/lit/ - Literature

>>18219222
good luck not experiencing stimuli retard

Buddha didn't talk in greentext shitpost so try again

>>18219222
>Isn't this counterintuitive?
Did you expect a major religion to be nothing but common sense?

>>18219223
>>18219241
Attatchment is the root of all suffering. Seems like he forgot to say what the purpose of suffering is.

>>18219222
not really, why it should be counterintuitive?

>>18219222
>it's simple bro, there is no permanent self in phenomena
Okay, acceptable. If it's not in phenomena, where is it then exactly? Makes sense to me that there isn't self in phenomena, but where is it then exactly?
>uhhhhh, the question is worthless and doesn't contribute to enlightenment.
Does any one else find this annoying? At least the Advaitins will tell you some variant of "you are awareness, or that which experiences appear in".

>>18219447
>Does any one else find this annoying?
not really because the intellectual is a dead end, as i have found myself, and these teachings have a clearly stated goal that confusing yourself with the trappings of the intellectual detracts from. be enlightened then intellectualise.

>>18219447
>If it's not in phenomena, where is it then exactly?
It doesn't exist.

>>18219253
Suffering has a purpose in Buddhism which is that it teaches lessons

>>18219222
counter-intuitive to what?

>>18220340
suffering doesn't teach lessons; only conciousness teaches itself
JAYSUS FUCK CUNCEq

Where is it from where that ideas don't matter, but what physical bodies do that matters.

>>18220350
Being conscious of pain makes someone realize desire/aversion while meditating. Obviously if there was no suffering there would be no buddhism

>>18219222
In the right mind, good advice can be helpful, in the wrong mind, it serves only to confuse.
That's why Buddha had to teach people and didn't just pass down his thinking on paper, that's also why he wasn't even sure he should teach people because it's not a simple task.

>>18219222
Intuition can be misleading, the greater problem with Buddhism is that its metaphysics are logically inconsistent and its philosophy of mind is NPC-tier in its denial of us having a singular and continuing center of consciouses
>>18219253
ignorance is prior to and more fundamental than attachment
>>18219447
>Does any one else find this annoying?
yes
>>18219486
Its hypocritical of Buddhists to say “Buddha refuted Vedism with his arguments” and then when people turn around and point out the logical contradictions in Buddhism then Buddhists on /lit/ are all like “uuhhh... thats just pointless intellectualizing it doesn't matter”
>>18219496
> It doesn't exist
Then there would be nobody to witness phenomena and no experiencing of them, but we do have the experience of phenomena as an intelligent presence which is different from them, so the Self obviously does exist

>>18219447
>Does any one else find this annoying? At least the Advaitins will tell you some variant of "you are awareness, or that which experiences appear in".
Buddhists tell you that you are ignorance, and experiences appear in you because you are ignorant. Awareness has to be achieved. Don't pretend Buddhism doesn't at least give an answer, even if you don't like it. If you're interested, this is part of the doctrine of conditioned arising. It actually puts Buddhism closer to Christianity than Vedanta purely in respect of the "origin of the self" because the origin of the Buddhist self is ignorance, which can be compared to sin (although not quite the same, unless you reinterpret Christian doctrine esoterically)

>>18219447
>Okay, acceptable. If it's not in phenomena, where is it then exactly? Makes sense to me that there isn't self in phenomena, but where is it then exactly?
I wrote this. >>18220422
Let me tack on to this other question with a direct quote from a sutta out of the Digha Nikaya. What else is there apart from phenomena? A luminous mind-made self, for starters, and the going beyond of phenomena. (Samannaphala Sutta 85.)
>"And he, with mind concentrated ... having gained imperturability, applies and directs his mind to the production of a mind-made body. And out of this body he produces another body, having a form, mind-made, complete in all its limbs and faculties."

>"It is just as if a man were to pull a sword from its scabbard. He might think, "this is the sword, this is the scabbard. Sword and scabbard are different. Now the sword has been drawn from the scabbard." In the same way a monk with mind-concentrated ... directs his mind to the production of a mind-made body. He draws that body out of this body, having form, mind-made, complete with all its limbs and faculties. This is a fruit of the homeless life more excellent and perfect than the former ones." (86.)

>"And he with mind-concentrated ... applies and directs his mind to the various supernormal powers ..." etc. (87.)

...

>>18220409
>>Then there would be nobody to witness phenomena and no experiencing of them, but we do have the experience of phenomena as an intelligent presence which is different from them, so the Self obviously does exist
No sanna is conditioned. Same thing for vedana.

>>18220409
Not really. Start with What the Buddha Taught, then read the Heart Sutra.

>>18219222
There's absolutely nothing in Buddhism about having to accept all stimulus.

>>18220409
>advaita vedantin
>complaining about other religions being inconsistent
lmfao theres a reason this garbage is to this day mocked and belittled in india anon.

>>18220422
>>18220444
Yet another big problem is the fact that Buddhist teaching, from the original texts, operates on two distinct levels. One level is considered mundane, "according to the common understanding (including mundane philosophers)." This level of speech and teaching relies on the concepts we are all used to, that we have a (temporary) self which experiences (passively - which is why Buddha does not consider it THE self in the higher teaching). You are experienced (passive - you are not the one creating), rather than experience (active - you are the one creating). Buddha never denies this, and reasons with these ideas, for the sake of argument, in certain suttas, but he always makes sure to clarify that he is only toying and that it is not to be considered the highest teaching. So, Buddha in actual fact does not even deny the commonly held philosophical notion of self, which is seen in various philosophical arguments. The Vedanta teaching on self, if interpreted according to the lower teaching is accepted, but if interpreted according to the higher, is rejected.

>>18220474
Stating Buddhist axioms in response is just circular thinking, you have not provided a single argument for why anyone should accept what you are saying is true, all you are doing is just demonstrating how Buddhism functions like a cult that indoctrinates people and gets them to abandon critical thinking.

Moreover, your argument is wrong anyway since Vedanā or sensations are not consciousness/Self, they are specific feelings of a certain type which have particular good or bad characteristics, but consciousness which is the Self is partless and formless and lacks distinguishing characteristics, so it’s not Vedanā; ergo Vedanā being conditioned does not mean the Self or consciousness is conditioned. Vedanā or distinct sensations appear to consciousness as something different from it.

sañña appears to have multiple meanings, defined as “grasping at the distinguishing characteristics of features” it wouldn't be Self or consciousness either though since it is conceptualization and thoughts (mental activity) which grasps onto things, consciousness doesn’t grasp onto things but it is just pure presence, distinctions appear as mental images to consciousness and then the mind (which is not the Self or consciousness) grasps at them and conceptualizes about them, but consciousness never does so and it remains unconditioned. If you interpret sañña just in a general sense as “perceiving” or “witnessing” that wouldn’t show that consciousness is conditioned either, because things that are witnessed only provide information about the witnessed object and not the witness. Changes in witnessed objects provide no indication whatsoever regarding any change or conditioning in the witness itself, for the reason that you are not talking about any change in the witness, only a change in the things appearing to it.

>>18220501
>Not really. Start with What the Buddha Taught,
Yes really, I’ve already read Rahula’s book btw it was nihilistic garbage

>>18220650
All of this nonsensical rambling and you can't even show how consciousness is distinct from experience (you just assert this axiomatically as you claimed Buddhists did with the default and correct position). Buddhists don't need to bother because they are simply right by default. The more hoops you jump through, the more likely it is you're wrong. Roar the lion's roar, otherwise you have nothing.

>>18220540
>The Vedanta teaching on self, if interpreted according to the lower teaching is accepted
No, it is not. There is no one single Vedanta teaching the Self, there are many. Advaita Vedanta's constitutional dualism is completely and utterly opposed by Buddhism for the same reason it's opposed by the majority of Hindus (it's completely incoherent).

Secondly, Buddhism opposes the entire constitutional dualism of Advaita Vedanta. Buddhism accepts the idea of all being one, but this isn't limited to just the luminous translucent self-illuminating slice of atman that is actually brahman that cannot be sliced, it's literally everything. Advaita Vedanta argues that your hand is made of Nothing, as is literally everything except the tiny little man in your head that's actually Brahman that Shankara can never actually pin down as doing anything or even existing. Buddhist monism (which is not accepted by the entirety of Buddhism and only really shows up in this sense in China and Tibet and even then is hardly universal within the two but let's just roll with it) says that yes, all mental stuff is really one, and it's also one with rocks, trees, your hand, chariots, your cat, stars, space, and time. "All is one" encompasses everything in Buddhism, whereas in Advaita Vedanta no, all is certainly not one, there's two distinct classes of things in the universe.

This view ("Buddhist Monism", which again is really only a Chinese and Tibetan thing and even then is hardly universal in both) does actually have a corollary in Hinduism, it's the (vastly more popular in India) Qualified Non-Dualism school of Hinduism (Vishishtadvaita).

>>18220662
but here >>18220409 you admitted that you havent read anything about buddhism

>>18220678
You didn't understand my post. You're trying to classify Buddhism according to mundane philosophical categories, which completely neglects the fact that Buddhism, as I stated, has two distinct layers.

>>18220516
Most schools of Hinduism argue with one another. The single most influential theologian/philosopher of Shaktism (Bhaskararaya) says that Shankara is right though, I’m not aware of other Vedantists receiving similar recognition outside of their school. Unlike Buddhism though Advaita has survived as a major tradition in India from its inception to the present day because it actually had good arguments and it fully responded to the arguments leveled against it, unlike Buddhism which couldn’t deal with the onslaught of refutations unleashed against it by Hindu philosophers. The last Hindu whose actual arguments the Buddhists tried to address was Kumarila but from Shankara onwards to Ramanuja and Abhinavagupta the Buddhists in their intellectual impotence were unable to even attempt a refutation of the Hindu arguments.

>>18220682
>but here >>18220409 you admitted that you havent read anything about buddhism
No I didn’t, I never said anything in that post about what I have read or not read
>>18220674
>and you can't even show how consciousness is distinct from experience
That’s easy to do, experiences change while consciousness doesn’t. Consciousness is the continuous presence in which experiences come and go, this is what allows us to notice change and movement and have multiple experiences occur to the same person throughout the day. Without a presence that continued inbetween as well as during distinct experiences there would be no way to consciously witness the transition from one experience to the other such as occurs to everybody every day. When you have the experience of hearing a sound, and then you turn and look out your window, the reason that you are able to do this without feeling like you are being erased out of existence and recreated again at the second experience is because your consciousness is continuous and is there equally when you hear the sound, when you are turning, and when you are looking out the window.

We have these Buddhist vs Vedanta threads every fucking day and they’re all structured the exact same way. Is this guenonfag?

>>18220746
>Consciousness is the continuous presence in which experiences come and go, this is what allows us to notice change and movement and have multiple experiences occur to the same person throughout the day.
Memory allows this without a consciousness separate from experience. You would never feel like you are coming in and out of existence because there isn't a you that is coming in and out of existence. There also wouldn't be memory of such a thing, making experiences give the appearance of continuity.

>>18220678
>it's completely incoherent).
lol, no its not, there is nothing incoherent about acknowledging that consciousness is qualitatively different from non-conscious things
> self-illuminating slice of atman that is actually brahman that cannot be sliced
Its funny because here you get it wrong while correcting your mistake in the same sentence
> Advaita Vedanta argues that your hand is made of Nothing
That’s incorrect, they say physical objects are maya which Advaita explains is not identical to nothing or nothingness
> there's two distinct classes of things in the universe.
consciousness isn’t in the universe, the universe is in consciousness

>>18219222
That's a silly way to put it, but it's just the baby steps. We are too eager to judge stuff because our minds are full of shit, so we lose sight of what is actually being presented to us because we jump straight to categories. If you don't get over these superficial level of reaction through practice you can't hope to get a better grasp on the more profound stuff.

>>18219241
best point
>>18219252
heh, also good point.

>>18219253
Buddhism is not about suffering in the trivial way we use this word. The word for it is "dukkha", which is the opposite of "sukha", which is the root of the word "sugar". Dukkha is about what is sour, about how everything is not perfectly and eternally sweet, it's a sense of unfinished business. Best translation would be dissatisfaction, that whatever happends in life, it's never enough, it's never just right. Most people think of suffering as a heart break or, I don't know, being whipped, but it's much more profound and subtle than that, it's a realization that you'll never be fully satisfied, that's the sour taste of it.

So it has nothing to do with ordinary "no pain no gain" mentality.

>>18220405
True.

>>18220800
>Memory allows this without a consciousness separate from experience.
That doesn’t make any sense, who in this scheme has the memory then? Experiences dont have memories, the experience of hearing a sound in real time is not identical to memory, nor does that moment of hearing sound itself have its own subjective memory (i.e. your sense of sight has no memory, your ears and their hearing dont have their own memory. If there is only experiences (which are not memories) with no consciousness, there is nobody who can remember anything.

We can also tell that this is wrong because the identity of one’s awareness or consciousness from moment to moment is something that is immediate and continuous, it is more fundamental than and prior to the thoughts and memories that come and go within it. It is there in-between thoughts as well as simultaneous with them. A psychological notion of identity from moment to moment that is produced by memory would have to be sustained by continuous thinking about it, but when we are immersed in action without either thought and memory entering into our mind or when we are so engrossed in thinking about something that it occupies our mind to the exclusion of all else, or when we are deep in meditation or samadhi when all thought ceases and memory ceases temporarily, in all three of these instances even absent any thought or memory about ones identity there is still a continuity of abiding awareness which remains in each moment without the sensation of one’s own consciousness vanishing.

>>18220912
I don't deny that there is awareness. What I deny is awareness separate from any form. If there is awareness, there must be awareness of something. This awareness and awareness of something are really the same thing.
When you hear a sound, you can think of it in two ways. Either as discrete moments which appear continuous, or as a continuous wave. Memory records the sound as continuous (an example of a continuous interpretation). If I hear a sound, there is a beginning, middle and end of it (an example of a discrete interpretation). Memory itself is just another experience. It is not special.
You can't have a consciousness separate from experiences, what would you be conscious of?

>>18220762
Yes. You can easily tell because he only ever replies like @18220831. He doesn't really get Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta, and it shows.

>>18220955
Some buddhists say nibbana is pure bliss. You and or other buddhists here deny any sort of awareness/experience. Either nibbana is something (yeah im aware of your radical apophatism) or it is literally (somehow) death, unconsciousness. What is nibbana?

>>18220994
>and it shows.
>he’s wrong but I wont explain why, just trust me bro

>>18220705
>bhaskaraya
meanwhile bhaskara accused shankara of being a crypto buddhist

>>18221120
>You and or other buddhists here deny any sort of awareness/experience.
I do not deny awareness or experience. I believe they are the same thing.
>What is nibbana?
When there is an end to craving, there is no more dukkha.

>>18221120
>Either nibbana is something (yeah im aware of your radical apophatism) or it is literally (somehow) death, unconsciousness. What is nibbana?

Modern philosophical schools of Buddhism are all more or less influenced by a spirit of sophistic nihilism. They deal with Nirvāṇa as they deal with every other dogma, with heaven and hell: they deny its objective reality, placing it altogether in the abstract. They dissolve every proposition into a thesis and its anti-thesis and deny both. Thus they say Nirvāṇa is no annihilation, but they also deny its positive objective reality.

According to them the soul enjoys in Nirvāṇa neither existence nor non-existence, it is neither eternal nor non-eternal, neither annihilated nor non-annihilated. Nirvāṇa is to them a state of which nothing can be said, to which no attributes can be given; it is altogether an abstract, devoid alike of all positive and negative qualities.

What shall we say of such empty useless speculations, such sickly, dead words, whose fruitless sophistry offers to that natural yearning of the human heart after an eternal rest nothing better than a philosophical myth? It is but natural that a religion which started with moral and intellectual bankruptcy should end in moral and intellectual suicide.

>>18221120
nihilistic incels co opted buddhism and turned it into a annihilationist religion. the idea of no soul is outrageous

>>18220409
>“uuhhh... thats just pointless intellectualizing it doesn't matter”
This destroys the cryptobuddhist

>>18221137
Yeah, and Bhaskara is a relatively minor figure without any followers today. There is no sampradaya or tradition descended from him and based on his theology. Meanwhile Bhaskaraya is the Shaktist philosopher par excellence and most Shaktist schools recognize his authority and rely upon his works.

>>18220705
>Advaita has survived as a major tradition in India from its inception to the present day because it actually had good arguments and it fully responded to the arguments leveled against it, unlike Buddhism which couldn’t deal with the onslaught of refutations unleashed against it by Hindu philosophers
Yes that's exactly what happened, the hagiographic pokemon battles recorded by doxographers are the genuine historical reason why some religions declined and others expanded over the millenia. Everyone from the lowest peasant to the highest land baron was a super rationalist bugman who listened to widely circulated debates between pedantic pandits to determine his views on metaphysics.

>>18221198
>Buddhists being inconsistent hypocrites destroying anyone
no

>>18221223
Gonna stop you right there before you tell me we're all just brahman riding in the atmangelion but because he has the power of ignorance he can't remember where he left his car keys so we're stuck parked on the other side of his body until we can discover we were brahman all along

>>18221164
So there is awareness of something (the very state of nibbana, awareness of end of dukkha). What is aware?

>>18221165
Yes. There are nevertheless values attached to nibbana and telos if nibbana is something to be reached. But this is something many, or most here, will try to circumvent.

>>18221173
But this is not something exclusive to this place or more modern forms of it. Rupert gethin’s chapter on the self with the buddha is aporetic on the question of the (or a self) self’s existence or permanence.

>>18221235
Advaita vedanta is retarded but so is skepticism.

>>18221246
It's not skepticism if astral dragons taught you it.

>>18221238
>What is aware?
There are experiences.
We keep going back and forth where you ask what is aware, and I say that there isn't anything aware because awareness and experience are the same.

>>18221326
This is nonsensical. Experience is that which awareness is aware of, unless you actually explain whatever you wanted to say.