/lit/ - Literature

their all hacks

I haven't read any of their books.

>>13099194
Post the Buddhism pasta

>>13099194

They've never had sex.

>>13099194
everybody knows they're a muthafucking monstah

>>13099232
you retards coudent tell what buddhism is if it came out your ass, the buddhism all you twats refer to comes from the Hīnayāna which is the shitty retarded version of the original doctrines compared with the Mahāyāna which stays way truer to the doctrines. You all are fascinated with a buddhism that is most likely the farthest and least familiar with any eastern doctrines aka not buddhism but some shit Westerners love to praise. As a student studying Traditionalism but more so the orientals i can't help but cringe everytime I see you discuss "Buddhism" its more so some-shit the Westerners took in and adapted to their imagination. You guys read some chart and become a Eastern monk and maybe even understand Buddhism itself? gtfo, read guenon's first book so you can get rid of your western prejudices

>>13099362
was the anon who made this right? Do you have to read Guenon and the theosophists to understand Buddhism?

>>13099362
based and buddha-naturepilled

They dead

>>13099386
Nope, that’s why it’s a pasta.

>>13099194
I don't know. What do they all have in common? All of them liked asceticism or something?

>>13099386
>Do you have to read Guenon and the theosophists to understand Buddhism?
You don’t even have to read Guenon to understand Hinduism/Vedanta. I don’t get the obsession of consulting second hand material when you could go straight to the source yourself. People who complain about hipsters misinterpreting Buddhism are just as cringe when they promote a traditionalist/theosophical misinterpretation.

>>13099865
lmao at this pseud who thinks he can understand the Traditonal eastern doctrines without reading Guenon and getting rid of his ingrained pro-scientism and pro-materialism prejedices, lmao brainlets never change

>>13099194
Monism i guess

>>13099194
They don't have any self

>>13099900
Wouldn't your sentiments be better directed at the "secular Buddhists" on this board and not the people who discuss Buddhism with regards to its early texts? Someone who accepts the first Dhammapada line that "Mind is the forerunner of all things" is clearly not a materialist or scientist, but I don't think the same can be said for secular Buddhists.

>>13099362
>>13099386
Why are you endorsing Guénon instead of actual pioneers of Buddhism in the West?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Henry_Allan_Bennett
>He was the second Englishman to be ordained as a Buddhist monk (Bhikkhu) of the Theravada tradition [1] and was instrumental in introducing Buddhism in England. He established the first Buddhist Mission in the United Kingdom.

He converted to Buddhism and wrote texts
in plain English for westerners long before Guénon even began his writing career. His short essay like "Training of the Mind" is perhaps the most excellent summarization of the mental practices I have ever read concerning the meditative methods.

Bennett was not some orientalist, but actual initiate/monk (Bhikkhu) of the Theravada tradition and assumed the name Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya. Most people here probably do not like his association with Aleister Crowley as Bennett served as a mentor to Crowley in his early years.

boring

>>13100568
shut the fuck up Crowleyfag, Crowley, Bennett and Theravada are all fake and gay

>>13100605
Imagine that posters actually like this read "Traditionalist literature", they also discriminate authors based on their public image and personal relation in a same fashion one has fandom towards pop artists.

Just out of curiosity, do you even understand the texts you are reading, like most of the time?

>>13099900
ah yes i'll understand Indian philosophy from some... French Muslim author? lmao

>>13099348
underrated

>>13100652
it's just that schizo known as gu*nonfag, he's been shitposting for awhile recently

>>13099194
They all failed to help me get gf

>>13100131
His sentiments for any buddhist is the same. He has no plans for honest discussion on anything eastern and just indulges in shilling his cult author.

>>13099900
Wow. That hurt, unironically hurt my right temple to read.

>>13099386
>>13099637
>>13099865
>>13100568
>>13100716
>>13100793
>>13100984
In that case, is this chart actually bad or is it just the Guenon-posters calling it bad? It seems at least better than the other Buddhism chart to me IMO since the other one was mostly Buddhism-lite "summary of the religion" books written by Western academics in the last 20 or so years. I don't get why this one would get so much more flack than the other one.

>>13099194
>Question, what do these things all have in common?
They were all retards

>>13100605
Unironicaly this

A monistic metaphysics of some absolute.

>>13101461
pretty sure Nagarjuna wasn't absolutist at all

>>13099362

>>13101483
Yes, he definitely was, Nirvana is identified as the Real or the Absolute in his system, people just make the mistake of thinking he's not one because "oohhh it's like empty and sooooo different mann *hits bong*"

>>13101860
(You)

>>13101877

Nágaijuna defines the Real thus: The Real is the self-existent Absolute which is realised through immediate spiritual experience (apara-pratyayam), which is blissfully calm (shántam), which transcends the plurality and suffering of phenomenal life (prapaňchairaprapaňchitam), which is beyond all determinations of thought (nirvikalpam) and which is suprarelational and non-dual (anánártham)—this is the definition (laksanam) of the Real (tattva)* -—M. Kárika, XVIII, 9. It is identified with Prajňápáramita, Bodhi or Advayajňána which is the highest intuitional knowledge, the non-dual realisation, the immediate spiritual experience. The trinity of empirical knowledge, knower, known and knowledge or subject, object and their relation, is transcended here. The Real cannot be determined in any way by thought-categories. Even existence, unity, eternality, joy, goodness, consciousness, etc., cannot be affirmed or denied of it. True, the Absolute exists; nay, it is the only self-existent Real, yet it does not exist in the way in which any object exists. As the transcendent source of all categories, it cannot be categorised. We cannot logically apply even the category of existence to it, for that would be to drag it down to the level of phenomenon. Its foundational unity (non-duality) is not abstract unity known through the category of ‘unity*. It is pure consciousness or immediate spiritual experience, but we can have no idea of this ‘experience* by our relational thought. It is Supreme Bliss, but worldly pleasure cannot give us even a shadow of this Bliss. It is the highest good, but its goodness is not empirical. All categories are relational and work within phenomena; they cannot be applied to the Absolute. To the objection that if the Absolute is utterly indeterminate and inexpressible, it becomes an abstraction empty of all content and is reduced to a mere nothing and we cannot even know that there is such Absolute, the Madhyamika replies that though the Absolute is unapproachable by thought, it is not inaccessible to immediate spiritual experience; that though it is transcendent to sense, thought and language, and to all phenomena, yet it is also immanent in all phenomena as their indubitable inner reality. As the reality of the appearances it is there always and everywhere. Shantideva says: Thought, of course, cannot positively know the Absolute but thought which is samvrti can negatively point to it as the undeniable ground-reality of all phenomena realisable in non-dual spiritual experience - Bodhichmyävatara, IX, 2.

pretty standard stuff

>inb4 I'm not like the other spiritual absolutists

>>13101903
>True, the Absolute exists; nay, it is the only self-existent Real,
>yet it does not exist in the way in which any object exists. As the transcendent source of all categories, it cannot be categorised. We cannot logically apply even the category of existence to it, for that would be to drag it down to the level of phenomenon.
Is it not arbitrary to call Nirvana a self-existent substantial absolute, when it says right there in the Vedanta book you cited that:
>The Real cannot be determined in any way by thought-categories. Even existence, unity, eternality, joy, goodness, consciousness, etc., cannot be affirmed or denied of it.
How is this not essentially just saying "Nirvana is beyond conceptions of existence or non-existence, both terms cannot be applied to it, but at the same time - it has inherent self-existence"?
If existence and substance are fabricated conceptions that cannot apply to Nirvana, why go on to then use such conceptions (existence, substance) to describe it?

>>13101948
***also as far as I can tell, there is nothing in Nagarjuna's work to indicate that Nirvana itself is the source of all categories

>>13101948
>Is it not arbitrary to call Nirvana a self-existent substantial absolute
As far as I'm aware Nagarjuna does not use the adjective 'substantial' that you used, and typically neither does Vedanta, Neoplatonism, Daoism etc but they all have their own way of expressing the non-applicability of that sort of category to the Absolute. There is a key difference between "self-existent absolute" and "self-existent substantial absolute"
>why go on to then use such conceptions (existence, substance) to describe it?
Because in order to point to what is beyond thought and only approachable through immediate spiritual realization/experience you are forced to a certain extent to build a launchpad or diving board for the realization of it using definitions which don't strictly delineate said Absolute itself but which eliminate misconceptions about it and point to it via negation. If they just said Nirvana doesn't exist that would imply its non-attainability.

>>13101903
>Even existence, unity, eternality, joy, goodness, consciousness, etc., cannot be affirmed or denied of it.

To say “it is” is to grasp for permanence.
>To say “it is not” is to adopt the view of nihilism.
>Therefore a wise person
>Does not say “exists” or “does not exist.”

>”Whatever exists through its essence
>Cannot be nonexistent” is eternalism.
>”It existed before but doesn’t now”
>Entails the error of nihilism.
- MMK

also

>Views that after cessation there is a limit, etc.,
>And that it is permanent., etc,
>Depend upon nirvana, the final limit,
>And the prior limit

>Since all existents are empty,
>What is finite or infinite?
>What is finite and infinite?
>What is neither finite nor infinite?
>What is identical and what is different?
>What is permanent and what is impermanent?
>What is both permanent and impermanent?
>What is neither?

>The pacification of all objectification
>And the pacification of illusion:
>No Dharma was taught by the Buddha
>At any time, in any place, to any person
- MMK

It is pretty clear that he is saying that any attempt to develop a metaphysics of Nirvana/Ultimate Reality is futile.

>>13102000
>It is pretty clear that he is saying that any attempt to develop a metaphysics of Nirvana/Ultimate Reality is futile.
Yes, but that's what his entire MMK is, he just mostly uses a metaphysics of negation, of apophatic theology, there isn't anything particularly unique about it except that in the MMK he takes that approach also found elsewhere to an extreme.

>>13102012
If you are suggesting that he is using negation to eliminate false conceptions of ultimate reality, I'd agree, but if you are suggesting that he is using negation to deny the unreal in reference to the real (substance or self/True Self) I would have to disagree since it is canon in Buddhism that Nirvana is not-self, and afaik Nagarjuna maintained that stance as well.

>>13102012
>>13102071
Worldlings in general, whether they call themselves Buddhist or non-Buddhist, conceive of existence in terms of a perdurable essence as 'being', somewhat along the lines of the view of heretics. Nibbāna is something that drives terror into the worldlings, so long as there is no purification of view. The cessation of existence is much dreaded by them.

Even the commentators, when they get down to defining Nibbāna, give a wrong interpretation of the word dhuva. They sometimes make use of the word sassata in defining Nibbāna.[281] This is a word that should never be brought in to explain the term Nibbāna. According to them, Nibbāna is a permanent and eternal state. Only, you must not ask us, what precisely it is. For, if we are more articulate, we would be betraying our proximity to such views as Brahmanirvāna.

>>13099194
Everybody knows I’m a motherfucking monster

>>13102071
>I'd agree, but if you are suggesting that he is using negation to deny the unreal in reference to the real (substance or self/True Self)
Are you unable to conceive of an Absolute or Real outside of the two categories of a substance or self? Because there are more ways to conceive of the Absolute than this, Nagarjuna is not referring to either of these but he himself defines the Absolute/Nirvana with the Sanskrit word 'tattva' which has very clear connotations of a Real which is itself actual/existent even if it's in such a way that is transcendent to all thought and unlike anything to do with phenomenal existence, completely ineffable and indescribable etc.

>>13099194
they all exercised in some form, when is /lit/ going to realize all great men exercise

>>13102105
My apologies, this whole time I was going by the sort of Absolute implied by this initial post:
>>13101461
Which I think you would agree is not what Nagarjuna taught about

>>13099194
idealists? all is mind?

>>13100716
>brillant mathematician
his book on calculus is a complete joke