/lit/ - Literature

>>14120293
For Advaita, the best recommendation I have would be to begin with Shankara's Upanishad commentaries, in particular the shorter ones linked to below. If you are having trouble understanding them than take a break and read a quick overview book on Advaita and then it will become clear, some good intro books are Deustch's 'Advaita Vedānta: a philosophical reconstruction' (on lib-gen), Guenon's 'Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta' (on archive.org and lib-gen) and just the chapters on Vedanta in Sharma's 'Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy (also on archive.org and lib-gen)

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

Vajrayana combines a lot of Mahayana thought with Tantric influence. Some of the more valuable and in-depth writings by Vajrayana thinkers include those by Longchenpa, Dolpopa and Kukai. You can skip right away to reading them if you want to but if you really want to fully understand the context of them and get most of the references in their writings you should have already read selections from the Pali Canon, have a working knowledge of Madhyamaka, and have read the works of Asanga, some of the Tathagatagarbha Sutras and the early Buddhist Tantras. The major Vajaryana thinkers cite and combine the ideas of all of the above in addition to other material. I'm not really into Hermeticism and don't have any good advice but I would like to read it eventually.