/lit/ - Literature

Sidenote: I'm also interested in Indo-European studies in general, so if there are comparable books on Old Avestan or even Hittite etc., or comparative studies, I'd be cool with that.

Also: I have ordered Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society, by Emile Benveniste. An anon recommended Dumezil as well.

>>12413485
>I'm looking to understand the core concepts or earliest developments of Vedic thought from a philological, phenomenological, and hermeneutical perspective.
The academics take a different view from that of the Hindu tradition itself, the Hindus regard the principal Upanishads (and the pre-Upanishad portions of the Vedas) as essentially all being a consistent body of revealed texts describing the same teaching from different angles while most academics think that the principal Upanishads to some extent contain different understandings which changed over time. The Hindu analysis and commentaries on their own texts are generally more in-depth and interesting than academic summaries written from the anthropological perspective by modern scholars, although there are occasional exceptions who have insightful writing on Hindu philosophy published by academic presses. You can read different academic works on the Upanishads but many academics will just push their own views and often disagree with each other, there is no consensus. The work of early orientalists like Muller and Duessen can be interesting but they are also somewhat superseded by later research. If you want to develop the most in-depth and insightful understand of what the Hindus consider to be the metaphysical doctrines revealed by the Upanishads I would just recommend reading through the Vedanta commentaries supplemented by a few academic works.

I'm assuming you aware of the different schools of Vedanta, Advaita Vedanta is one of the more influential schools, has the most texts translated to English, is the one most written about by academics and is most often the focus of books comparing Hindu philosophy to other schools and so unless you have a specific reason not to than I'd generally recommend studying that school (you can go and read the works of other schools afterwards to see where they differ, as Advaita developed into a formal school first they often show significant influence from it, even in their rejection of it). Shankara himself analyses the Upanishads from all those perspectives you mention, at times discussing ontology, epistemology, and also the philological such as when he discusses how we can infer the meaning of certain Upanishads passages from the grammer and conjugations of verbs and so on.

>>12413698

You'll need to do some preparatory reading before you can understand the commentaries, they presuppose a pretty in-depth understanding of Hindu philosophy, you can get this from Hiriyanna's 'The Essentials of Hindu Philosophy', Rene Guenon's first two books (intro to hindu doctrines + Man and his Becoming) also explain like 90% of the words and concepts you'll need to understand Shankara's commentaries although you may still need to look up words on occasion. You can find free translations of all of Adi Shankara's commentaries as free pdfs here but it's something like 3,500+ pages so you may want to get hard copies or port them onto a kindle or something so you don't strain your eyes reading them on PC. I recommend starting with his 2-part commentaries on 8 of the Upanishads because these are shorter and easier to digest than his 600-900 page commentaries on the Brihadaranyaka, Chandogya, Brahma Sutras and Gita. I've read about 1/3 of his works so far, they're quite good.

>Shankara's commentaries on 8 principal Upanishads part 1
https://archive.org/details/EightUpanishadsWithSankarabhashyamSwamiGambhiranandaVol11989
>Shankara's commentaries on 8 principal Upanishads part 2
https://archive.org/details/EightUpanishadsWithSankarabhashyamSwamiGambhiranandaVol21966
>Brihadaranyaka Upanishad commentary of Shankara
https://archive.org/stream/Brihadaranyaka.Upanishad.Shankara.Bhashya.by.Swami.Madhavananda
>Chandogya Upanishad commentary of Shankara
https://archive.org/stream/Shankara.Bhashya-Chandogya.Upanishad-Ganganath.Jha.1942.English
>Brahma Sutra commentary of Adi Shankara
https://archive.org/details/BrahmaSutraSankaraBhashyaEngVMApte1960
>Bhagavad-Gita with Shankara's commentary
https://archive.org/details/Bhagavad-Gita.with.the.Commentary.of.Sri.Shankaracharya


>Right now I'm reading some selections of the Rigveda and Upanishads, and looking especially for commentaries on either, or on Vedic ontology specifically if the latter exists.
Coomaraswamy has a very interesting book called 'Perception of the Vedas' where he skillfully and convincingly argues that the earlier pre-Upanishad portions of the Vedas take for a given and demonstrate an understanding of the same doctrines of the Upanishads (which would support the Hindu understanding of them as an internally-consistent revealed text), although as I mentioned this is not the mainstream view in academia. It's free on lib-gen. I would recommend only reading this after you have a decent amount of experience reading Hindu philosophy in particular Vedanta because it's quite dense

http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=EA5EB71D19BB3DF22AE017638C8D5A24

>>12413698
>>12413705

How does Hindu philosophy make a difference to the world?

Like in the West all of these different philosophical ideas are some times put into practice because they are either practical or enhance our lives for the better.

Does hindu philosophy have such a thing, or is it just a historical circlejerk between Brahmin priests?

>>12413765
>How does Hindu philosophy make a difference to the world?

By informing and giving a theoretical basis to almost every aspect of Hindu worship, ritual and meditative/yogic practices, to people's spirituality generally. Things engendered by religion and spirituality such as finding happiness, bliss and contentedness pertain to the individual + their immediate community and are removed from the sphere of causing 'practical differences in the world' which one could argue are transient anyways. If you are trying to measure the importance of Hindu philosophy by asking what scientific inventions it has come up with you are missing the whole point. There is a long history of fairly advanced mathematics, astronomy, medicine etc throughout classical Indian civilization and the borders of that often intersect with Hindu religion/philosophy but each domain belongs to its own sphere and their respective effects are not really comparable. You can more or less substitute what Heidegger had to say about technology/materiality versus the importance of Being for what a Hindu might say with regard to Hindu religious/philosophical thought.

>>12413765
>Like in the West all of these different philosophical ideas are some times put into practice because they are either practical or enhance our lives for the better.
An example of these being put into practice and causing massive benefits for hundreds of millions of people would be things like yoga and meditaiton

>Does hindu philosophy have such a thing, or is it just a historical circlejerk between Brahmin priests
Yes, it informs every aspect of Hindu society. Even the lowest castes have their own cults and spiritual traditions which pertain to the same general context and ideas as Vedic and Tantric teachings., not to mention many monastic orders throughout history have been open to people of any caste.

>>12413826
Wasn't caste system as we know today, firmly applied first time in Manusmriti?

>>12413806
No, i'm completely aware of the non material aspect concerning Hindu thought. In fact i hold it in very high regard as opposed to what westerners call spirituality because every idea related to the non-material existence of the human condition, within Hinduism at least, is treated very very seriously, and there's been dedicated historical practice of each new idea when ever it appeared.

In the West, or more specifically within Zoroastrian, Judaic or Christian spirituality, there's a lot more emphasis put onto how materially practical some things are when talking about worship. Zoroastrians concerning themselves what's pure and what's not, ways to treat the dead. Christians about enforcing a certain morality that will eventually lead an individual to heaven, or in the very legalistic Judaism that is concerned about the smallest of life's aspects.


What i mean to ask, since i'm not familiar with Hindu thought or society but do know some history of the region, does Hindu thought concern itself with establishing a common, unilateral approach to worship through debates, as well as enforcing a single approach to how reality works, or is it that everyone is free to follow whatever they think is more sound to them?

Because as old and complex Hindu thought is, it seems to me, from a historical perspective, that all it's achieved is coming up with ideas for people to follow, but not achieving any homogeneous way of looking at spirituality. Correct me if i'm wrong but this is the vibe that i get when studying the evolution of Hindu thought.

>>12413698
>>12413705
Thanks much for the info and recommendations anon. Yeah I am very aware of the shortcomings of academic scholarship, but I also don't want to get mired in philosophical schools before I have a good conservative estimation of the historical and linguistic development of the Vedic corpus first. I am trying to chart a bit of a middle course and ultimately to have the best of both worlds.

I am interested in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy as well, in the long run. But I am interested in historical treatment of the textual tradition exactly because I want to have criteria to guide me when ten different friends recommend "just read x" or "just read y" etc., x/y being your choice of 10th century Buddhist sect or neo-Vedantist and so on.

>>12413908
>does Hindu thought concern itself with establishing a common, unilateral approach to worship through debates,
Many of the major Hindu thinkers have attempted to unify diverse currents of thought and in doing so establish a common framework of worship (such as drawing from multiple darshanas as Vedanta does), and philosophical/religious debate has long been central to Hindu culture, Sanskrit was the lingua franca of the educated scholars and sages of India for almost its entire history and it was very common for towns to have a dedicated stage/area for traveling monks to debate each other and the Brahmins of that town. At the same time, dogmatism as found in the history of the Abrahamic religions is mostly absent from Hindu history. Opposing schools of thought criticize each other in their writings but violence between Hindu sects is almost entirely absent from history. Most of the occasions of violence have to do with either violent resistance to Muslim invaders/bandits or for a brief period against Buddhists when Buddhism was seen as being the religion of foreign dynasties imposing themselves on the subcontinent like the Kushans.

>as well as enforcing a single approach to how reality works, or is it that everyone is free to follow whatever they think is more sound to them?
The approach of 'enforcing' stuff is not really taken, it's more that if you want to follow and be accepted by a certain religious order/school/temple you'd have to accept their teachings or at least learn their lingo and critique them from the inside as a reformer, but the approach of trying to actively eliminate and silence other views is very rare. In any given place and time throughout history you'd often have half a dozen Vedic/Sramanic/Tantric/Puranic shrines and groups all in close proximity to each other in the same village.

>but not achieving any homogeneous way of looking at spirituality.
Yes and no, there are obviously dozens of completing theological interpretations within mainstream Hinduism, but at the same time there are a common set of values and beliefs which unite most of them such as valuing non-violence, dharma, reverence for the common basis of the Sruti, the ideal of the ascetic and devotee, the small rituals giving a divine context to stuff in daily life etc.

try Buddhism

>>12414061
That's a damn shame. If Hindu philosophers would all unite in their efforts to make one single coherent monotheist explanation of our existence, then i am sure that all of the planet would be hindu within a generation.

Speaking of which, what would make someone of hindu tradition abandon it and embrace christian orthodoxy for example?

bump

>>12413485
good thread op

>>12414354
My ancestry is Anglo-Indian on my mothers side. Alot of the family on my Indian side converted to Catholicism or Anglicanism for marriage. Other than that, i haven't seen many coverts. In my experience, Hinduism is less dogmatic on it's individual practitioners, my gf is punjabi and her Hinduism is slightly different but she is still accepted by Hindus as Hindu (versus protestants in the west with regards to Mormonism or another vastly different sect) This is just what I've noticed though, could be wrong.

>>12414354
Hindus already share basically the same metaphysics and it is that which can be exported. Plato having been Indian, changing nothing else in his belief system would be considered Hindu in India, although a heterodox one since he did not have the Vedas.

Problem is that the rest of the world for the most part does not have any pre-Abrahamic traditions left that could sustain and uphold Indian metaphysics. Without ritual, mythology and traditions it becomes nothing but an intellectual endeavor that can never break into the mainstream since you basically have to have an PhD to be able to fully understand it and especially be able to argue it good enough to combat easily packaged and defined Christianity or Islam.

>>12415196
I just imagine some non-dual metaphysician going to London's speakers corner trying to debate and prove the superiority of his system

lel

>>12413922
>mired in philosophical schools before I have a good conservative estimation of the historical and linguistic development of the Vedic corpus first.

The reason Shankara/Advaita is often recommend is that in a way it represents the first emergence of a consistent Hindu textual tradition which regards itself as such and which survives in physical form down to the present time. The ancient/classical Indians kept much less detailed records than the Chinese (many texts/universities/libraries were also destroyed by invaders especially the Muslims beginning in the 12th century) and so there are large areas of ancient/classical Indian history where we don't know exactly what happened, how popular certain schools/sects where or when certain doctrines emerged or became popular.

Before the emergence of formal Vedanta schools in the early to mid 1st millenium AD we have many Hindu texts such as the Vedas, the Itihasa (Mahabharata+Gita and Ramayana), the Upanishads, the early texts of various Darshanas like Yoga and Samhkya and the various Puranas which combine myth/history/cosmology/metaphysics, many of which discuss the same sort of teachings of the later Vedanta. However, we have no understanding of how Hindus in the first millennium BC reconciled all these, which theological views dominated and so on, the writings of the pre-Vedanta schools like Samkhya mostly stuck to their special areas of interest and did not try to reconcile everything. Shankara (and later Vedanta teachers after him like Ramanuja etc) were the first people to attempt to provide a consistent interpretation of everything existing previously, in a sense each major Vedanta Acharya viewed themselves as the restorer of the tradition of correct interpretation of doctrine which had been lost due to time and disagreement etc. This is why on Adi Shankara's wikipedia page it says "He is credited with unifying and establishing the main currents of thought in Hinduism".

>>12414354
>>12415735

As an example of what I'm talking about Adi Shankara begins his Gita commentary by writing (after quoting a Purana):

>"This is a puranic verse speaking of the Antaryamin, the Inner Guide and Regulator of all souls. It is quoted here by the commentator in order that be may begin his important work, after the orthodox fashion, with the contemplation of his favorite God, namely, Narayana, and further with a view to show that the Purana, the Itihasa and the Gita teach one and the same doctrine

Ramanuja similarly begins his commentary on the Brahma Sutras with the words:

>"The nectar of the teaching of Parâsara's son (Vyâsa),--which was brought up from the middle of the milk-ocean of the Upanishads--which restores to life the souls whose vital strength had departed owing to the heat of the fire of transmigratory existence--which was well guarded by the teachers of old--which was obscured by the mutual conflict of manifold opinions,--may intelligent men daily enjoy that as it is now presented to them in my words."

Vedanta represents the emergence of a consistent interpretation providing a unifying explanation for how all the revealed and inspired texts reflect the same understanding; it's basically the main Hindu commentarial tradition. It's this which is primarily why Vedanta was so influential and mostly superceded the other schools in the first millenium AD. Before Adi Shankara and the other Vedanta Acharyas nobody had even come close to doing so. We can reconstruct the views of certain thinkers lost to time before them from them being quoted in Vedanta texts but none of these people reach this level. There are many thousands of pages of Hindu texts predating Vedanta (which are definitely worth reading btw), but until them there is no tradition of interpretation/commentary that survives intact (with the addendum that Vedantic teachings are likely predicted on the efforts of earlier people who passed down and kept alive the correct interpretation by word of mouth from the time of the Upanishads, which is why Shankara refers to Gaudapada as 'knower of the tradition'.

>>12413922
>>12415740

>I am interested in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy as well, in the long run. But I am interested in historical treatment of the textual tradition exactly because I want to have criteria to guide me when ten different friends recommend "just read x" or "just read y" etc., x/y being your choice of 10th century Buddhist sect or neo-Vedantist and so on.
As I explained above, aside from the various primary texts existing without commentary, the Vedanta represents the beginning of this for Hindus. It's a mistake to associate Advaita Vedanta with Neo-Vedanta, they are actually quite different. Neo-Vedanta began to be known as such largely when Vivekananda and associated people in the late 19th/early 20th century began to promote a syncretic form of Advaita which was drew from among other things, western ideas about equality and human rights, Protestant theology and aesthetics, anti-colonial sentiment and Indian nationalism, western philosophy and the work of late Medieval-era Vedantic thinkers who were trying to reconcile earlier Vedanta with the Yoga, Samhkya etc that Vedanta originally claimed to supercede. It differs significantly from the traditional Advaita of Shankara and its various subschools, some of these medieval-era thinkers Neo-Vedanta relies upon like Vijnana-Bhikshu were ironically enough Bhedabhedan Vedantins whom Shankara would have heavily criticized. I'm not trying to bludgeon you into reading Shankara, but I just wanted to explain the significance of classical Vedanta for the overall Hindu tradition and how it shouldn't be confused with the modern phenomenon of Neo-Vedanta. Between 500-1800 BC there also emerged many monastic and written traditions drawing from Vedanta or Tantra in combination with Vaishnavism, Tantra, Shaktism etc like the Nath Yogis for example

>>12415750
*Between 500-1800 AD

Brereton and Jamison's three-volume edition of the Rigveda comes with historical-critical introduction and commentary.

>>12413922
I would recommend against reading a commentary of the Upanishads or the Gita if it's your first time reading them. The commentary is interspersed with each verse, which breaks the flow of the discourse.

>from a philological, phenomenonological, and hermeneutic perspective

You sound like an insecure graduate student.

Anyway if you want west meets east, and more thorough comparative philosophy than you ever dreamed you wanted, then Bimal Krishna Matilal is your man.

For starting with the Indians, video related is the best place to start
>https://youtu.be/_B4Z1PB97KY

Not even being ironic.

>>12416445
>youtube link unironically
Embarassing.

>>12416445
I'm tripping balls

>>12416541
How do you live with yourself?

>>12416569
>not drinking Soma to see through the veil of Maya

bump

>>12416657
Drink all the soma you want, so long as you offer up animals to Agni in perfect karmic order and according to Vedic law. Also let me know when you figure out the recipe.

Do any of you guys have experience with direct insight? I can't wash away this feeling that all my studies into Buddhism might be for naught, and they say you have to just keep meditating until a bit of truth reveals itself, but it's hard to stay committed with such a vague promise. Whenever I read anecdotes of people claiming to have experienced insight, a good 50% of them come across as plain fiction, but then even the more intelligible claims have this "too good to be true" sense about them, and to match it, these people never have an appropriate reaction considering they say they've received proof for essentially what might be the real truth to our existence, and they just sort of shrug it off and write things like "My hands are buzzing and I now have compassion for all people. I like spending all my free time outside now too. I might be enlightened." Does that not feel disgenuine to you? Painfully lacking in some way?

I do think this is territory worth exploring, but I wish I could find honest answers as to what I should expect instead of everyone RPing as a wisened monk and spitting out their own aphorisms to lost beginners.

>>12413485
Let me save you a ton of thought and time. If we start under the assumption that western throught is influenced by monotheistic notions, then explaining eastern thought is a bit easier. Consider this thought experiment: there are two groups of people; both are monotheistic. However, the difference is that the eastern group has many personifications of their monotheistic cosmos, making them a polytheistic society. They are aware of the infinitude of reality, but they reach this awareness through their own unique cosmological structuring. Yet they are still monotheists. Once you understand that, you need not waste your time unless you wish to.

Me on the left.

>>12417485
In Ram Dass's book Be Here Now, he talks about going to India in the 1960's and giving some random sannyasi a huge dose of LSD at the request of the sannyasi, he says the guy meditated for a long time with eyes closed and then opened his eyes and told him that a long time ago yogis used similar medicine to reach God but that they don't do so anymore, he then tells Ram Dass that LSD can be an aid to reaching God if one takes it in a seated position by themselves and directs their attention inwards, he also says not to take it in a place that is too warm. Of course you can't just accept as infallible advice something from 60 years that's hearsay in a book but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

sidenote: most 'psytrance' and 'psychedelic' art is absolutely disgusting and makes me want to throw up whenever I look at it, I was looking for some image related to this post that I could add and I was immediately reminded of how much I hate it and similar computer-generated stuff

>>12413485
For a historical perspective, Gavin Flood's "An Introduction to Hinduism" is really good. He starts with a historical overview then looks at major strands of Hinduism roughly chronologically, followed by thematic chapters on ritual and modern Hinduism. It's not too long and is succinctly written. I'd recommend taking notes as it's quite information-dense, though easy to read.

For academic commentary on Vedic texts, Patrick Olivelle's Upanishads translation is very good, it has numerous end notes which take a historical and philological perspective. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's translation has an extensive commentary which is highly academic while having some devotional input.

The other main Vedic text of interest is the Rig Veda Samhita. The only worthwhile unabridged translation is by S. Jamison and J. Brereton, which has commentary in the form of introductions to each hymn. It's very expensive, so here's a link to a bunch of Hinduism resources that includes it:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ziouaua5sgmol/Hinduism

The Rig Veda Samhita has over 1000 hymns, so it's unlikely you'll read them all. To that end, there are selected translations. Penguin has a selection of 108 of the hymns by Wendy Doniger, she's a top philologist so the translations themselves are legit, but beware when she makes broader comments about Hinduism since she has some controversial views. There's another selection by Walter Maurer called "Pinnacles of India's Past" but it's pricey.

Max Müller's scholarship is totally out of date now, it's probably not worth reading him.

>>12414354
>Speaking of which, what would make someone of hindu tradition abandon it and embrace christian orthodoxy for example?
It's not unheard of for 2nd or 3rd generation Indians in American to either become atheist/agnostic or end up becoming Christian, I'm not Indian and can't speak from personal experience but I've seen people talk about Indian families trying to assimilate to the point of not really teaching their kids about the tradition. If you only associate Hinduism with fantastical looking statues and puja and know nothing of the philosophy and the more subtle/profound aspects of it it's not hard to imagine why an Indian teenager in the west might not take it very seriously.

>>12418869
>tfw Paul Deussen's 1917 book 'Vedânta, Platon und Kant' remains untranslated

>>12417636
>Do any of you guys have experience with direct insight?

Yes, but not through Buddhist literature or meditation. I don't know if you are one of those Buddhists who reflexively freak out when people talk about self/soul/God but I've found that Vedantic and Sufi texts are most often the ones that induce blissful/mystical/ecstatic/transcendental experiences with lasting effects while reading them (and while occasionally taking breaks to sit for a while with eyes closed reflecting on what I just read). I have studied Buddhism and gone to a 10-day Burmese-style Vipassana meditation retreat and none of it affected me as much as the aforementioned stuff. The Vedantic text Aparokshanubhuti can be literally translated as 'direct experience'. It may also be that you are focusing on the wrong schools of Buddhism.

http://www.nevernotpresent.com/source-texts/aparokshanubhuti-self-realization/

>>12419308
I wouldn't say I'm a Buddhist, just a guy curious whether this is a field with real depth worth exploring or if there isn't much more to engage with beyond the shallow and vague interactions like I mentioned above. To be honest, I never realized this until now, but the frustrations I listed above are basically a direct equivalent to what people do with Western philosophy where they read Nietzsche at 18 or do a quick reading of The Stranger and claim they really understood it and will now go around calling everything subjective and so on. In other words, pseuds.

The big difference with Eastern philosophy so far though is that you're instructed to verify it with experience, and that's when you really 'get it', so you have to deal with both mediocre theological interpretations and nonsense accounts of what the teachings will do as you try to see things for yourself. There are enough highly intelligent people studying Eastern religions that make me think, there is probably something here, but it's this deluge of meaningless info I have to filter out which is discouraging.

I hope you see what I'm getting at. I guess the only solution is to start with the canon until I get a good eye for these things so I can quickly filter out the valuable perspectives from the weak ones, and it won't be an issue. I might do that.

>>12419586
>. I guess the only solution is to start with the canon until I get a good eye for these things so I can quickly filter out the valuable perspectives from the weak ones, and it won't be an issue.

Yes, in the end whether you benefit from it just depends on you, aside from seeking a teacher really (and whether you benefit from them still depends on you in the end) the best thing is just to read and study as much of it as you can so you can verify and make informed judgements about it yourself

>>12419586
I would certainly recommend learning some meditation techniques in a structured way. Most major towns and cities have some kind of classes available. Just some basic guided mindfulness sessions of 1 hour per week helped me understand some of what the texts were saying in an intuitive way.

>>12417636
>>12419586
I was in similar position and after 10 years of exploring various buddhisms and confirming that this is it but never realizing teachings I settled for practice with The Mind Illuminated after verifying main author and testimonies of practicing people. After 3 months of daily practice I experienced state of extreme bliss in whole body, heightened awareness with senses partially pacified and unwavering concentration for 2-10 minutes (sense of time got really distorted). I experienced 2-3 day afterglow with mild bodily bliss and it was harder to sleep (especially the day it happened) with mind more stimulated and aware but tranquil at the same time. I already knew it wasn't anything extraordinary for meditators, because these states were already described in the book and reported by others, nevertheless experiencing it was very motivating
Few month after that I experienced some minor insights during and after regular metta meditation but no big insights. Now I'm doing mainly Samatha. There will be time for insights after I make my concentration and awareness stronger.
I'm already convinced and I don't think 1 hour a day is too big commitment. Everyone who achieved at least partial enlightenment say every hour was worth it and I honestly believe there are at least dozen of them even on the book subreddit.

My thread died so I'll post this here. Thoughts on this book?

>>12420303
>My thread died
you lie, it's still in the catalog, I would have posted a very detailed description of it but I don't tolerate lies

>>12420303


Strange this gets mentioned.

Just started reading this and truly mind blowing so far.

>>12413485
I guess this is the right thread to ask - which translation of Bhagavad Gita should I get? Is the OWC edition any good or do I go for the one by Easwaran?

>>12421537
OWC is fine. Anything is better than Easwaran or the "As It Is" version.