/lit/ - Literature

>>14049161
Flying through, I disregard the paragraph by seeing an Indian name and the word Brahma.
>Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness."
what did he mean by this?

>>14049628
probably that it doesn't lead to happiness

>>14049776
Without knowing the context, it only leads me to assume that the path isn't for this person.

>>14049899
it was written in the context of 8th century India when various philosophical, esoteric, mystic, ascetic etc schools were competing for influence and adherents

>>14049161
>Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness
you can't be hedonistic and buddhist so he doesnt have to worry about this

>>14050663
he is not talking in that passage about sense-pleasures and hedonistic happiness but more so bliss or spiritual happiness

why does guenonfag always post like an "outsider," for real

>>14050942
why do you post about guenonfag in every vaguely eastern-philosophy related thread? are you gay for him or something?

>>14051298
t. guenonfag

>>14051359
I'm sorry to disappoint you but I'm not guenonfag. I hope to one day have my own fan-club on /lit/ like he does though, I find it inspiring.

dumb idiots don't get it, more news at 11

>>14051397
>I'm not Guenonag but boy does this Guenonfag sure sound impressive and I wish I could be him!

t. guenonfag

Can someone explain the Advaita doctrine of waking, dreaming and sleeping states? By reading Shankara it seemed really profound at first but then I started watching some youtube videos and there they basically just explain it as "that feeling that there is a continuation of identity throughout all these states". How does this in any way differentiate from literally any other religion that believes in a soul?(yeah I know it becomes different when they start making the argument that this identity is Brahman) And why is it considered so profound in Advaita?

>>14053123
I would recommend staying away from youtube videos which may dumb the subject down or even get it completely wrong depending on who is making it. For a full explanation on the concept and it's importance I would recommend reading the Mandukya Karika of Gaudapada accompanied by Shankara's commentary on it. You can find a complete translation of the Karika with Shankara's commentary in the 2nd part of Gambhirananada's 8-part Upanishad commentary as well as in the standalone translation of the Karika+commentary by Nikhilananda. In the book 'The Method of Early Advaita' by Michael Comans you can also find the entire Karika with a commentary by Comans that draws from Shankara's. Nikhilananda's and Coman's books also contain intro sections overviewing the concept. All three of the works I just listed can be found as free pdfs through google, archive.org and lib-gen. The European Vedantist Raphael also has a translation of the Karika but I don't know where to find it for free.

>"that feeling that there is a continuation of identity throughout all these states"
That is not the purpose of the 3 states, the purpose of the teaching is to provide a conceptual framework to point the aspirant towards the real nature of the Atma. All of our life is normally spent either awake, in dream or in deep sleep, there is a transcendental fourth state taught in the Upanishads which is Turiya. Like the third state of deep sleep (Prajna) there is an absence of normal thought patterns, objectification, conceptualization etc but the main difference between Prajna and Turiya is that Prajna still contains the seed of ignorance and is characterized by darkness whereas Turiya can be characterized as self-illuminating awareness free from ignorance, it is of the nature of light. As in deep sleep there is no more automatic conceptualization or anything else tainted by or stemming from ignorance but at the same time the person established in Turiya is fully aware and conscious of it unlike in deep sleep.

>How does this in any way differentiate from literally any other religion that believes in a soul?
The purpose of the 3 states is not to be the main way of explaining what the Atma/soul is, the various Upanishads explain the nature of the Atma and differentiate it from the typical understanding of soul using numerous dialogues and metaphors, if you want to understand exactly what the Advaitic Atma and how it differs from normal conceptions of the soul than read Shankara's Upanishad commentaries, in particular on the Kena and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads.

>>14049161
buddhism btfo

Where does one find Shankara's books. My uni has like nothing or his works and a lot of the translations of him on amazon seem sketchy at best. Can anyone link me what I should start with for Shankara. I've read the Upanishads, the Gita, and a lot of secondary academic stuff.

>>14049161
>Buddha is wrong because... he's wrong!

>>14054229
>commentaries
http://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf
http://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-vol2.pdf
https://archive.org/details/Brihadaranyaka.Upanishad.Shankara.Bhashya.by.Swami.Madhavananda
https://archive.org/details/Shankara.Bhashya-Chandogya.Upanishad-Ganganath.Jha.1942.English
https://archive.org/details/BrahmaSutraSankaraBhashyaEnglishTranslationVasudeoMahadeoApte1960
http://estudantedavedanta.net/Bhagavad-Gita.with.the.Commentary.of.Sri.ShankaracharyaN.pdf

>>14054229
The other anon already linked the better translations of his commentaries, to add on to his post I'd recommend beginning with volume 1 of the 8 Upanishads translation, the more of his Upanishad commentaries that you read first the better prepared you'll be for his Brahma Sutra commentary. The Gita commentary can be read at any point. The non-commentary works especially Upadesasahasri will make more sense after you've read a good amount of his commentaries.

>>14054577
Thank you friend, that helps a lot.

>>14055146
Is the Brahma sutra commentary considered his most difficult work?

>>14053241
>>14054577
>>14055146
Not the person who asked the questions, but I just wanted to say thank you as well for the quality contributions

>>14049161
cope

>>14055187
I would say so, although it's mainly because there is a lot of contextual information that one should already be aware of when they read it, he presumes the reader is already well aquainted with the Upanishads. The writing itself though in his commentaries is generally very lucid. His Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya commentaries can also be kind of difficult because they are massive 700-900 page texts and those Upanishads include large portions of material discussing opaque cosmology, ritual-related stuff and so on. It helps to read his shorter Upanishad commentaries before those two IMO

>>14056153
>uses Hindu architectual symbolism

>>14054407

>>14057274
>Hindu architectual symbolism
Where can I learn about this?

>>14051359
>>14052271
You are the real joke

>>14049161
Everyone with a brain knows that Hinduism >>> Buddhism.
The later is simply much better known (at a surface level) in the west because it's not associated with poo-in-loos.

>>14058928
buddhism is also much more simpler with a focus on method and lack of gods and so forth.

>>14049161
seething Shankhara
>Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness
It's the opposite. All you get from advaita is attachment to subtle self and therefore suffer in the end. If you can spell "self" without "attachment" it isn't self anymore.

>>14058950
>All you get from advaita is attachment to subtle self and therefore suffer in the end.
>t. has a wikipedia-tier understanding of advaita

How do you people keep falling for the guenonfag bait? Unreal.

>>14059533
I am a mastermind of deception

hahahah HAHAHHAHAHAH hahahhaha

>>14058948
I've studied both Advaita and Buddhism. No doubt in my mind that Buddhism is definitely a lot more difficult than Advaita.

Phenomenology is more of a strenuous study than logic

>>14059641
There is no requirement to study Buddhism as a phenomenological method though, but you are just supposed to follow the basic precepts, eightfold-path and meditate etc, there is no mandatory requirement to study thousands of pages of PC or later texts from a phenomenological standpoint. With Advaita on the other hand there is no simplified path for laymen as one finds in Buddhism but you are supposed to study thousands of pages of Vedantic writings that deal with metaphysics, logic, phenomenology and epistemiology and it's openly stated that someone who doesn't renounce everything and seek initiation by a teacher cannot reach the highest goal. There is depth to both but a surface level understanding is way more common in Buddhism, one could even say that its promoted.

>>14060035
>seek initiation by a teacher cannot reach the highest goal.
not that guy, but do you have a teacher? if so how do you find one?

>>14060223
I do not have a teacher, I am self-taught. The level of detail in Shankara's works and other Vedantic texts is such that anyone with the right capabilities can self-study to such a degree that they attain a very advanced understanding of Vedanta and benefit immensely from that in a spiritual sense, nevertheless the traditional Advaitic texts are unanimous in stating that without renunciation of all possessions and ties as a sannyasin and the accompanying initiation true moksha is impossible to attain. However, it's also important to remember that it's not all or nothing, and that Vedanta holds that people who fall short of liberation but who are spiritually advanced/pure/etc can still transmigrate into very auspicious birth circumstances in their next life where they are very intelligent and predisposed to spirituality etc, and even that one can attain heavenly realms lasting until the end of this universal cycle. Any amount of spiritual progress is beneficial and the more one is drawn to spirituality in each life the more one steadily draws closer to liberation.

There are branches of the Ramakrishna order found in western countries that you can go to for instruction, the swamis there are generally aware that Vivekananda promoted his own modern version of Vedanta and pay lip service to him while mostly sticking to traditional Advaita teachings in their discourses. There is one in the city where I live, you can try googling for 'Vedanta centers' or 'Vedic Studies' etc in your area. If you wanted a truly traditional teacher/initiation you'd have to learn a modern Indian dialect like Hindi etc so you could communicate fluently with them and some Sanskrit as well and then you'd have to travel to India, permanently renounce all possessions and your former life and then seek initiation into the Dashnami Sampradaya order or an equivalent one, who still live the same monastic existence wandering around, staying at hermitages and obtaining food through alms. I may do this in old age after having had children if my wife dies before me but I'll decide whether to cross that bridge when I come to it.

>>14060378
thank you

My priest always talked shit on buddhism

>>14049628
"you go to hell if you follow the false religion"
Thats what it means

>>14051298
its called paranoid hatred by a mentally weak incel

>>14058008
>Degenerate schools established literally hundreds of years after Buddha's death = Buddhism
The absolute state of hinducucks. Your """teacher""" can't even tell apart Buddhism from some random poo's babble.

>>14060035
>Advaita unironically says you need to become a full-time larper in order to attain enlightenment and dumbfucks still eat this shit up 2000 years later

>>14061166
>if the truth is hard, its laughable
Good luck being stuck on the physical plane forever and ever

>>14061110
what is real Buddhism then?

>>14061361
Nice projection faggot

>>14061513
Shit comeback, shitcunt.

>>14061381
Read Huángbò.

>>14061588
Absolutely based. I don't know how valid the claim to being "real Buddhism" is though, maybe you could expand on that.

>50 posts
>24 posters

Guenonfag asking himself questions and responding to them again because his thread can't stay afloat by itself.

Best schizoposter on /lit/.

>>14061951
obsessed

>>14062015
>obvious Guenonfag thread pops up
>watch IP count
>first reply pretending to be a new person
>IP count didn't go up
>someone asks a question like "Huh that seems very interesting! Where can I learn more about this?"
>IP count didn't go up
>someone posts 2 paragraph reply to question
>IP count didn't go up

Lmao Guenonfag what will you do when /lit/ is gone?

>>14062057
>Lmao Guenonfag what will you
>you
Wew, seems I get to participate in the spirit which is "Guenonfag" too. I thought I didn't have nearly enough Upanishads under my belt for that.

>>14049161
based and red-pilled

>>14062057
the absolute state of buddhists

>>14061166
>why can't enlightenment be handed to me on a platter reeeee

>>14062057
even if there had been 45 different IP's in this thread you would have accused him of resetting his IP to make half of them anyway, I've seen you do it before in huge threads with 70+ posters

Om shri shankara namaha. Also, happy diwali, /lit/!

>>14063571
No you absolute fucking mongoloid. I'm saying you don't have to play dress-up and praise Allah to attain anything.

>PSYCH!
>You got the wrong Buddha!

>>14064148
how nice of you to join us butterfly

>>14061588
Huangbo is Chinese chan/zen, which is a relatively late school that developed after those Indian Buddhist schools that Shankara criticized, I don't know how you can believe that those Indian schools he attacked are illegitimate for developing hundreds of years after Buddha's death but then also say that "real Buddhism" is an even later Chinese school based on those very same Indian schools that Shankara attacked. Chinese Chan Buddhism is directly based on the Indian Yogachara school and in particular the paradigmatic Yogachara text the Lankavatara Sutra (which even the Buddhist partisan cum scholar Hajime Nakamura admits displays evident Hindu influence) which is why when it first began in China Chan was originally called 'The Lankavataran School'. If Huangbo and Chan is "real Buddhism" then why did the entire intellectual basis for them not appear in India until the first millenium AD, some 500-600 years after Buddha's death?

It's also funny that you would use 'hinducucks' as a pejorative when early Yogachara and Chan is almost the same thing as Upanishadic teachings. The eternal non-dual consiousness of Parinispanna that Asanga taught and Tathagatagarbha/buddha-mind is just repeating what the Upanishads already described a millenium earlier. If you want to believe that's real Buddhism than go right ahead, I agree that Buddha probably taught crypto-upanishadic teachings in real life myself but you should be aware that Huangbo is basically just Hinduism before you talk shit about Hinduism.

>Huángbò's teaching centered on the concept of “mind” (Chinese: hsin), a central issue for Buddhism in China for the previous two centuries or more. He taught that mind cannot be sought by the mind. One of his most important sayings was “mind is the Buddha”. He said: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient beings.[8]

That could have been taken straight from the Upanishads

>>14056153
>5 centuries of abrahamic rule vs dharma rule

>>14064148
apparently they did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unHZeSQ0Lqg

>>14064300
Interesting, this was a suggest video from that, which has been debated here before:
>Was Adi Shankaracharya ji a Closet(Undisclosed) Buddhist?
https://youtu.be/omM3vnHsVik

>>14064351
nothing in that video
he just gets kinda irritated at the dumb student and says something about western reinterpretation of adishankara's birth period

>>14064371
he uses the same argument agaisnt buddhism i've seen around here by defenders of shankara, must be a common polemic.

>>14064406

>>14049161
>buddha's doctrine is shit and must be disregarded
>>14064406
>buddha's doctrine is the same as us they stole it

fucking make up your mind

>>14059510
>t. I can redefine "self" to anything I want
No, you cannot. Stop deluding yourself.

>>14064194
But if they're just extensions of Advaita then why wouldn't one pick them instead of Advaita? Buddhism is probably a lot easier to export to westerners than Advaita. You do not have to accept the Vedas nor do you have to; like you said, literally go to an ashram in India in order to be fully an Advaitin.

So in order to spread Dharma to the west, begome Buddhist? If you want to let loose such a religious fervor that will completely engulf and burn the west, begome Buddhist?

>>14064194
Nice wikipedia research, mouthbreather

>>14065148
dont blame me because you were exposed as being totally ignorant of the history of buddhism

>>14064441
The Buddhist schools that later developed out of the interpretation of the Pali Canon are shit but what Buddha actually taught when he was alive was largely just repeating the ideas of the Upanishads with a new framing, although this was later misinterpreted by subsequent Buddhist schools.

>>14064689
The Buddhist only has circular logic based on other Buddhist claims not accepted by anyone else to suport his viewpoint that any usage of the word 'Self' is like a blackhole that sucks people in and creates problems for them. Setting aside that many Mahayana sutras speak of a 'self' that they equate with dharmakaya/tathagatagarbha etc, you dont have any good arguments for why any usages of 'self' is bad that aren't premised on other Buddhist claims that a neutral third party wouldnt accept, but your head is up your own ass so much that you forget this and make the mistake of believing buddhist metaphysical positions to be normative.

>>14065669
pre buddhist or post buddhist upanishads

>>14065749
I'm not sure what your question is but if you mean to ask "which Upanishads was he repeating ideas from" than it would have to have been the pre-Buddhist Upanishads

>>14065776
is direct experience BS?

>>14064689
The Upanishadic/Vedantic understanding of Atma is completely unlike anything that Buddha used the term 'self' for, Buddha doesn't describe, criticize or disagree with it once in the entire Pali Canon but only uses the term anatta with reference to things that Vedanta would also classify as non-Self, and in addition he never even categorically denied that a Self existed but only said "X is not the self, Y is not the self" etc. Among the list of wrong-views that are mentioned in the Brahmajala Sutta (Digha Nikaya 1), the Upanishadic understanding of Atma is not mentioned at all. Buddha described Nirvana with all the same adjectives that the earlier Upanishads used for Atma (pic related for example), there is no need to redefine the conception of Atma/Self because it existed as a concept in the early Upanishads before Buddha was even born, it's Buddha who redefined the transcendent Self as Nirvana.

>>14065836
can you elaborate on what you mean?

>>14065622
You can keep deluding yourself but it'll never make Advaita relevant again

>>14066336
>not having any argument other than muh numbers of adherents
>being attached to ideas like "relevant" in an unreal world
Not very Buddhist of you. Advaita still is and always will be well-known and relevent in India, which is the only place Advaita considers it important to remain relevent in, and unlike Buddhism it hasn't fragmented into countless sects very few of whom actually knew what he really taught. 80-90% of Buddhists worldwide are either Abrahamic-tier pure land Buddhists or NPC-Theravada brainlets