/lit/ - Literature

Best English translation to read his works? I have Roots of Vedanta.

>>13115272
I really like Gambhirananda's translations, he has translations of Śaṅkarācārya's commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, the Chandogya Upanishad, and the Bhagavad-Gita, in addition to a 2-volume compilation of his commentaries on 8 Upanishads and Gaudapada's Mandukya Karika (you can also purchase Gambhirananda's translations of these 8 commentaries individually). The only Upanishad commentary he didn't translate is the one on the Brihadaranyaka, which was done well by Madhavananda. If you buy the Brihadaranyaka one by Madhavanada and then all the ones by Gambhirananda mentioned above you'll have the complete translations of all his authentic commentaries. An alternative option for the Gita commentary is Alladi Mahadeva Sastry's, it was published in the late 19th century and uses a little older English but is generally well-regarded and has seen like 50 reprints, I find it to be a little more to my liking then Gambhirananda's translation of that one commentary and it seems like Sastry translates the sentences a little more literally although Gambhirananda's are still generally very good.

The translation is less important for the non-commentary works, for Upadesasahasri I'd recommend Jagadananda or Mayeda, for Vivekachudamani I'd say Grimes or Prabhavananda, for all the smaller ones likes like Atma Bodha, Aparokshanubti etc any translation will do. It's best to read a good amount of his Upanishad commentaries before any of his other works IMO

bump

he's just as bluepilled as any other theologian

>>13115837
wrong

>>13114410
yeah but brown people made it so its shit just like brown peoples skin color haha

>>13115857
Sabda is the bluest pill there is.

>>13115425
both madhavananda and gambhirananda are associated with ramakrishna mission, are they trustworthy?
also what is shankara's commentaries on bhavagad gita? what are good editions? I'm about to read it soon, it'd be nice to read his commentaries on it afterwards

>>13116094
Yes, they are trustworthy. There is no 'neovedanta' content or slant to their translations, I know because I have compared them with translations by people not affiliated with the ramakrishna mission and they're basically the same aside from small differences in how they choose to render the sentences which is typical for translations.
>also what is shankara's commentaries on bhavagad gita?
I'm not sure what you exactly mean by this? He wrote a commentary on the Gita which includes the original text as part of it, after every stanza is his explanation underneath it and sometimes an extended discussion of the implications etc. When you buy the single book it has both the entire Gita and his entire commentary. The Gita attached to his commentary is actually the earliest one that survives down to the present day.
>what are good editions? I'm about to read it soon, it'd be nice to read his commentaries on it afterwards
Easwaran's is sorta the newcomer-friendly version and has some brief intros before each chapter explaining some of the concepts/words used in it. Radnakrishnan's is also pretty good. Nikhilanda's should be avoided if you plan on reading Shankara's commentary because Nikhilanda's comes with an extended commentary that closely follows Shankara's so it would be a little redundant to read both.

>>13115928
He doesn't rely exclusively on Sabda but instead heavily makes use of logic, inference, etc and him and Gaudapada use various ontological arguments for why Advaita is a logical explanation for existence.

>>13116257
I see.
And yes, it was precisely Easwararn's Bhagavad Gita I am intending to get (pic related). But as for Shankara's commentaries on the Gita, where can I find it?

>>13116794
You can order on Amazon the translations of Shankara's Gita commentary done by both Sastry and Gambhirananda. Sastry's translation of it can also be read/downloaded as a free pdf here:

http://estudantedavedanta.net/Bhagavad-Gita.with.the.Commentary.of.Sri.ShankaracharyaN.pdf

Idk if you have yet or not but it helps to have read at least one book on Advaita before reading his commentaries (because they sometimes use a lot of very technical terminology) such as 'The Essential Vedanta' by Deustch or 'Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta' by Guenon or 'Vedanta: Heart of Hinduism' by Torsten. If you are already familiar with the basics of Advaita or have already read some some short Advaita texts however you might be able to get by just through looking up any words you don't understand.

>>13116883
>'Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta' by Guenon

>>13116883
Thank you for the pdf.
I have a very superficial understanding of it. I was planning to read Guenon's Man and His Becoming after the Bhagavad Gita. Do you think it is a good way to get myself acquainted more profoundly with Vedanta? I heard it is a difficult text. Anyway, I'll check the other books on it.

But have you read Gaudapada, his guru?

>>13116934
https://youtu.be/sNqsWSE94QM
>Reading Of Rene Guenon - Sankhya Yoga and Vedanta

>>13116935
>I have a very superficial understanding of it. I was planning to read Guenon's Man and His Becoming after the Bhagavad Gita. Do you think it is a good way to get myself acquainted more profoundly with Vedanta?
Yes, that'd probably be good. You can read Easwaran's translation first without any preliminary reading but before diving into Shankara's commentary I'd recommend one of the books on Advaita I listed.

>I heard it is a difficult text.
It's not that difficult IMO, not any harder than Shankara's commentaries at least. He just has a unique writing style where he uses a shitload of footnotes at the bottom of the page combined with a bunch of notes in parentheses in the main body of the text (pic related is an example of this from the book), however, I thought it was a really good book and the constant references to other religions was very illuminating. AK Coomaraswamy called it the best book on the Vedanta in any European language but that was also a while ago. It's also the shortest book out of the 3 books on Advaita I listed, it's around 120 or so pages and the others are each 200-300 I think. Any of them should do the job fine though.

>>13116972
Yes I have, the Mandukya Upanishad, Gaudapada's Mandukya Karika, and Shankara's commentaries on both of them are included in the 2nd volume of pic related; they were very interesting.

>>13116993
>You can read Easwaran's translation first without any preliminary reading but before diving into Shankara's commentary I'd recommend one of the books on Advaita I listed.
Yes, I'll do that. Thanks for the help.

>>13117010
Nice, thank you

>plagiarize buddhism
>relegate Bhakti in favor of Mimamsa
>later vedantins expose him
>'everyone else is wrong except me'

>>13117211
>plaigiarize buddhism
You can find a complete statement of Advaita in the pre-Buddhist Chandogya and Brihadaranyaka Upanishads that he cites constantly in all his works
>relegate Bhakti in favor of Mimamsa
completely wrong, he criticized both but Mimamsa especially, he was less harsh to Bhakti which he considered could have appropriate uses in certain circumstances and for some people
>later vedantins expose him
lol, wrong; the same stuff they accuse him of taking is found in the Upanishads. If you don't even know what they were specifically accusing him of taking or being influenced by then you shouldn't even be repeating that allegation, even Buddhists would accuse each other of being 'crypto-vedantins', it doesn't mean anything

>Bhaviveka is notable in the Indian tradition for his inclusivist comments. He equated the Buddha's Dharma body with the Upanishadic concept of ultimate reality called Brahman,[4] but this view does not imply that he was a Vedantist or that he viewed Buddhism and Vedanta to be the same.[4] In his writings he comments on early Vedanta, and also addresses Hinayana (Theravada) accusations that Mahayana Buddhists are "crypto-Vedantins".[5][6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bh%C4%81viveka

>>13114410
>takes a big, fat, stinky shit in the street
>proceeds to roll in it while chanting: I AM GOD, I AM GOD, EVERYTHING I SEE IS ME, ME ME ME, EVEN MY SHIT IS GOD!
>TRULY I AM EUPHORIC IN MY MOKSHA

OK THIS IS BASSSSSSSSSED
Why didn't westerners think of this? Fuckn brainlets.

Is art thou bramin

>Hey sir, did I tell you that
>*grunts*
>that actually
>HHHNNNNNNN
>sir, actually, sir..
>HNNNNNNNNNNNNN AREH BENCHOD
>did I tell you that-
>*BRAPPPPFFF*
>that atma is-
>*shit unloads in the pavement*
>that atman is brahman sir?
>*bobbles head*

>>13117270
>Why didn't westerners think of this? Fuckn brainlets
they did though, and it remained one of the major currents of western esoterism (and occasionally philosophy too viz Spinoza et al) for most of history

>>13117398
t. hasn't read plot

Shankara, most narcissistic faggot in history, thought his shit was divine.

>>13117416
how is it narcissism if you regard everyone else and their shit as equally divine as well?

>>13117408

Plotinus, the celebrated mystic, comes nearest in his views to the Vedanta philosophy, and is practically in full agreement with the Eastern sages, both in his theory and his methodology. His system is called Neoplatonism, as it consummates the philosophy of Plato in a highly developed mysticism. To Plotinus, God or the Absolute is the All. The diversities of the world are grounded in the Absolute, though the Absolute is above all contradictions and differences. It is the first causeless Cause, and the world emanates from It as an overflow of its Perfection. We cannot define God, for definition is limitation to certain attributes. All logical, ethical and aesthetic principles, truth, goodness and beauty, are incapable of representing Him in His true greatness. Nothing can be said of the essential Reality of God, and what we can give at the most is a negative description of His Being. He is beyond being and non-being, beyond all concepts, notions and perceptions. He is above thinking, feeling and willing, above subject and object, above all conceivable principles and categories. He cannot even be called a Self-conscious Being, for this implies duality. He is the Thinker and the Thought, and also what is Thought. He is everything. He alone is.

This is nothing short of the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara. Only the view that the world is an overflow of the Perfection of God is peculiar to Plotinus. For, to the Vedanta, there is no such overflow; there is, to it, only the Absolute, and the world is its appearance; not an emanation from or an overflow of its being. This is the position, in spite of the acceptance of a relativistic creation of the Universe from the Absolute, as adumbrated in the Upanishads. For Plotinus the world is neither the creation of God nor an evolute from Him, but just an emanation. Plotinus, no doubt, takes care to see that this emanation does not in any way affect the Perfection of God. Plotinus is not advocating the parinamavada or the transformation theory of some of the Indian schools. God does not become the world by modification or transformation of Himself. He is ever what He is and the emanation is something like that of light from the sun. God never gets lost or exhausted in the world. Plotinus is thus free from the charge of propounding a pantheism. God is both transcendent and immanent. The world originates, subsists and finally merges in God. The Thought of God and the Object of this Thought are one and the same, and the world is God's Thought. God's Thought is merely the activity of His own being; it is the immediate, instantaneous, all-comprehending Essence of pure Consciousness, direct and intuitive, knowing everything at one stroke, and transcending the dualistic categories of relative reason, which functions through a succession of ideas.

>>13117443
Plotinus introduces into his system the Ideas of Plato, which are the archetypes of all things in the universe, and which are thoughts in the Mind of God. Only Plotinus would rise above Plato in not making God's Thought dependent on the ideas. For God is absolutely independent. Rather Plotinus makes the Platonic Ideas what the ideative processes are in the Ishvara of the Vedanta. The whole world is for Plotinus what the Vedanta means by ishvara-srishti, or cosmic manifestation, as distinguished from jiva-srishti or individual imagination.

God's Universal Thought, which we may compare to the Creative Will of Ishvara, manifests the World-Soul in the second stage of emanation. This World-Soul has some of the characteristics of Hiranyagarbha, and while it is rooted in the pure Divine Thought, and possesses its characteristics, it has a tendency towards bringing order in the sense-world. When it acts in the sense-world, it becomes the Soul of the physical world. The World-Soul has an eternal aspect as rooted in pure Thought, and a relative aspect as animating the phenomena of Nature and subject to temporal division. The World-Soul produces matter and acts on it as its animating principle.

The theory is strikingly similar to the Vedanta, excepting, of course, the several technical concepts which are peculiar only to Greek thought. But matter for Plotinus is the principle of evil. In the Vedanta, however, matter is an appearance of God Himself, and it becomes evil only when it excites and feeds the passions of the individual. Else it is a phase of the body of Ishvara, worthy of adoration. Evil is not a cosmic principle for the Vedanta; evil exists only for the individuals, and it is to be attributed to their ignorance of the true nature of things.

>>13117449
Plotinus also refers to the Vedanta conception of jiva-srishti, when he says that the souls contained in the World-Soul, as its ideas, act on matter and give it a sensuous character. Plotinus, however, is not very clear in his assigning to these souls the function of creating matter and of acting on matter. When he says that they are beyond space and produce matter we have to take them as ideas in the World-Soul, which manifest the physical universe and which are all held together in the unified intelligence of the World-Soul. When they are said to give matter a sensuous image, they may be considered to have undergone division as individuals which act on the objects of the world in sense-perception. For, creating matter and making it a sense-object cannot be the function of the soul in one and the same condition of its consciousness; the one is trans-empirical, and the other empirical. The former may create division through space, time and objectivity, but does not necessarily render them sensuous. Plotinus regards the appearances of the World-Soul, matter and its division into sense-objects as simultaneous processes, distinguishable only in imagination or thought. Here, again, he concurs with the cosmology of the Vedanta.

The system of Plotinus rises to lofty heights and takes creation beyond time, with no beginning and not originating in any fiat of the Divine Will. Plotinus has in him, however, aspects of the Samkhya when he says that the world is eternal in spite of its outward changes. He has also elements of the bhedabheda doctrine of difference-in-non-difference, and he is not always a consistent non-dualist. These have, however, to be regarded as mere concessions to occasional descents in the philosopher's thought, or as indications of an attempt to present to the world different aspects of the one Reality.

The essential nature of the soul, Plotinus holds, is freedom and eternal existence. It is a part of the World-Soul, and, as in the Vedanta the bondage of the soul is simultaneous with the creation of the diversity of the world by Ishvara and is actually occasioned by the Jiva itself by its passions, so in Plotinus the individual soul gets bound by its sensuality, consequent upon the manifestation of matter by the World-Soul. The blessedness of the soul is in its turning towards God, in its contemplation of the Real, by freeing itself from sensuality. The Goal of life is the realisation of God or the Absolute-Intelligence. This is possible through a tremendous discipline of the soul, by abandoning attachments to the body and bodily connections, and by contemplating on the Eternal. The soul, in the beatific vision obtained in ecstasy, attains communion with the Real.

>>13117454
Ecstasy is beyond contemplation and is akin to the samadhi of the Yoga and the Vedanta. Plotinus is one of the very few mystics with whom the Vedanta would have the greatest sympathy; in both we find the transfiguring element of unconditioned devotion to the Absolute. Plotinus was a great sage and is said to have been blessed with the beatific vision of the Absolute several times in his life. It is the opinion of some scholars that the strikingly Oriental element in Plotinus is due to his having gained the wisdom of India while he was accompanying the Emperor Gordian in his campaign in the East.

The flashes of insight in Plotinus are superb: "There everything is transparent, nothing dark, nothing resistant; every being is lucid to every other, in breadth and depth; light runs through light. And each of them contains all within itself, and at the same time sees all in every other, so that everywhere there is all, all is all, and each all, and infinite the glory. Each of them is great; the small is great: the sun, there, is all the stars, and every star again is all the stars and sun. While some one manner of being is dominant in each, all are mirrored in every other." "In this Intelligible World, every thing is transparent. No shadow limits vision. All the essences see each other and interpenetrate each other in the most intimate depth of their nature. Light everywhere meets light. Every being contains within itself the entire Intelligible World, and also beholds it entire in every particular being... There abides pure movement; for He who produces movement, not being foreign to it, does not disturb it in its production. Rest is perfect, because it is not mingled with any principle of disturbance. The Beautiful is completely beautiful there, because it does not dwell in that which is not beautiful." "To have seen that vision is reason no longer. It is more than reason, before reason, and after reason, as also is the vision which is seen. And perhaps we should not here speak of sight; for that which is seen if we must needs speak of seer and seen as two and not one is not discerned by the seer, nor perceived by him as a second thing. Therefore this vision is hard to tell of; for how can a man describe as other than himself that which, when he discerned it, seemed not other, but one with himself indeed?" (Enneads, V. 8; VI. 9, 10).

Who can afford to miss noticing the similarity, nay, identity of these passages with the magnificent proclamations of Sage Yajnavalkya as recorded in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (Ch. III, IV)?

>>13117270
>>13117383
>poo poo pee pee reeeeeeeee
wow, so this is the power of western thought...

>>13117383
absolutely based

>say poop again mleccha and see what happens!

>>13117443
>vedanta website
>greeks stole our thoughts! *poops in street*
>Jesus? Muhammad, Plotinus? Of course all taught the vedanta. *curry farts intensify*
SHOCKING.

>>13117790
>swims in corpse infested ganges
Based Shiva's blessings cleanse us!

>>13117873
>n-n-no Plotinus is like totally different!
>gets BTFO
>resorts to poop jokes

>>13117904
Plotinus was retarded for sure, but not THAT retarded. The 'One' could not be 1-to-1 equated fully with ANY of it's emanations, so any attempt to self-identify with IT would be blasphemous.
Try again poop worshiper.

>>13116972
Gaudapada was his great guru, though. Shankara's guru was Govinda Bhagavatpada

>>13117913
>the 'One' could not be 1-to-1 equated fully with ANY of it's emanation
Neither is the "emanations" of Brahman equated with Brahman in Advaita, the Atma is the same as Brahman and is neither an emanation nor a manifestation
>so any attempt to self-identify with IT would be blasphemous.
kek, are you one of those people who think it's like proto-Christianity or something?

>The highest attainment of the individual soul is, for Plotinus, "likeness to God as far as is possible" (I.2.1; cf. Plato, Theaetetus 176b)
>His last words: "I was waiting for you [the physician Eustochius] before that which is divine in me departs to unite itself with the Divine in the universe.

>>13118061
go read shankra
he does it all the time
I AM HE, I AM HE, OH I AM HE HE HE (aka the Lord)

>>13115425
Pretty good list, but for Vivekachudamani, I recommend Chandrashekara Bharati III's commentary, who was the 36th jagadguru of Sringeri Sharada Peetham, the only monastery of the four founded by Adi Shankara that maintained an unbroken chain of succession of jagadgurus.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadguru_of_Sringeri_Sharada_Peetham

>>13118133
Meant to say 34th jagadguru

why was adi shankara so handsome

more like Shitkara

>>13114410
For you, it's Sankaracacapoopoo

>>13114410
>dinduism

>Everything is one
>>So why do we see multiple things?
>That's an illusion
>>Where does the illusion come from?
>Dunno lol
Woah...

>>13118283
All numbers are made of One. And they're all "one" number

>>13118283
>Where does the illusion come from?
Ignorance, thinking you are the doer, thinking you are the body, confusing the atman with ego, etc.

>>13118305
>just absolve yourself of autonomy and responsibility, everything is a result of the One
>discord and chaos are illusions, you are not even this body, don't confuse ego with Atman
t. psycho calming himself after a rough night of rape and murder

>>13118310
>t. psycho calming himself after a rough night of rape and murder
And that is why esoteric knowledge can not be trusted in the hands of the masses.

>>13118335
esoteric hindu knowledge is divorced from morality, good and evil, even pleasure and pain are illusions.
the serial-killer sage does what must be done, and his deadly actions do not disturb his serenity of mind as he dwells in the ineffable truth.

plebs might get offended at this idea, but that's where hinduism leads

>>13118365
>plebs might get offended at this idea, but that's where hinduism leads
hence most advaita teachers have harems, get super rich and diddle their female followers and their children

>>13114410
How can you even define Nondualism without reference to the dual? I mean it's right there in the name. Checkmate Advaitaists

>>13117383
>>HNNNNNNNNNNNNN AREH BENCHOD
>>*bobbles head*

>>13118305
So where does ignorance come from?

>>13118667
S-shut up! Westerns binary thinking can't understand the deep esoterism of the far East.

I am toying with the idea of constructing a syncretic life-philosophy that integrates advaita and High Romanticism. I may quickly come to conclude, in the course of my studies, that such a thing is impossible, but for now I believe that such a system would be a powerful machine for generating good poetry. Certainly Kalidasa, with his Shelleyan heights, had some such system, though per his name I would imagine it was more on the bhakti end of things. Studying Sanskrit is so worth it.

Bhenchodo chal kya raha he ye Ved aur bhagwat geeta kon read krra hee. Aj jmaneme.

>>13118686
that's not new, lots of modern poets are narcisstic faggots who combined transcendtalism/pantheism with romanticism, see Tea at the Palaz of Hoon by Wallace Stevens, etc

"Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange."

ego self-fellatio
there's only one God, and you're not it. dumb street shitter

Get over this mystic bullshit, faggots
Reading Vedas isn't going to make you an upper caste in India.
Stick to Buddhism, Hindu religious literature is an abomination.

>>13118707
abe yeh bahar wale logo ko sab esoteic aur magic lagta hai, shankarcharya ko edhar kutta bhi nahi punchta

>>13118088
When he says 'I' in those cases he is referring to the Atma, which has nothing to do with Shankara individually as a person but which is supraindividual

>>13118855
>Stick to Buddhism
No thanks, I prefer the original good stuff and not version 2: electric boogaloo

>>13118283
>Where does the illusion come from?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lila_(Hinduism)

>>13118377
>hence most advaita teachers have harems, get super rich and diddle their female followers and their children
lol wut, no they don't, most of the renowed ones tend to live pretty ascetic lifestyles

>>13118616
Aristotle already did it. Duality only proves Unity. Aristotle said that opposites are but the extremes of a spectrum which stems from the center. Or something like that. Dualities are United