only produce a non-eternal result. Something isn't truly eternal unless its existence is beginningless as well as endless, the only way to achieve a beginningless liberation is if it was the true nature of things all along and it only appeared otherwise via ignorance. Hence the emphasis in Advaita on knowledge, as it is only knowledge which can remove this ignorance. Someone who has attained moksha would still be aware of and able to interact with the world but would be entirely indifferent to it and regard it more or less as unreal transient vibrations of the Self.
>For the Buddhist this is impossible because the knowledge of the "ultimate" is only known in relation to the knowledge of the "conventional" (knowing it AS conventional) so it is impossible to assert the truth of one to the exclusion of the other.
Advaita is not talking about knowing the ultimate as an object of thought, it is talking about the knower being identified as the Ultimate itself irrespective of objects. The Ultimate is self-luminous Awareness, it is normally identified with the intellect but when it shines forth as the self-luminous Real, it's revealed that the knower was really that Real all along. It is a transcendental knowledge which dawns in spiritual realization and which does not depend on subject-object distinctions. So Advaita would disagree with the Buddhist position that the ultimate cannot be known except in relation to the conventional but in any case that point you made doesn't really apply because Advaita isn't talking about knowing It as an object or knowing it in relation to anything else.
>>14218535
I explained why it's not and the Upanishads and Advaita repeat that it's not as well
>>14218552
Advaita doesn't say that "everything" is Bliss, but that what we perceive as "everything" appears in that infinite Bliss (via maya), the Taittiriya Upanishad says that the universe emerges from, is sustained by and dissolves back into that Bliss. Because Bliss can only experienced by a conscious entity, infinite and eternal Bliss necessitates and includes within itself eternal, unborn and undying Awareness. Awareness includes by definition the capacity to be aware of and witness illusions. Because of Brahman wielding His power of maya the artful illusion of samsara is allowed to appear within this infinite Awareness. This is why Advaita is not monism or pantheism because objects themselves are not Brahman or made out of Brahman but are only appearances in Brahman.