/lit/ - Literature

>>11390313
>>11392921

Advaita is an incredibly profound teaching that is as subtle as it is beautiful. To varying extents, in the west parallels can be drawn with Plato, Neoplatonism, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Eckart, Philo and Bohme although Vedanta is way more developed and thought-out than these by virute of it being a multi-thousand year tradition (the composition of the Upanishads themselves constitute the beinning of Vedanta) that untold multitudes have participated in and contributed to understanding. Guenon regarded it to be most purest and direct of the perennial and eternal metaphysical truth more or less directly or cryptically taught by the eastern religions (occasionally found in the west too).

Here is a good article providing an overview of it for someone coming from the perspective of western thought.

http://religioperennis.org/documents/acoomaraswamy/vedanta.pdf

>>11334993
Your question is sort of vague but I can answer more in depth if you elaborate. If you explained why you thought that was the case it would be easier to explain at which point you misunderstood it.

>Will someone please explain to me how the absolute monism of Advaita Vedanta doesn't ultimately lead to nihilism not only of morality

Nihilism has nothing to so with Advaita. Advaita goes much beyond simple monism, which is why you have to actually read the Vedanta texts or at least some of the good books about it to come anywhere near close to understanding it. Brahman can be conceptually separated into the manifest and the unmanifested, the phenomal world and the universe belonging to the former. One of the very first differentiations that happens to manifested Brahman is Dharma (which can roughly be simplified the sake of this post as cosmic order, a preordained natural law of justness and harmony). Nihilism doesn't make sense when you are thinking within the context of dharma. Advaita teaches that ultimately everything is Brahman and that it is due to ignorance that we perceive otherwise; it being the goal to reach moksha through aquiring knowledge of the true nature of things. Short of this though it still teaches ethical considerations such as non-violence and not acting immorally, not taking advantage of others etc. Harming others is seen as naturally wrong because the same self is in everything, you would be both harming yourself and commiting an unwholesome act by inducing suffering.

A large part of it is taught in the context of making the student aware of the unwholesomeness of certain things with moral behavior necessarily following in one who understands this (i.e. when you learn that lust, anger, greed, jealousy, craving, etc are generated by the gunas, persist because of ignorance of the truth and play a large role in binding one to samsara, then one would logically as a result of this transcend all these fetters by becoming a possesionless mendicant who commits no sin and who generates no karma, thus acting morally. Vedanta also acknoweldges the validity and justness of the caste system, which is seen as dharma applied to society. Vedanta is implicitly aristocratic in that it repeatedly acknowledges that it's usually only a small minority who have the capability to quickly understand the highest truth; because of this its seen as natural and just that the priestly caste should guide society and teach the truth, because without a dedicated group of qualified people passing it down there is no reason the teachings would not be lost or corrupted.

Just because everything is Brahman does not mean that actions don't have consequences, in Vedanta causing suffering and ignorance of the truth is still seen as unambiguously bad.

>but also truth therefore contradicting itself?

The highest truth is the absolute non-duality of Brahman but Vedanta teaches that there is still a convential reality and conventional truths.

>>11322549

If you agree with that general premise than you could say he was certainly onto something although he didn't develop the idea anyway near as far as Vedanta does, he really doesn't delve into the applications and implications to the same extent as Vedanta and his ideas are much more simplified and reductionist, also notably his work was lacking the notion that one could achieve limitless bliss and liberation through proper assimilation and realization of the truth like Vedanta teaches etc.

That's why you often see people posting that Spinoza is really simplified Vedanta or that he is inferior to Vedanta. Spinoza's entire philosophical body of work is just really a portion of Advaita that limits itself to one basic (albiet important) part of the doctrine.

Still though Vedanta is a tradition with thousands of years behind and untold thousands of people have composed hundreds of Vedanta texts so it's not surprising that Spinoza would seem limited by comparison, if anything it's praiseworthy and impressive that he was at least able to figure out a basic element of the doctrine on his own (assuming he didn't plagiarize from Hindu texts brought back by Dutch traders from India, I myself don't know or care but some people think he may have and the Dutch were in India then).

>>11198957

It's included in the term Prasthanatrayi which also includes the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad-Gita. The Bhagavad-Gita can be read early on as a good intro texts even with one of the simple translations like Easwarans but if you really want to deeply understand Hindu thought you should read the entire prasthanatrayi accompanied by the Vedanta commentaries that establish their true meaning, in specifically Adi Shankara's commentaries. There is nothing wrong with reading Easwarans or another simple translation of the gita first and then going back and reading Shankaras commentary later.

>>11130063
>If you are well read on Guenon and Hindu society in general, you would know that everything has its proper place.

I never said otherwise or even implied otherwise in my post.

>If you were to suggest to a Hindu that he didn't have a caste/profession because all is One, he'd likely scoff at you.

My post has nothing to do with this. In order to defend yourself you are willfully misinterpreting it. Caste is dharma applied so the social order and plays a vital role in organizing society, but one should never make the mistake of thinking that caste, race or anything else stands for something absolute when in fact it is only contingent and relative, the exact same atma is inside people of every caste and all beings. The atma inside a Brahmin and an intenstinal parasite are strictly the same, and the sruti leaves no room for contention on this. It's with this in mind that Shankara states that it's wrong to treat others because of their caste in Upadesasahasri, while also defending the notion of caste in his other works, the two positions are not in the least contradictory.

>in his first book he approaches the issue of the differing races and their mentalities.

Yes I'm fully aware but when push comes to shove he always demonstrates a knowledge of the ultimate truth of non-duality and the illusionary nature of the phenomenal world. Different races obviously have different tendencies but these are all themselves contingent and non-absolute, the only real aspect of the being and their soul (atma) is the exact same in all of them. Guenon not once in any of his works makes the mistake of claiming otherwise. He never claims that people or races have different souls. The key mistake Evola makes is to take the relative and contingent differences and to assume that there is an absolute difference of soul, which is the exact opposite of the truth. You seem to want to blur the distinction between the real and the non-real and so it should be noted that Vedanta teaches unequivocally that the only real aspect of beings (atma) is the exact same in all of them. Hence difference only is true in a relative, contingent and illusionary sense.

>The fact of the matter is that all human beings occupy the same domain of "corporeality," at least partially, but always in an eliminable way

The only eliminable aspects of the being are the non-real, while the only real aspect of them (atma) is non-eliminable, omnipresent, forever the same and unconditioned.

>and to diffuse and hand-waive away genuine problems within that domain is a kind of despotism: not an illumination.

You simply misunderstand basic Hindu doctrine, likely from your reading of Evola who makes the same mistake. Before you again try to claim that I'm denying or hand-waving away genuine differences I will again make it clear to you that the Traditional doctrines teach that the only differences are only relative and contingent (which does not preclude them from falsely seeming real to us).

Best books for Japanese Mythology and Hindu Mythology? Does Russia have mythology?