/lit/ - Literature

>>19778429
Vajrayana borrows heavily from Hinduism.
Anyway, who cares. Post good books on lucid dreaming. Has anyone on this board managed to successfully become a regular lucid dreamer/"dream yogi"?

>>19778429
Mahayana and Advaita do tend to overlap, the difference is that Buddhism affirms the phenomenal world by saying Samsara=Nirvana which creates the incentive to return to the world after achieving liberation to help the plight of the suffering beings. I am aware of no such thing in Advaita and this is ironically because their view of Maya is much more life denying, relegating the phenomenal world as mere illusion to be discarded, while the Buddhist Emptiness affirm's the world's value as conventionally existent and as such the ground of your holy duty. This is not to say that an Advaitin might not return to the world after liberation, but it's just not a possition dirrectly supported by it's metaphysical system.

>>19778549
> regular lucid dreamer/"dream yogi"?
Yes, I have had maybe 30 or so lucid dreams before and I once reached the clear light that OP’s book talks about and rested peacefully in it for a while before waking. The best method for regular lucid dreaming in my experience is just daily dream-journaling when you awake every morning before you forget the dream.

>>19778570
>relegating the phenomenal world as mere illusion to be discarded
This is also the case in Theravada from what I've read of the Pali Canon.
>>19778588
>dream-journaling
That's all you do? You don't do reality checks, or use the methods in OP's book? The first method described (going through daily life constantly reminding yourself that "life is a dream") works very well but I couldn't keep it up because it gave me hardcore derealization, which I guess is the point but it spooked me at the time.
I dream journal too but in my experience it's unreliable. How good is your dream recall?

>>19778549
I'm a practitioner of yoga. I played around with the dream stuff for a bit, but honestly, at the end of the day, the world of dreams is just another place to visit and to get bound up in. Explore there if your karma there can't be fulfilled by normal means (actual, normal-ass dreaming) but for me it was an unnecessary complication. My wife is into dream stuff, and I don't mind hearing about her lucid dream attempts (she's had a few seconds of success in the months she's been trying it).
>>19778570
"Return" to the world? Who is going where?
>>19778588
Years ago, I do remember this working when I tried it. Now, I keep a journal that I write in every morning, but it isn't for dreams, it's for creative thoughts. Journaling in the morning is a great exercise for anyone regardless.

>>19778600
>the world of dreams is just another place to visit and to get bound up in
Are there others? Aside from dreams and waking reality, I mean.

>>19778598
Theravada is focused mostly on deconstructing the mental experience and the sense of self and doesn't go deep into the metaphysics of the world. Theravada keeps a skeptical or agnostic view on such matters.
>>19778600
>Who is going where?
Conventionally, "you" after realising Emptiness return to engaging with the "world". In absolute terms, it cannot be thoght of what happens.

>>19778620
>Theravada keeps a skeptical or agnostic view on such matters.
I guess, but the analogies used when the Buddha or his followers bring up Nibbana suggest a very clear-cut distinction between a transient phenomenal world and the unknowable "other shore".
Now that I think about it even the Diamond sutra has this, so even though Mahayana maintains that Samsara = Nirvana, it does seem to sometimes suggest an idealist/immaterialist stance towards phenomenal reality depending on the specific school.

>>19778626
Many schools interpret buddhist ontology differently. Personally I take a Madhyamaka stance, where you assert the conventional nature of the world and the emptiness of Emptiness, meaning you completely give up trying to discover what the nature of that "other shore" actually is and instead focus your efforts on the conventional world that you experience.

>>19778634
Isn't a big part of Madhyamaka metaphysics that the nature of "things" or thing-ness is indescribable (tathata/dharmata) and that there is no such thing as being or non-being, existence or non-existence, and so on? And this would form the basis of emptiness.
I have to admit my interest in Mahayana isn't that great considering that I feel at odds with its most fundamental teaching (the Bodhisattva path) so I don't know much about the different schools and their ontological positions.

>>19778606
Read Yoga Vasistha. It'll blow your mind.

>>19778650
>that there is no such thing as being or non-being, existence or non-existence, and so on
In a way yes, but these are mostly ways to assert that whatever ultimate reality there *might* be, it cannot be described by any concept. Indestructible is mostly used to contrast the transient world of experience rather than assert the existence of a self-enduring substance.

>>19778570
>the difference is that Buddhism affirms the phenomenal world by saying Samsara=Nirvana
Saying they are identical isnt philosophically serious because they have mutually exclusive attributes (violates LNC), and saying they are identical also violates Nagarjunas tetralemma as well. The position of affirming that they are the same is one of the 4 alternatives which are all supposed to be rejected, it’s “having a view”, but Nagarjuna says he doesn’t have any views, which, if he wasn’t being totally inconsistent would extend to not having any view on the difference of Nirvana and Samsara, or their sameness, or both sameness and difference, or neither. You cannot affirm their sameness and then claim to have no views a la Nagarjuna without contradicting yourself immediately.
>creates the incentive to return to the world after achieving liberation to help suffering beings.
There is arguably more of an incentive in Advaita because the awareness inside other beings is admitted as being real, the teachings eliminate the conventionally-real suffering inhering in the conventionally-real minds, which all rest on the same supraindividual absolutely-real Self, instead of conscious experience just being falsehood all the way down.

With Mahayana Buddhism its more muddled:

“if one came to know and perceive that all entities are in fact without svabhava, i.e. are conceptual constructs, then the false belief and perception which enables one to participate in an (apparently) public world would be destroyed. The enlightened Madhyamika would see not only that all objects of the supposedly public world are conceptual constructs but also that the very people with whom he might share the publicly accessible world are themselves his own conceptual constructs. There are in fact no other people who have similar karmavipaka to oneself and with whom one might therefore participate in a commonly acknowledged conceptually constructed world! The enlightened Madhyamika must surely be a solipsist. It is difficult to see how, in this condition, the bodhisattva ideal - which is a fundamental pillar of Mahayana spirituality - could be enacted. It does, after all, seem to be a real paradox (and by this. I mean a non-sensical statement, a contradiction) that the bodhisattva saves all sentient beings yet there are no sentient beings to be saved (for they are all the bodhisattva's own conceptual constructs).

>>19778659
I know about concepts like Brahma's net and the extremely vast nature of dharmic cosmology and so on but I was more interested in your own personal experiences.

>>19778570
>relegating the phenomenal world as mere illusion to be discarded,
Discarding attachment to everything naturally follows after having knowing that which, after having been known nothing else needs to be known, you can continue to guide and initiate people after having no attachments to anything though
>while the Buddhist Emptiness affirm's the world's value as conventionally existent
Advaita also affirms the world as conventionally existent and they wrote refutations of the subjective idealist positions of Dharmakirti etc which denied any world exterior to our own minds. And its the dharma of Brahmins to continue to spiritually guide mankind even when liberated, just as its the dharma of the kshatriyas to fight

>>19778549
Yes, but I didn't practice much, just wrote dreams down after. However, I always had lucid dreams to some degree. I also remember deep sleep dreams fairly often, which are more disjointed, more repetitive loops of thought, and waking dreams (hypnogogic). Probably ties to why I have early childhood memories, which aren't the funnest (being stuck in a crib, getting in trouble for shitting myself during toilet training), and also I remember both surgeries I've had, which were extremely unpleasant.

I love lucid dreams but I tend to get anxiety after vivid dreams regardless of them being pleasant.

Writing helps though, I dream every night.

>>19778676
You could have just read about the Two Truths and spare yourself some confusion. Assertions like Samsara=Nirvana and the Bodhisattva ideal makes sense only at the level of conventional truth, which is where there exist the need for such things. Nagarjuna rightly claims to hold no views, because he holds no positive views about the nature of ultimate reality.

>>19778678
>Advaita also affirms the world as conventionally existent
Not quite. Advaita radically relevates Maya to mere illusion, ontologically different from Brahman. The jivanamukti no longer has any incentive for anything.

>>19778698
> Assertions like Samsara=Nirvana and the Bodhisattva ideal makes sense only at the level of conventional truth
And what is true at the conventional level is false at the absolute level, so you are being a little duplicitous by saying “Mahayana teaches that samsara is Nirvana” without any further qualifications because in truth this is considered to be ultimately wrong. Your rhetoric is trying to present Mahayana in a more favorable light on the basis of affirming something that is ultimately held to be wrong!
>>19778707
> Not quite. Advaita radically relevates Maya to mere illusion, ontologically different from Brahman.
Advaita says the world of experience is conditionally real but that its not absolutely real, just as Mahayana does. Mahayana doesnt say that the world absolutely exists and has absolute existence, and Mahayana also says the world isnt nothingness. Advaita also says that the world does not have absolute existence and thats its not nothingness either. The world is not “more illusory” in Advaita than in Mahayana, anything who says this gives away that they haven’t read the texts in question.
>The jivanamukti no longer has any incentive for anything.
Exactly! Once you are liberated and enlightened you have gone beyond incentives because you ever ever fulfilled and desireless, without any need of anything. Only a being who has needs and a sense of incompleteness is motivated by incentives. While continuing in this state of completeness and perfection, jivanmuktis provide spiritual guidance and initiation to those who seek it and who are fit for it, not because of a desire or incentive to, but because they have no reason not to.

If I remember correctly, that same book addresses the issue you're pointing out. Quoting out of context for (you)s much?

>>19778677
Oh, in my case, I'm not going to be as you, I haven't had many flashy experiences, mostly experiences of a vast cosmos that keeps expanding on all levels (physical, spiritual, mental, emotional) psychedelic artists try to represent it, but it's more subtle than that to me.

>>19778677
Oh, in my case, I haven't had many flashy experiences, mostly experiences of a vast cosmos that keeps expanding on all levels (physical, spiritual, mental, emotional) psychedelic artists try to represent it, but it's more subtle than that to me. Always accompanied with stillness and silence.

>>19778600
> the world of dreams is just another place to visit and to get bound up in.
Read authentic Tibetan texts and authors on dream yoga. It can be a means of liberation and to accustom yourself to the fact that the waking world is no less of a dream.

Yeah, there’s much voodoo and superstition in Mahayana (so-called) “Buddhism”. Prefer Theravada if you want to discuss the teachings of the Buddha rather than monastic fan fiction and syncretistic mumbo jumbo. Peace.

>>19778777
>And what is true at the conventional level is false at the absolute level
Nice strawman. Unlike Advaita, Madhyamaka is not a dualist ontology of real/unreal.
And the world is "more illusory" in Advaita since it is affirmed to be ontologically illusory - an absolute statement, meanwhile Madhyamaka only asserts things according to our cognitive capabilities, that is, from a conditional perspective and doesn't make absolute, ontological statements about the world.

As a Buddhology PhD I would just like to say this thread is cringe

>>19779834

If the fleeting feeling of superiority over people you will never see and who are just the topic out of curiosity was worth the crippling student debt and low wage customer service job you ended up with then more power to you.

>>19778429
Start with the jeets instead of working backwards from Tibet. Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana both resolve into absolutist positions but one of these is based on the revelation/theological claims of the Vedas and on the notion of a permanent substance, while the other is based on the momentariness of all elements of experience

>>19779726
>Nice strawman. Unlike Advaita, Madhyamaka is not a dualist ontology of real/unreal.
It has to be one or the other otherwise that would violate my Aristotelian crypto-Thomism!

>>19779444
>accustom yourself to the fact that the waking world is no less of a dream.
This is the purpose of all the tantric practices by the way, whether reciting spells or throwing petals and garlands on to paintings to see where they land. Piercing the veil of interdependence

>>19779726
> Unlike Advaita, Madhyamaka is not a dualist ontology of real/unreal.
lmao, try to give a systematic definition of what constitutes a “dualist ontology”, under any definition you can come up with, you’ll find that Advaita turns out to not be a dualist ontology.
>And the world is "more illusory" in Advaita since it is affirmed to be ontologically illusory - an absolute statement, meanwhile Madhyamaka only asserts things according to our cognitive capabilities, that is, from a conditional perspective and doesn't make absolute, ontological statements about the world.
Madhyamaka still ends up placing the world in-between the status of a truly-real absolute reality and nothingness as Advaita does, i.e. as belonging to neither of these two categories, so despite a difference in approach the world still ends up being assigned a similar status. So, that doesn’t make the world in Advaita “less real” than Madhyamaka. Madhyamaka doesn’t simply say that we cant know if the world is real but the status of the world as an independent and fully-real or absolute reality is actively denied and its compared by Nagarjuna and others to being a mirage or dream. A common interpretation of Madhyamaka is that all entities are conceptually-constructed and that there are no non-constructed entities (and this is how Chandrakirti seems to interpret Nagarjuna), leading to a quasi-solipism, whereas Advaita says that trees and mountains exist conventionally as part of the maya-universe even in the absence of any individual conceptually constructing them.

>>19779953
>there are no non-constructed entities (and this is how Chandrakirti seems to interpret Nagarjuna), leading to a quasi-solipism
There is no affirmation of a single mind imagining everything so how is this solipsism? Just because the idea of a tree is entirely contingent does not mean the slice of reality we are calling a tree does not exist. If anything
>Advaita says that trees and mountains exist conventionally as part of the maya-universe even in the absence of any individual conceptually constructing them
this is the actual solipsism because the One Real Thing To Think Them All, Brahman, is radiating out illusion because Brahman just does that as a function of being Brahman. And everything that isn't Brahman is exactly so, an illusion. The only thing that really is, is Brahman. The phenomena cannot be "conventionally real" unless you mean to say illusions are real. The Buddhist has less problems here because there is no real thing that is causing illusions, it's just (You) being ignorant of the nature of the things you are describing, not some Vedic god flexing on you with a bunch of mirages.

>>19780108
> There is no affirmation of a single mind imagining everything so how is this solipsism?
I said ‘quasi-solipsism’ and not solipsism, and it’s a quasi one because it involves the denial that the other people you are interacting with are also present in the conversation too with their own subjective experience of whats going on; because they are just your own conceptual constructs, it throws up a chasm that makes it impossible to ever interact with anyone else because their bodies and behavior etc are something you have conceptually constructed. It doesn’t deny that somewhere, out there in samsara is other minds, but it involves reducing everyone you interact with to your own delusions. It’s not that you are perceiving the raw perceptual data corresponding to some other sentient being and then wrongly construct that into a “person”, because to admit this would make that perceptual input something unconstructed, the existence of which is denied. The Advaitin actually can admit that while the mind and body of the person he speaks to are only conventionally-real, that conventionally-real being has an absolutely-real awareness on the inside.

>Just because the idea of a tree is entirely contingent does not mean the slice of reality we are calling a tree does not exist.
The denial of any non-constructed entities full stop leads to a subjective idealism in skeptic drag.

> this is the actual solipsism because the One Real Thing To Think Them All, Brahman, is radiating out illusion
Advaita doesn’t deny that other beings have a truly real awareness, and it doesn’t deny that other beings have conventionally real minds, Madhyamaka is a much more radical and highly absurd attempted negation of the existence of the other people that one encounters.

>>19780694
>the denial that the other people you are interacting with are also present in the conversation too with their own subjective experience of whats going on; because they are just your own conceptual constructs
The concept I have of my conversation partner is not my debate partner, and there is no epistemological to ontological crossing I can make such that they are permanently who I describe them as. If that is solipsism then you have a very naive phenomenology, but that is unsurprising for a theologically inclined person who negates everything other than god

>>19779953
>A common interpretation of Madhyamaka is that all entities are conceptually-constructed and that there are no non-constructed entities (and this is how Chandrakirti seems to interpret Nagarjuna), leading to a quasi-solipism,
You seem to be confusing it with the Yogacara position. Conceptually constricted refers to our cognitive capacity to only interact with representations, it is not an ontological claim about the world. Unlike Advaita which claims the world is ontologically illusion. If anything, Advaita leads to the solipsism of Brahman

>>19779953
The trees and mountains still exist. But they are not trees and mountains in and of themselves, we impute those categories onto the objects. No one is denying the phenomenal world, only the inherent existence of it.

>>19780694
>Madhyamaka is a much more radical and highly absurd attempted negation of the existence of the other people that one encounters

what? Nagarjuna's method is to simply reduce philosophies such as yours to their simplest parts to expose how they are inherently contradictory.

>The denial of any non-constructed entities full stop leads to a subjective idealism in skeptic drag.
This is sidestepping the point.

>It’s not that you are perceiving the raw perceptual data corresponding to some other sentient being and then wrongly construct that into a “person”, because to admit this would make that perceptual input something unconstructed, the existence of which is denied

But that is what perception is: raw sense data upon which concepts, such as inherent existence, are superimposed.

>>19778659
https://www.artofliving.org/in-en/wisdom/theme/7-astonishing-truths-from-yoga-vasistha

yo wtf is this real?

>>19778588
I keep a dream journal, but in 400 days I've only done about 60 dreams because I just don't always remember them. I've only ever lucid dreamt once, many years ago, and that was I believe when I was actively trying to make it happen with reality checks etc.

>>19780873
>simply reduce philosophies such as yours to their simplest parts to expose how they are inherently contradictory.
Try to name one (1) inherent contradiction in my philosophy (Advaita Vedanta)

>>19781592
>everything is brahman
>uhhhh except maya that's not brahman

>>19780751
>The concept I have of my conversation partner is not my debate partner, and there is no epistemological to ontological crossing I can make such that they are permanently who I describe them as
It's not about permanence, its about whether your conversation partner is comprised of foundational constituents (dravyasat) that have svabhava and substantial existence while being dependently originated, or whether your conversation partner (including your perception of their body etc) is an entity that is conceptually constructed/imputed (prajnaptisat) by you. The contextual evidence indicates that Nagarjuna was responding to and attacking the Abhidharma acceptance of dravyasat entities viz. samskrta dharmas and arguing that all entities whatsoever are only prajnaptist. And this is indeed how Chandrakirti interprets Nagarjuna. Prajnaptist entites can either be imputed on the basis of dravyasat entities, or other prajnaptist entities. And so when dravyasat entities are ruled out and when your perception of the other person is a conceptual construction by you based on your other conceptual constructs, it means that it actually has no relation whatsoever to another conscious person but is just your delusions building off of each other, there is no conscious person behind your mental concept of them.

>>19780752
>>19780752
>You seem to be confusing it with the Yogacara position.
I'm not, Richard Burton has an extensive discussion of how this is the implication of Nagarjuna's position in 'Emptiness Appraised'.
>Conceptually constricted refers to our cognitive capacity to only interact with representations, it is not an ontological claim about the world.
When I say "conceptually constructed" I mean prajnaptisat entities. Nagarjuna's work is by all indications an attack on the very concept of dravyasat entities, meaning the only remaining entities are those which are prajnaptisat.

> As I have explained in detail in this chapter, there is very strong evidence in Nagarjuna 's texts that his fundamental objection is to the notion that any dependent originating entity has more than a conventional, conceptually constructed status. Thus, it does not seem that, even if Nagarjuna were criticizing the Vaibhasika doctrine of permanent (samskrta) dharmas existing with svabhava only, it is the primary object of his critique of svabhava. That is, a large body of textual evidence (reviewed above) suggests that, even if (samskrta) dharmas with svabhava were posited as in all respects impermanent or momentary - i.e. as being through and through dependently originating - Nagarjuna, etc would object to them, on the grounds that the possession of such a svabhava would entail unanalyzable (and, hence, more than-conceptual) existence

And this is how Chandrakirti understands Nagarjuna, as mounting an attack on dravyasat entities as such, and not simply a faulty formulation of them by Abhidharma

>(iii) Finally, it is clear that later Madhyamikas, such as Candrakirti (see Y$V 40-41) criticize the notion of svabhava not only as it appears in the Vaibhasika Abhidharma, but also as it occurs in the Sautrantika and Vijfianavada schools, neither of which accept the Vaibhasika theory of permanent (samskrta) dharmas (with svabhava only. (In fact, the Sautrantikas were vigorous opponents of this Vaibhasika theory. They assert the complete momentariness of (samskrta) dharmas with svabhava). What all three of these schools have in common is :an acceptance - contrary to Madhyamaka - of some foundational~ more-than conceptually constructed form of existence (dravyasat). Candrakirti makes clear that his objection is to the notion of dravyasat as it occurs in all three of these schools. He does not say that his objection is to the Vaibhasika theory that (samskrta) dharmas exist permanently.

Ruling out all dravyasat entities as impossible/false IS making an ontological claim that all entities whatsoever are only prajnaptist, i.e. imputed or conceptually constructed by us, even the visual sight of another person before we assign any sort of mental notion of person to it. Meaning that everyone we see and interact with is made up by our delusions and doesnt actually exist or have any subjective experience of their own (according to Nagarjuna).

>>19780873
>The trees and mountains still exist. But they are not trees and mountains in and of themselves, we impute those categories onto the objects.
Calling them objects that we impute categories "onto" is to imply that they are dravyasat and not prajnaptisat, but Nagarjuna seems by all indications to be trying to refute the very premise of dravyasat entities being a valid thing.
>>19781618
Nice try dummy but you already lost

Advaita says: everything REAL is Brahman, not "everything is Brahman"

>>19781789
>there is no conscious person behind your mental concept of them
Insofar as there are no permanent entities in ultimate reality that can be conceptualized, yes, there is no atman or pugdala, etc. Not for you, and not for the other person. Conventionally such things are appearances only. Neither one nor many as Shantaraksita put it

>>19781255
>I keep a dream journal, but in 400 days I've only done about 60 dreams because I just don't always remember them.
It helps if you write it down immediately upon waking before even showing or pissing etc. Also, you can use an alarm to wake you up before you usually wake up, and if it interrupts you in the middle of a dream that can help you remember it.
>I've only ever lucid dreamt once, many years ago, and that was I believe when I was actively trying to make it happen with reality checks etc.
I recommend the book "Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self" by Robert Waggoner, it helped me have more success at becoming lucid, he gives instructions for both sleep-initiated and wake-initiated lucid dreams as well (where you remain conscious but unmoving as your body thinks its asleep and starts to enter dreaming and you directly transition from waking to the dream state) but I have not done that.

Using reality checks in combination with dream journaling works well, but the reality checks are not infallible, I've done them while dreaming and failed to recognize it was a dream before. Lastly, the herbal tea Guayusa from Ecuador that you can order online is extremely delicious, healthy, and many people report that regular consumption of it helps them lucid dream more often, so you can try adding that to your plan too.

>>19781830
>everything REAL is Brahman
This is just dumb. What's Brahman then if not anything in experience at all? The imaginary is the only real?

>>19778549
Yes I had regular lucid dreams after a couple months practice. By looking at letters on paper, looking away, then looking back. If the letters changed, I realized I was dreaming. I'm not sure what dream check you do matters. Just do it regularly, habitually, until you do it in a dream. If you don't remember your dreams much, start a dream journal. If you don't remember them at all, just think about dreams more and take naps, then dream journal.

I found my sleep less restorative and sometimes had sleep paralysis, which is annoying. So I've stopped doing it. I might go back to it, if I think of anything else I want to do.

>>19781967
>Insofar as there are no permanent entities in ultimate reality that can be conceptualized, yes, there is no atman or pugdala, etc.
That's a red herring, since the point I'm talking about is not the absolute or non-absolute status of the being under discussion, but about whether they have any subjective experience whatsoever *or* are instead entirely the insentient creation of our own delusions/imagination, just like the people in our dreams who have no subjective experience and are just our dream representations.

The point about Atman or Pugdala is totally irrelevant. The question of "Is this person that I am talking to a completely conceptually-constructed entity (prajnaptisat) by me, or is there another entity here who is conscious of this conversation, whose body I am perceiving and then I am imputing the notion of a person to it?

Whether they have a lack of pugdala or Atman or not is a totally separate question from the question of whether or not they exist as anything more than my conceptually constructed delusion (e.g. they can theoretically exist as dravyasat either with or without an Atman), if they are only my conceptually constructed delusion (which is true if dravyasat entities as a category dont exist), then they have no conscious/subjective experience and are on par with dream-figures.

>>19781981
>This is just dumb.
Have you ever considered that it just seems this way because you have no understanding of the subject beyond a superficial one garnered at a distance?

>What's Brahman then if not anything in experience at all?
Brahman is the awareness in and through which particular experiences take place

"This is the ultimate reality, the changeless eternal, all-pervading like space, free from all causal modification, ever-contented pure bliss, indivisible, self-luminous by nature, untouched by actions in the form of virtue and vice along with their effects, and beyond time in its three tenses of past, present and future; this unembodied reality is called moksha or absolute freedom"
- Shankara, 'Brahma Sutra Bhasya 1.1.4

>The imaginary is the only real?
Brahman is the only real, and is non-imaginary

>>19782096
>awareness is ultimate reality
So you are the solipsist after all, not the Buddhist. Thanks for playing

>>19782122
>So you are the solipsist after all,
Incorrect, since I don't deny that other people also have awareness. The solipsist denies the reality of other people including their inner awareness. The Advaitin doesn't deny the reality of anyone's inner awareness but instead affirms the reality of everyone's inner awareness, hence it's not the same as solipsism.

>>19782046
>Whether they have a lack of pugdala or Atman or not is a totally separate question from the question of whether or not they exist as anything more than my conceptually constructed delusion
But it's not totally separate at all. That "anything more" would be exactly the atman, pugdala, etc. Anything you insert there is going to have the same problems. Does't matter what concepts you invent, since they are all conceptual and assume some simultaneous permanence AND efficiency which allows them to adhere, even though this cannotstand up under scrutiny. That's the whole point of the Madhyamaka pov

>>19782149
But only Brahman's awareness is real. My awareness or your awareness can't be his awareness or this conversation wouldn't exist. Or is Brahman a schizo?

>>19782152
>But it's not totally separate at all. That "anything more" would be exactly the atman, pugdala, etc.
Incorrect, and saying this implies that you don't even understand what is being discussed now. Dravyasat entities (more than conceptually constructed) can be held to exist either with or without Atmans, as either with or without Pudgalas. Sautrantikas, Vaibhasika's and Yogacharas all accept the existence of dravyasat entities, but they also reject Atman/Pudgala. For Sautrantikas, Vaibhasika's and Yogacharas you can have dravyasat entities that exist and are conscious but without any Atman.

When you say "That anything more would be exactly the Atman, Pugdala etc, you are saying "anything more than a prajnaptisat (conceptually-constructed) entity would be an Atman", which is completely incorrect and signifies you don't even understand what's being talked about, because Abhidharma and Yogachara both affirm the existence of DRAVYASAT entities (which are *more than prajnaptisat*), but as existing WITHOUT Atmans. The concept of Atman is a completely different subject then the separate discussion of classifying something as either dravyasat or prajnaptisat. Why would you even try to defend Mahayana philosophy without having a basic grasp of the meaning of the terminology involved?

>>19782163
>But only Brahman's awareness is real.
Which isn't incompatible with what I said, Brahman's awareness is the same supra-individual awareness that is inside everyone. My awareness is Brahman's, and so is yours.
>My awareness or your awareness can't be his awareness or this conversation wouldn't exist.
Why not? This conversation only exists conventionally and not as absolute reality. What IS absolutely real is the inner awareness inside us and all beings. There is no reason why this conversation couldn't conventionally exist as part of maya if the inner awareness inside both of us were the same supra-individual awareness .

>>19782272
>Abhidharma and Yogachara both affirm the existence of DRAVYASAT entities
The Madhyamaka of Nagarjuna or Chandrakirti is not either of those anyway. It doesn't matter what they affirm.

>>19782272
>What IS absolutely real is the inner awareness inside us and all beings
But we don't have the same awareness or there would be no need for this conversation about what we know or don't know. Obvious nonsense

>>19782336
Okay, so are you now arbitrarily claiming that dravyasat entities are equal to Atmans because you say so?

Can you give an argument for why that would be the case? Why dravyasat entities should be treated as synonymous with Atmans? Dravyasat entities in Abhidharma can be completely insentient dharmas like physical elements, and dravyasat entities are still considered to be dependently arisen (in all Abhidharma) and impermanent (in certain types of Abhidharma). Can you give any good argument as to why a dravyasat entity that is 1) insentient 2) impermanent and 3) dependently arisen, can reasonably be considered an Atman?

Also, it's not even true as you say that Atmans require " simultaneous permanence AND efficiency". So there is no real problem to begin with in doctrines like Advaita that accept Atmans as fully real. But's that's a separate question, what is important to note is that:

1) it's completely arbitrary and unjustified to automatically equate Abhidharma dravyasat entities with Atmans
2) and so.. replacing "dravyasat" with "atmans" and whining about unexplained "problems with Atmans" doesn't provide a satisfactory refutation of the existence of dravyasat entities as maintained by Abhidharma
3) not least of all because... Atmans (or the Advaita formulaiton of them) possesses no problems and has never been refuted

>>19782430
>Atmans (or the Advaita formulaiton of them) possesses no problems and has never been refuted
Lmao

>>19782343
>But we don't have the same awareness or there would be no need for this conversation about what we know or don't know.
Why would there be no need? Awareness isn't the same thing as thoughts or intentional mental-states, awareness is the luminous foundational presence that reveals the thoughts taking place in the mind. The same awareness can illuminate two or more different minds at once, just as the same undivided sun illuminates and reveals multifarious objects on earth, and multifarious planetary bodies, all in the same moment. Absent any of the insentient things that awareness illuminates (like thoughts), you don't any referent left that can be used to indicate the difference of your awareness from anyone else's.
>obvious nonsense
It only seems that way if you have a faulty understanding of what awareness is

>>19782461
>>Atmans (or the Advaita formulation of them) possesses no problems and has never been refuted
>Lmao
Yes, try reading a book on the subject and you'll see what I mean, the Buddhists provided some arguments against the various Atman theories of Sankyas, Mimansas, Nyayikas etc, but no Buddhist in ancient, medieval or modern times has ever came up with an argument that refutes the Upanishadic Atman that Advaita explains as being partless, immutable self-disclosing presence. Even S. Dasgupta, who is no partisan of Advaita (he seems to be a much bigger fan of Nagarjuna) or even Hinduism generally, is forced to admit after a long discussion that the Buddhists never refuted the Advaita Atman and that the Advaita Atman is more correct than the Buddhist anatman model.

>>19782507
*is forced to admit in his 'Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophy'

>>19782507
>no Buddhist in ancient, medieval or modern times has ever came up with an argument that refutes the Upanishadic Atman that Advaita explains as being partless, immutable self-disclosing presence.
Nagarjuna MMK chapter XVIII

>>19778676
>Saying they are identical isnt philosophically serious
not at all, a lot of schools of philosophy like german idealism or phenomoenology also share that view
>>19778676
>because they have mutually exclusive attributes (violates LNC)
advaita also violates the LNC pricniple when it gives atributes like "neither being nor not-being" that is something being -a=a at the same time
pretty much every hindian school violates the LNC that's what makes them different from the western tradition

>>19781618
to this day no advaitafag could actually explain how that makes sense

>>19782552
dude i never seen the guenonfag being owned this hard!

>>19782507
>why haven't buddhists refuted crypto-buddhism?

>>19782272
>Which isn't incompatible with what I said
yes it is, because if only awarness is real, and not any of the objects of awarness, then i'm being aware of absolutely nothing, thus being by deffinition a form of solipsism
who would believe something contradictory and counter intuitive like that?

>>19782430
I don't really care what Sarvastivadins thought. The Abhidharmakosabhaysa is on my list but a low priority. In any event, I don't see how arguing for Sarvastivada gets you anywhere trying to defend Advaita Vedanta vs Madhyamaka. You don't even agree with the Sarvastivadin. You'd never use their arguments to advance your own position independent of this debate, because they are nastika. It's highly dishonest.

>>19782552
>Nagarjuna MMK chapter XVIII
top kek, it's so telling when you don't post or summarize the argument itself, for your sake though I'll point out why Nagarjuna totally fails to refute the Advaita Atman in this chapter (setting aside the point that this passage is likely directed at other Buddhists/Pugdalavadins)

Here is the whole chapter:

>Chapter 18 - Investigation of Self and Things
>1. If the aggregates were self, it would be possessed of arising and decaying. If it were other than the aggregates, it would not have the characteristics of the aggregates.
The Advaita Atman is none of the Buddhist aggregates, and neither does it possess the characteristics of the Buddhist aggregates, so this sentence doesn't present any problem for Advaita. The Self is ever-present without any original arising and without ever being subject to decay. The Buddhist aggregate of "consciousness" is intentional (object-directed) and is admitted to exist as different kinds like ear-consciousness, eye-consciousness, nose-consciousness etc, whereas the Advaita Atman is non-intentional and only exists as one type instead of different types for various organs, so it doesn't even resemble the Buddhist aggregate that Buddhists call consciousness.
>2. If the self did not exist, where could what is mine exist? In order to pacify self and what is mine, grasping I and grasping mine can exist no more.
This verse is talking about the implications of the proposed non-existence of the self, and so it doesn't present anything that can be construed as a challenge to the Advaita model.
>3. The one who does not grasp at me and mine likewise does not exist. Whoever sees the one who does not grasp at me and mine does not see.
This is just further unpacking the context of the above verse, again without providing any challenge to a self existing
>4. When one ceases thinking of inner and outer things as self and mine, clinging will come to a stop. Through that ceasing, birth will cease.
This verse is just saying stopping clinging causes the end of rebirth, it's not challenging or refuting the concept of self
>5. Through the ceasing of action and affliction, there is freedom. Action and affliction [come] from thoughts and they from fixations. Fixations are stopped by emptiness.
ibid

>>19782465
>The same awareness can illuminate two or more different minds at once
Oh right it's just theology, not an effort to actually explain anything that exists. I almost forgot.

>>19782746
>>19782552
>6. It is said that “there is a self,” but “non-self” too is taught. The buddhas also teach there is nothing which is “neither self nor non-self.”
This is just talking about what Buddhism teaches, no arguments against the Atman here in this verse
>7. That to which language refers is denied, because an object experienced by the mind is denied. The unborn and unceasing nature of reality is comparable to nirvana.
Saying that you deny there is an object experienced by the mind as this verse does is not a refutation of anything or an argument against anything else.
>8. Everything is real, not real; both real and not real; neither not real nor real: this is the teaching of the Buddha.
This is also not an argument against something but is just saying what Buddha taught
>9. Not known through others, peaceful, not fixed by fixations, without conceptual thought, without differentiation: these are the characteristics of suchness.
This is not an argument against the Atman, but in fact Nagarjuna here seems to be describing it. The Advaita Atman is 1) Not known through others (because it's self-disclosing), peaceful, not fixed by fixations (unaffected by mind), without conceptual thought (its the non-conceptual presence through which thought is known) and without differentiation (as the Atman is partless, unchanging etc)
>10. Whatever arises dependent on something else is at that time neither that very thing nor other than it. Hence it is neither severed nor permanent.
The Advaita Atman never arises on anything but is beginningless, eternal and unarisen. And even if you want to say Nagarjuna is trying to argue against this, then this verse doesn't provide any argument for why foundational awareness should be considered as arising on the basis of anything instead of simply existing spontaneously and primordially.
>11. That ambrosial teaching of the buddhas, those guardians of the world, is neither the same nor different, neither severed nor permanent.
Again, just stating Buddha's teachings, not an argument
>12. When perfect buddhas do not appear, and when their disciples have died out, the wisdom of the self-awakened ones will vividly arise without reliance.
ibid

Wow, that was the whole chapter XVIII of Nagarjuna's MMK and it didn't contain a single argument that seemed to be directed at the Upanishadic/Advaitic Atman, let alone an argument that can be presumed to refute it. Nagarjuna's works seem conspicuously devoid of arguments.

>>19782746
>The Advaita Atman is none of the Buddhist aggregates, and neither does it possess the characteristics of the Buddhist aggregates, so this sentence doesn't present any problem for Advaita
Oh so you agree with Mahayana that the atman cannot be located among the the skandhas or whatever else. Go figure. Stop stealing Nagarjuna's homework.

>>19782753
>just stating Buddha's teachings, not an argument
You're not allowed to use the Upanishads either then. Please, do demonstrate that the atman is Brahman. This may be difficult since you agree with Nagarjuna that it cannot be located among the elements of our experience.

>>19780694
>Advaita doesn’t deny that other beings have a truly real awareness,
yes it does, even if they don't want to, if you think only awarness is real, then you're only aware of your own awarness, everyone else are just presented to you as objects to your awarness, you can't be aware of their awarness only of their bodies, voice, gestures etc.
so you're forced to admit that by your own logic you're the only real thing in the world

>>19782652
>a lot of schools of philosophy like german idealism or phenomoenology also share that view
pro-tip: neither are philosophically serious
>pretty much every hindian school violates the LNC that's what makes them different from the western tradition
I agree the other schools sometimes do but Advaita doesn't.
>advaita also violates the LNC pricniple when it gives atributes like "neither being nor not-being" that is something being -a=a at the same time
Lmao, did you even pay attention to what you just wrote? Do you have any self-awareness? Saying "X is neither being nor non-being" is not saying "something is equal to its negation". The first statement is making the denial that something can be categorized into 1 of 2 categories. The second statement is violating the LNC by saying the opposite/negation of X is identical with that X. Making the observation that X doesn't fit into either of the 2 proposed categories for it is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than saying mutually-exclusive things are identical.

>>19782688
It was already explained in the reply to his post. Advaita doesn't assert that everything is Brahman, it asserts that everything that is real is Brahman.
>>19782719
>yes it is, because if only awarness is real, and not any of the objects of awarness, then i'm being aware of absolutely nothing
In Advaita, the things presenting themselves to awareness through the apparatus of the mind are classified as false (mithya) and not nothingness or complete non-being. So it's incorrect to say that if awareness alone is real you are aware of nothing, because falsity or false objects are not nothingness. Also, awareness is aware of itself, so even if it had no knowledge of anything else like falsity, the mere fact of it having immediate access to (i.e. knowledge of) it's own presence means that it is incorrect to say that it knows nothing (because awareness isn't nothingness itself so in knowing itself awareness knows more than plain nothingness).
>>19782731
>I don't really care what Sarvastivadins thought.
Well, you are making a fool of yourself by saying dravyasat = Atman so I would advise reading more on this before talking about something you don't know anything about. If you dont want to read their texts you can find this topic discussed at length in Burton's 'Emptiness Appraised'. It's sad that me of all people should have to be schooling you on this. In any case, Nagajuna's denial of or attack on dravyasat entities leads to completely absurd and laughable conclusions that are incompatible with compassion, bodhisattvas etc as well as logic and common sense.
>I don't see how arguing for Sarvastivada gets you anywhere trying to defend Advaita Vedanta vs Madhyamaka.
there is nothing to "defend" Advaita from because Madhyamaka has no arguments against Advaita, the few who tried like Shantaraksita all got a bunch of basic stuff wrong like incorrectly thinking Advaita accepts sahopalambha, and these mistakes throw off their attempted critique so that it is only directed at their own weird made up strawman which has nothing to do with what Advaita actually teaches about the Atman, metaphysics etc.

You don't even agree with the Sarvastivadin. You'd never use their arguments to advance your own position independent of this debate, because they are nastika. It's highly dishonest.

>>19782748
>muh theology
Not an argument that demonstrates any contradiction in what I said. In any case, theology *is* an attempt to explain things by any reasonable definition, an attempt to explain things is not by definition a naturalist one.

>>19782759
>Oh so you agree with Mahayana that the atman cannot be located among the the skandhas or whatever else. Go figure. Stop stealing Nagarjuna's homework.
Yes, because none of the skandas remotely resembles how Advaita describes the Self and the nature of consciousness you fool, it has nothing to do with Nagarjuna

>hurr durrr if your understanding of consciousness is actually completely different from the buddhist one that means..... its actually a buddhist one despite being completely different.
major brainlet moment

>>19782780
>Please, do demonstrate that the atman is Brahman.
At this moment, I'm just demonstrating how Nagarjuna failed to refute the Upanishadic Atman, the question of proving its existence is a completely different subject than the separate question of whether Nagarjuna refuted it.

>>19782847
>did you even pay attention to what you just wrote?

i did, did you? this is logic 101, quick example:if i say something isn't human nor non-human then i'm breaking the LNC something must be human or non-human, if not the Law of identity is broken and with it the LNC

>>19782847
>Saying "X is neither being nor non-being" is not saying "something is equal to its negation"
yes it is, that's exactly what that ilogical quote from shankara means, if something is non-being, then it can't be being, but if someting is not non-being then it must be being, if is neither of them then it ends up being both of them at the same time, thus violating the LNC

>neither are philosophically serious,
those are the most influential schools in continental philosophy, you should study them sometime it will help you a lot understanding actual logic

>>19782800
>yes it does, even if they don't want to, if you think only awarness is real, then you're only aware of your own awarness, everyone else are just presented to you as objects to your awarness, you can't be aware of their awarness only of their bodies, voice, gestures etc.
Their awareness that is aware of itself is the exact same, i.e. is numerically identical with my awareness that is aware of itself, so I'm not denying their awareness at all, I'm fully acknowledging their awareness and saying that this one and the same supra-individual self-aware Entity is the underlying awareness of all beings, like the sun at the center of a galaxy illuminating all the things within it from the center of that galaxy.
>so you're forced to admit that by your own logic you're the only real thing in the world
The awareness inside me no more belongs to my body than it also belongs to the bodies of all sentient beings, when I say that awareness alone is absolutely real, it implies no prioritizing of the awareness in my body over the awareness inside the bodies of other living beings too

>>19782903
>In Advaita, the things presenting themselves to awareness through the apparatus of the mind are classified as false (mithya) and not nothingness or complete non-being. So it's incorrect to say that if awareness alone is real you are aware of nothing, because falsity or false objects are not nothingness
that's just a play on words, knowing only false objects is the same as knowing nothing, there's no substancial difference
>awareness is aware of itself, so even if it had no knowledge of anything else like falsity, the mere fact of it having immediate access to (i.e. knowledge of) it's own presence means that it is incorrect to say that it knows nothing (because awareness isn't nothingness itself so in knowing itself awareness knows more than plain nothingness).
again, if awarness can't be aware of anything but lies and false things then is not really something substancial that can provide any type of knowledge, since it only quality is to show me illusions, according to your own logic
if i can´t be aware of nothing real, what purpouse has awarness itself?

>>19782943
>the question of proving its existence is a completely different subject than the separate question of whether Nagarjuna refuted it.
Yes the usual entirely bad faith discussion you have in every thread: "No I can't and won't actually prove the position you are arguing against, but you are wrong about it for some scholastic reason."

>>19782974
>Their awareness that is aware of itself is the exact same, i.e. is numerically identical with my awareness
but you can't know that with your awarness

>so I'm not denying their awareness at all
you are if you say only awarness is real, since awarness can't let you be aware of their pure awarness only of gestures on existence
>'m fully acknowledging their awareness
but not with your own awarness which is the only real thing, that's the thing, you don't have the tools to aknowledge their awarness even if you want to, since you can only be aware of your own awarness, an dthat's why your gnoseology ends up in solipsism
>The awareness inside me no more belongs to my body than it also belongs to the bodies of all sentient beings
you're not aware of that, you just think that, which is a whole different thing, which doesn't have any value of reality if only awarness exist

how can you know other people is also aware when you're only aware of your own awarness?
this is the question you need to answer if you wanna show that advaita isn't a philosophy that falls into solipsism

>>19782903
The intra-Buddhist argument was that the abhidharmikas had basically made dharmas into little atmans. I'm not writing you a thousand page summary of why that was corrected as being incompatible with the doctrine of momentariness, nor would it change that Vedanta is an atmavada school and so all the refutations of an atman broadly apply to it. There is no wiggle room for you because you've said "actually the atman is brahman" because that's just more dogma. You certainly won't demonstrate it is so.

>>19782974
>this one and the same supra-individual self-aware Entity is the underlying awareness of all beings, like the sun at the center of a galaxy illuminating all the things within it from the center of that galaxy.
Basically a theistic version of samkhya, retroactively refuted by every Buddhist

>>19782957
>i did, did you? this is logic 101, quick example: if i say something isn't human nor non-human then i'm breaking the LNC
The law of non-contradiction is only broken when you assert two contradictory propositions as being true at the same time, in situations where there is a third alternative then it's not a violation of the LNC to deny the first two alternatives in favor of accepting the third. E.G. in the question "was Elvis Japanese or French?" There is no violation of the LNC to deny these and say "neither, he was American". When Falsity or Mithya is a third ontological space inbetween Real/Unreal or Absolute Reality/Nothingness then it's not a violation of the LNC to say it's neither, just as Elvis was neither Japanese nor French. If you say that "being and non-being are exhaustive so there cannot be a third option", that's exactly what you were trying to prove to begin with, so it's just the logical fallacy of using circular reasoning if you cite that claim as the reason why that claim is true, e.g. "being and non-being are exhaustive and don't allow for any third option and I know this because being and non-being are exhaustive and don't allow for any third option" (circular reasoning fallacy).

>>>19782847 (You)
>>Saying "X is neither being nor non-being" is not saying "something is equal to its negation"
>yes it is, that's exactly what that ilogical quote from shankara means,
It's not a quote from Shankara, he doesn't ever write that (if so, cite the exact page). Saying "C =/= B =/= A" isn't the same as "A = -A"
>if something is non-being, then it can't be being, but if someting is not non-being then it must be being, if is neither of them then it ends up being both of them at the same time
It doesn't end up being both at the same time when there is a third option which is neither, duh!

>>19783034
>"was Elvis Japanese or French?
that example is plain wrong, cos don't deal with the true problem of Mithya, that is negation
a bette rexample would be saying. "Elvis isn't japane nor non-japanese" it doesn't make any sense
now you can see how Mithya actually broke the LNC

>>19782990
>that's just a play on words, knowing only false objects is the same as knowing nothing, there's no substancial difference
Incorrect, because even in knowing false objects awareness knows itself, and since awareness isn't nothingness it means that awareness always knows something that isn't nothingness, even if what is known is the simple fact of awareness itself.
>again, if awarness can't be aware of anything but lies and false things then is not really something substancial that can provide any type of knowledge,
Awareness reveals and illumines the mind, and through this enables us to have access to mental knowledge of worldly and theoretical matters, such that all practical needs are fulfilled, allowing us to have knowledge of the world, conversations etc. These are false in the sense of not being the absolute reality of Brahman, not false in the sense that we cannot reliably or satisfactorily navigate around the empirical world and hear what other people are saying etc. When the self-disclosure of this tranquil primordial unconditioned awareness shines forth without the normal filter that the mind of the unenlightened applies over it (this filter only affecting the mind and not awareness itself), it is the most fulfilling and spiritually-enriching thing ever.
>if i can´t be aware of nothing real, what purpouse has awarness itself?
Awareness is Brahman (God) who is uncaused, and as purposes for things are really just causes for them spoken of differently, Brahman has no purpose because Brahman is uncaused, eternally complete and self-sufficient unto Itself.

>>19783002
>Buddhist claims Buddhism refuted Advaita
>they are challenged and try to link to the argument or summarize it
>someone points out that it totally fails to refute the Advaita position
>the Buddhist starts seething and trying to save face by saying "uh... even though no Buddhist ever refuted it, you still never demonstrated it to be true though (which is irrelevant and Buddhism and Madhyamaka have never been demonstrated to ever be true either)"
every time

>>19783034
>Mithya is a third ontological space inbetween Real/Unreal or Absolute Reality/Nothingness
>>19783034
this brings another problem, since advaita here needs to make a bridge between substances absolute reality (A) and B) nothingness, so it creates(C) Flasity
but then what bridge unify C with A and C with B?
and those bridges need bridges too, ad infinitum
this is the old problem with trascendental substances, you need a ontological bridge to connect both worlds, but those bdriges need brdiges too, since there's never a logical moment where new ontological bridges between substances aren't needed, theology always end up with a random number of bridges without realising the need for them is never resolved, each new ontlogical world need more world inside to make sense
buddhist phenomenology is one of the few philosophical schools that actually adresses the problem and find a somewhat coherent answer

How long do I have to meditate for until this thread starts making sense?

>>19783016
>but you can't know that with your awarness
I don't need to, all I'm doing is explaining how nothing in my (Advaita's) explanation of consciousness is illogical or directly contradicted by experience.
>>so I'm not denying their awareness at all
>you are if you say only awarness is real, since awarness can't let you be aware of their pure awarness only of gestures on existence
That's not denying their awareness, since I'm saying the exact same pure awareness inside me also resides within them, just because I cannot see their awareness through my eye does not mean I am denying their awareness exists.
>>'m fully acknowledging their awareness
>but not with your own awarness which is the only real thing
You apparently just confused "acknowledging" with "having empirical confirmation of", you can acknowledge the proposed or inferred existence of something that you don't have access to through the sense organs. I have never seen an extraterrestrial but I acknowledge that they probably exist.
>>The awareness inside me no more belongs to my body than it also belongs to the bodies of all sentient beings
>you're not aware of that, you just think that, which is a whole different thing
that I only think that instead of having empirical confirmation of it isn't an example of a logical contradiction in the doctrine itself (since it accounts for why we dont have epistemic access to it) and nor is it denying their awareness (because you can acknowledge as valid the proposed existence of something you cant see)
>how can you know other people is also aware when you're only aware of your own awarness?
I infer that they are aware, I don't need to have direct epistemic confirmation that that they are aware in order for Advaita to not be solipsism because empirical experience of something and acknowledging the theoretical existence of something are two different things (a very ESL mistake to make, but who knows, we all have moments of tiredness etc)

>>19783125
>>19783125
>knowing false objects awareness knows itself,
knowing somethign that can only know falsehood is equivalent to not knowing anything

>us to have knowledge of the world

yes but the wolrd is an illusion

>Brahman has no purpose because Brahman is uncaused, eternally complete and self-sufficient unto Itself.
so he's pretty much nothingness

how is advaita not nihilistic again?

>>19783125
>>someone points out that it totally fails to refute the Advaita position
You can rearrange the Upanishads, atman, and Brahman all you like but those have each already been argued against already.

>>19783020
> Vedanta is an atmavada school and so all the refutations of an atman broadly apply to it.
They don't, because the Advaita Atma is so different from the other Darshanas Atmans that none of the Buddhist arguments against their Atmans are applicable to the Advaita Atman, you have been trying for years if I'm not mistaken and I have effortlessly shot them down every time. To this day you still don't have even one (1)! example of one argument that would apply to the Advaita Atman.
>>19783033
>Basically a theistic version of samkhya, retroactively refuted by every Buddhist
There are some similarities but the Advaitic conception of Advaita is still quite different still from the Sankhya Atman, and none of the Buddhist arguments against the Sankhya Atman are valid against the Advaita Atman. If you like you can post any and all of the Buddhist arguments against the Sankhya Purusa in this very thread and I'll happily explain for you exactly how they are inapplicable to or fail to refute the Advaita Atman

>>19783169
>I have never seen an extraterrestrial but I acknowledge that they probably exist.
Yes good thing nobody is silly enough to develop a whole ontology around potentially real beings and get all huffy when someone points out the obvious fact that he has no sound basis for any of his claims

>>19783169
>I don't need to
yes you do if you wanna recognize their existence, remember only awarness is real


>since I'm saying the exact same pure awareness inside me also resides within them,
you're saying that but you're not aware of that, so it doesn't have any value
>that I only think that instead of having empirical confirmation
exaclty, you only think about it, so according to your own gnoseology, that could be an illusion
>I infer that they are aware
with your mind, not with your awarness

so if only awarness is real, you have no way to prove to yourself or others than anyone else actually exist,since you can't be aware of other people awarness, and end up actually proving that advaita ends up in solipsism

>>19783199
That's too much work. You are just rearranging defeated ideas until you exhaust your opponents. It succeeded in India after Buddhist intellectual culture had atrophied and moved east. And you've already said you don't care to prove your stuff so at this point we might as well replace atman, brahman, and the Upanishads, with Alice, the Red Queen, and the published works of Lewis Carroll.

>>19783115
>that example is plain wrong, cos don't deal with the true problem of Mithya, that is negation
Mithya isn't defined as negation
>a bette rexample would be saying. "Elvis isn't japane nor non-japanese" it doesn't make any sense
That is redirecting back to the assertion that being and non-being are exhaustive, which cannot be used as a reason to prove that being and non-being are exhaustive without falling prey to the logical fallacy of circular reasoning. Your main argument for why mithya violates the LNC is entirely premised on circular reasoning, it's completely fallacious. Do you really have no self-awareness of when you engage in circular logic?

>>19783155
>this brings another problem, since advaita here needs to make a bridge between substances absolute reality (A) and B) nothingness, so it creates(C) Flasity
but then what bridge unify C with A and C with B?
>and those bridges need bridges too, ad infinitum
Nothingness isn't something that exists in its own right, its not created and nothing needs to be bridged to it. Saying that mithya isn't nothingness is not saying that nothingness is created by Brahman. And its also incorrect to say that one thing cannot directly act upon a second thing (like Brahman directly projecting maya) because we have examples in the world of something acting upon a second thing without needing any intermediary, as for example light revealing itself directly to the eye without any intermediary needed for that revealing. So, the claim that an intermediary is inevitably needed cannot be accepted as a valid universal rule because its falsified in our experience.
>this is the old problem with trascendental substances, you need a ontological bridge to connect both worlds, but those bdriges need brdiges too
See above, there is no reason to assume this when we have empirical examples of things acting upon other things without intermediaries.
>buddhist phenomen-
retroactively refuted by Sri Shankaracharya (PBUH)

>>19783158
>How long do I have to meditate for until this thread starts making sense?
You gotta READ nigga, you wont get closer to knowledge by emptying your head like a lobotomy patient

>>19783199
>To this day you still don't have even one (1)! example of one argument that would apply to the Advaita Atman.
there's one, the one buddha himself promote
show us actual proof of the atman, show us something that out of all doubt can be said is not victim to change
and if you want to say pure awarness, prove how pure awarness can exist outside of phenomena, and how it's not just a fabrication of different moments of particular instances of awarness
if you can't do that well you can't say you refuted the buddha, since no one could beat him on that one

>>19783240
>light revealing itself directly to the eye
Your eyes are self-aware? This should be good. Let's hear you explain this one.

Here's a question more in line with OPs topic: does coffee degrade one's ability to visualize/imagine things with their minds eye? I realized on my last caffeine tolerance break that I was actually having dreams again, whereas when I'm drinking 4 coffees a day I almost never have dreams. It could be that I fall more deeply into sleep when I don't have any caffeine during the day, but I have a sneaking suspicion that my 'mind's eye' gets less vivid when I'm (perhaps overindulging) in coffee. I dunno. Any thoughts on this? Has anyone else experienced a dulling effect on their imagination by regular caffeine intake?

>>19783247
>consooming words
>whole buncha asians going "yo just take my word for it bro"
I thought the only way to truly attain these insights was through direct practice?

>>19783240
>That is redirecting back to the assertion that being and non-being are exhaustive
lol no is not
i'm just formulating the same question but changing the names
elvis(Mithya) is neither japanes(being)nor non.japanese(non-being)
with that i just showing you how logically that kind of concept doesn't make any sense
i never fall into circular reasoning, because i never stated any argument to beging with, i just logically deconstructed one of advaita "logical" arguments, to show that indeed break the LNC, any student of logic can see that, when you say that something isn't a thing or his contrary, you're clearly violating the LNC no matter how much mental gimnastics you try to do around it, you should study how negation in logics operates, you seem really out of your element when you tr to use logic

>>19783180
>knowing somethign that can only know falsehood is equivalent to not knowing anything
It can't "only know falsehood" because awareness knows itself and awareness isn't false, so by the fact of awareness knowing itself, the claim "awareness only knows falsehood" is falsified.
>so he's pretty much nothingness
Brahman isn't nothingness, Brahman is eternal, infinite, self-disclosing unconditioned, supremely peaceful bliss-awareness.
>how is advaita not nihilistic again?
Because it says there is an absolute infinite eternal God who exists as the basis of everything, i.e. what nihilism denies
>>19783188
>You can rearrange the Upanishads, atman, and Brahman all you like but those have each already been argued against already.
Irrelevant if none of these arguments apply to the Advaita Atman. You do realize that each of the Darshanas Atmans are so different from each other that they are each deserving of their own unique word right? It is by convention that they are all referred to as Atman but in each case it's a completely different concept, and arguments against one are totally inapplicable to the others generally.
>>19783207
I'm not getting huffy, I'm having fun running circles around you clowns. If don't care if you don't think there isn't a sound basis, whats important is that every attempt to establish a logical contradiction in it fails because its without contradictions.

>>19783210
>if you wanna recognize their existence,
I can infer, accept and acknowledge their existence without having epistemic access to it, acknowledgement doesn't involve epistemic confirmation by nature but only in certain cases.
>you're saying that but you're not aware of that, so it doesn't have any value
I dont care if you dont think it has value, thats not an example of a contradiction or proof of solipsism though
>so according to your own gnoseology, that could be an illusion
Which is irrelevant since thats not a contradiction or proof of solipsism and Advaita doesn't require epistemic confirmation of all its claims in order for it to produce enlightenment or lesser attainments like psychological happiness and peace
>and end up actually proving that advaita ends up in solipsism
Pro-tip: trying looking up what the definition of solipsims is. It doesn't mean the failure to epistemtically confirm other peoples awareness or minds, it means actively denying they exist, which Advaita doesnt do, so by definition Advaita isnt solipsism

>>19783240
>light revealing itself directly
are you serious? seeing light is a completly mediated process, you know there's blind people right?

>>19783158
Problem is that Nagarjuna invented a method of just picking apart opposing theories and presenting that as evidence that ultimate reality could not be described, that it was empty of discursiveness, and then the Hindu theologians like Shankara and Gaudapada eventually copied this and applied it to the Vedas. In other words, they no longer have to prove the atman or brahman but can just argue that anything outside the Vedas contradicts the Vedas. "The Vedas? Well that's just the ultimate truth you see." Problem is of course that scriptures are the opposite of emptiness, they are entirely discursive and nearly every school based on them was actively argued against by Buddhists for a thousand years. But India was tired of Buddhism by then and the Buddhists were tired of arguing with the Hindu pandits. So no, following along with all this will not enlighten you. But perhaps the futility of discourse points the way after all

>>19783254
>show us actual proof of the atman,
That's not an argument that demonstrates any contradiction in it or that show it cant exist you goof

>>19783298
>in each case it's a completely different concept, and arguments against one are totally inapplicable to the others generally.
Yeah I know they are each some pet theory rearranging the same non-demonstrable substratum to argue with other pandits. Still an atman

>>19781990
>and sometimes had sleep paralysis
you fool. you're supposed to use that to enter dreams.

>>19783258
>Your eyes are self-aware?
Saying that light is revealed to the eye doesn't entail saying that eyes are self-aware. Light being revealed to the eye can just mean eyes directly and without any mediation receiving the information that light is present, which is then sent to the brain where it is displayed in the mind and known by awareness. Light doesn't require any intermediary for the eye to immediately capture that light is present when light comes into contact with it.
>>19783281
>I thought the only way to truly attain these insights was through direct practice?
In certain systems direct practice and studying/knowledge are like two legs of a cart and if you only have one its useless. Other systems say that you should have an extremely well-versed knowledge in the teaching first before really getting into serious direct practice.

>>19783298
>It can't "only know falsehood" because awareness knows itself and awareness isn't false, so by the fact of awareness knowing itself, the claim "awareness only knows falsehood" is falsified.
if i "know" a lie, that i don't know is a lie, then i don't know a lie, i'm being fooled, there's no actual knowing

>Brahman isn't nothingness, Brahman is eternal, infinite, self-disclosing unconditioned, supremely peaceful bliss-awareness.
it's indistinguishible from nothingness, it has no real qualities or pourpose
>>19783298
>I can infer
and by your own gnoseology, that could be a lie, falsehood, so you can't actually accept their existence, just convince yourself that you do
>I dont care if you dont think it has value
i don't think that, advaita think that by virtue of their gnoseology, if the only thing that's real is awarness, then each person can onlñy thrust their inmediate awarness, not what you think or what you see, that's just mathiya, so anyone else can be mathiya too
>Which is irrelevant since thats not a contradiction or proof of solipsism
how that can be irrelevant? if that's exactly the part of advaita epistemology that creates a gnoseology of solipsism
if only awraness is real, and i can't be aware of the awarness of anyone else, then even if i want to believe anyone else is real, my own advaita paradigm is leading me into solipsism
the fact that you can't adress this problem is very telling
all you can do is naively say that you:"think" other people exist, while your own philosophy actually leads you to the opposite way

>>19783310
that's buddhas main argument

>>19783310
>that show it cant exist you goof
if you can't prove it exist, it's a damn good argument against it's existence lol

>>19783300
>seeing light is a completly mediated process,
"seeing light" is awareness knowing the mind detecting light through the eye, but even in blind people their eye still detects light and responds to brightness by contracting its pupil etc if the cause of their blindness is not anything in the eye itself but something wrong in the brain. In other words, awareness having knowledge of the eye perceiving light is meditated, but the eye itself directly captures the fact that light is present without mediation, and then sends this info to the brain, where it is experienced as the qualia of seeing light which is after the fact of the eye itself directly detecting light in an unmediated manner

>>19783335
Light is meaningless to an eyeball. That's like saying the sun hits a rock.

>>19783345
This is why I recommend reading Alice in Wonderland alongside any theologian.

>>19783351
>he eye itself directly captures the fact that light is present without mediation
not really the eye is composed of different parts, and all of themmust mediate with each other, just as light mediate with space, since space is a medium in which light moves, if space is not in an optimal place(maybe i'm inside a cave) or some parts of my eyes aren't working,i can't see light, also we can say that "seeing light" is someting that happens in the brain and my eye is only receiving photons and a nunch of proccess/mediation, must occur in order for light to be manifested, also you need a sun to receive photons, in any case a lot of different moments of mediation are occuring

>>19783290
>elvis(Mithya) is neither japanes(being)nor non.japanese(non-being)
>with that i just showing you how logically that kind of concept doesn't make any sense
Just because there doesn't seem to be a middle ground between Japanese and non-Japanese (what if there was someone who was perfectly half-japanese and half-not-Japanese down to the last DNA strand btw, that would be neither) doesn't automatically entail that there is no middle ground between absolute being and nothingness, which is of another order entirely than things within mundane experience. And that's an inappropriate example since the non-Japanese person would still be presumed to have their own kind of being while nothingness/non-being has no qualities or existence etc unlike the non-Japanese person in contrast to the Jap.
>i never fall into circular reasoning,
Yes, you fell into circular reasoning when you asserted that non-being and (absolute) being are exhaustive and then cited that as the reason showing that non-being and (absolute) being are exhaustive, that's circular reasoning.
>any student of logic can see that, when you say that something isn't a thing or his contrary,
Not when there is a third alternative, Red isn't Blue, but Blue and Yellow are both not-Red, but Blue and Yellow are still both separate from each other despite being both not-Red
>you're clearly violating the LNC
It's not violated then where is a third alterative, in that case you care not asserting two mutually exclusive propositions about the same entity, I not sure if you actually know what the LNC means because you keep repeating that mistake

>>19783302
That doesn't even make any sense. If they truly copied Nagarjuna's method then wouldn't they just prove atman and brahman to also be empty?

>>19783338
>if i "know" a lie, that i don't know is a lie, then i don't know a lie, i'm being fooled, there's no actual knowing
English motherfucker! do you speak it?!
>it's indistinguishible from nothingness, it has no real qualities or pourpose
Wrong, because awareness self-discloses its own presence to itself while nothingness doesn't, I seriously hope you dont think that nothingness is self-aware, that would be REALLY stupid
>and by your own gnoseology, that could be a lie, falsehood, so you can't actually accept their existence, just convince yourself that you do
So? that's not a problem for Advaita, it doesn't matter if things other than awareness are a lie,
> then each person can onlñy thrust their inmediate awarnes
So? That's not a problem but it speaks to the undeniability of our own Self of awareness, there are no bad consequences of this
>ow that can be irrelevant? if that's exactly the part of advaita epistemology that creates a gnoseology of solipsism
You keep misusing these buzzwords, Solipsism is the active denial that others have subjective experience, Advaita doesnt do this and hence isn't solipsism full-stop.
>if only awraness is real, and i can't be aware of the awarness of anyone else, then even if i want to believe anyone else is real, my own advaita paradigm is leading me into solipsism
Wrong, because that doesn't involve you actively denying anyone's existence
>the fact that you can't adress this problem is very telling
what problem?

>>19783354
>Light is meaningless to an eyeball. That's like saying the sun hits a rock.
Tell that to the chemical reactions that happen in the eye after light acts upon it without mediation when they come into contact

>>19783398
If you are following closely, the e-vedantin refuses to argue for his own position, which is, instead of emptiness or the notion that ultimate reality is without qualifications, his own interpretation of the Vedas. These are mere theological assertions based on revelation which he knows cannot be proven, and this does not at all follow from refuting rivalrous views the way emptiness does. It's a rhetorical trick.

>>19783406
Do these reactions happen to the eye in the void or the eye attached to a living organism which responds to light? In any case, a simile to describe brahman is no different than Alice in Wonderland

>>19783373
>not really the eye is composed of different parts, and all of themmust mediate with each other,
That mediation is all after the fact of the light coming into contact with the eye, which requires only an act of initial contact and no mediation for that initial act.
>just as light mediate with space, since space is a medium in which light moves,
That space is a precondition of things moving in space doesn't mean that space is an intermediary in the act of moving, to be a condition that permits something else to take place is not the same as acting as the go-between that is between the actor and thing acted upon. The body requires a mother to be born as its preconditon, but we wouldn't say that the Kings long-dead mother was the "intermediary" in his ordering his army to move, she wasn't the "go-between", and if you want to take the example of space itself, space requires no intermediaries in order for it to provided extension for objects but it does so directly and without any intermediary

>>19783379
>what if there was someone who was perfectly half-japanese and half-not-Japanese down to the last DNA strand btw, that would be neither
that doesn't exist, there's no such thing as a half and non half japanese,it's again a lnc violation, or you're half(in this case the dichotomy would be japanes/any other nationality or you're not
so hal japanese sin't the same as japanese and non japanese, which ar emutually exclusive, but as japanese AND any other nationality, which aren't mutually exclusive

you're trying to hard to fix your faulty model of logic

>>19783379
>doesn't automatically entail that there is no middle ground between absolute being and nothingness
if i say soething posses non-being then i'm exluding being from the equation, since non-being is the quality of not having being, so a middle ground between being and non-being is impossible, since they have opposing qualities
again, if i'm saying something is non-animal what i'm saying is that such a thing has the quality of not being an animal, if then i say it also an animal i'm violating the LNC
if i'm saying that something is not a non-animal(-A) what i'm saying is that it has the quality of being an animal, but if then i'm also saying neither an animal, im also saying that such a thing posses the quality of being an animal
so i have a thing with two opposing qualities, the same happen here, something has the quality of being and non being at the same time
thus violating the LNC
>Yes
no i'm just using logical reasoning, yo ushould study how negation and the law of identit works
>It's not violated then where is a third alterative

if a third option has two opposing qualities, then that third option is breaking the LNC you like it or not

>>19783399
>So? that's not a problem for Advaita
it is if you don't wanna fall into solipsism
>there are no bad consequences of this
only i fyou think solipsism isn't a bad consequence
>Solipsism is the active denial that others have subjective experience
and that's exactly what advaita does when the only thing that's real is our own awarness, since we don't have any way to know that other people actually exist, since we can't be aware of their own awarness
>Wrong, because that doesn't involve you actively denying anyone's existence
you're denying it by virtue of only having your own awarness as sole fundament for reality, everyone else is at best a dream you're having, you have no way to validate anyone else existence even if you wanted

>>19783429
>space requires no intermediaries

you don't know that, a lot of quantum physics in fact thing the opposite

>>19783379
>you fell into circular reasoning
you fell into circular reasoning here
"Their awareness that is aware of itself is the exact same, i.e. is numerically identical with my awareness that is aware of itself, so I'm not denying their awareness at all, I'm fully acknowledging their awareness and saying that this one and the same supra-individual self-aware Entity is the underlying awareness of all beings, like the sun at the center of a galaxy illuminating all the things within it from the center of that galaxy."
you have no way to prove this, but you're using it as a basis for your argument

also here
"Awareness reveals and illumines the mind, and through this enables us to have access to mental knowledge of worldly and theoretical matters, such that all practical needs are fulfilled, allowing us to have knowledge of the world, conversations etc. These are false in the sense of not being the absolute reality of Brahman, not false in the sense that we cannot reliably or satisfactorily navigate around the empirical world and hear what other people are saying etc. When the self-disclosure of this tranquil primordial unconditioned awareness shines forth without the normal filter that the mind of the unenlightened applies over it (this filter only affecting the mind and not awareness itself), it is the most fulfilling and spiritually-enriching thing ever"

your notion of pure awarness as an axiom is a petitio principii
since awarness can also be explained as different mments of awarness that created the "idea" of a pure awarness outside of phenomena
since you can't prove that this is not the case, your notion of awarness as a self revealing thing is just a petitio principii(beg the question) you try to pass as self evident, without actually proving it exist

>>19783379
>what if there was someone who was perfectly half-japanese and half-not-Japanese down to the last DNA strand btw, that would be neither

if you're half japanese, you're not non-japanese
it's like saying a cuban-american is a non-american

>>19782652
>advaita also violates the LNC pricniple when it gives atributes like "neither being nor not-being"

that's not the only time advaita violates the LNC the whole advaita cosmology violates the LNC since brahma as a uncauses reality is also the "cause" of existence of maya
so you have something that it's outside of cause but at the same time part of causality, two oppose qualities

>>19778429
Biggest problem in Advaita is the theory of "Avidya" covering "Brahman", which, according to the theory, resulted into duality/creation. How can Maya overcome Brahman? Then Maya is stronger than Brahman.

Advaitins themselves agreed that Avidya covering Brahman is both an illogical theory and also not supported by Scriptures. But inorder to escape the problem of it being illogical, they simply said it's “achintya”, beyond the scope of logic & Material senses.

An German indologist named Paul deussen, who was influenced by Advaita Vedanta, and was also a close friend of Swami Vivekananda, himself says—

"On this question of how ignorance could possibly affect the Brahman, the authors of the Upanisads give us no information."

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was another but extremely renowned Indologist and was an Advaitin himself, In his work called "Indian Philosophy", volume 2, page no. 577 states—

"How Avidya and Brahman can co-exist, is just the problem for which we don't have any solution.“

Further in the next page he says—

"They (Upanishads) give no information because no information is possible. It is true no explanation is possible of the rise of the bewildering force of Avidyā, creator of false values, which has somehow come into being, in spite of the eternal and inalienable purity of the original self-existent Brahman."

Another problem for the theory of Avidya covering brahman apart from being illogical and not having its mention in Scriptures, is that the opposite has been mentioned in the Scriptures, i.e. Avidya cannot touch Brahman.

Adi Shankaracarya himself in his Bhagavad Gita 7.25 commentary had to admit it—

"That yoga-maya, since it belongs to Me (Krishna), does not obstruct the knowledge of Me who am God, the possessor of maya, just as the magic of any other magician does not cover his knowledge."

Objection— it can be argued that Brahman deliberately invites Avidya, and thus although Scriptures say he cannot be touched by Avidya, it can be argued that Scriptures said from the perspective of forced Avidya, or uninvited Avidya, whereas here it was his own sweet free will, and can do so if he wills. Thus it doesn't contradict Scriptural references, and it also doesn't prove that Maya is stronger than Brahman.
Refutation— The very desire to invite avidya is because Brahman wanted to experience duality, is it not? this desire is in itself a product of Maya. Also, how can the self existing Brahman “Desire” anything as he is described by Advaita as “desireless”, and “self satisfied”? Avidya cannot be "invited Avidya" at any logic, it is forced only, as most Advaitins hold.

The absence of the theory from Scriptures, i.e. Avidya touching Brahman, irrespective of being uninvited or being invited, is shaking the objection top to bottom, and making it a pure fantasy.

.

>>19783746

Even if the theory is granted to be true, then logically it still stands ungrounded. Invited Avidya is illogical because for Brahman creating a lifestyle for itself which is painful, getting finitized, helpless, fighting to eat, sleep, mate and defend, sounds pure fantasy. The lifestyle Jivas go through indicates that there's duality, the way material world works is not entirely out of our own choice but is also set by someone else, we had the desire to imitate God, God provided the facility but partially, and this is exactly what we can see in this world. Advaita's theory is not compatible, no sane would like to put themselves in such troublesome samsara, which the Brahman puts itself into

What could've been an interesting thread on dreams gets derailed by Advaita nonsense again

>>19783790
to be fair, the thread starts asking about the differences between advaita and buddhism

>>19783034
>where there is a third alternative

if that third alternative has contradictory qualities(in this case, -(a) and -(-a) ) then you're actually violating the law of non contradiction

>>19783240
>its also incorrect to say that one thing cannot directly act upon a second thing
it's the most basic pricniple o metaphysics, one substance can't interact with another substance, if that's the case, then they're the same substance, a substance is something that canonly interacts with itself, is by definition self sufficient
>because we have examples in the world of something acting upon a second thing without needing any intermediary
the world is only one substance, you don't have examples of two metaphysical substances acting upon eac hother, which is what we're talking bout here, you're just doing a false analogy fallacy, again a basic fallacy

>, there is no reason to assume this when we have empirical examples
metaphysical concepts can be proved or falsied with empirical examples, since those are concept outside the world of causation, you know, it's inne name, META-physics, beyond the physical/empirical world,only by rational arguments you an develop and criticise metaphysical concepts

>retroactively refuted by Sri Shankaracharya
he didn't even knew the difference between buddhist ontology and buddhist epistemology ,and his interpretation of the pratikiasamutpada is abysmal, no one made a worst job trying to refute buddhism than shankara

>>19781592
i can name a few
brahma which is outside causation, is also the cause of maya, so he's part of causation and beyond causation at the same time
mathiya is being and non being at the same time
brahma put itself inside adviya while at the same time being all knowing and all powerful
brahman has qualities while at the same time being uncaused thus exsiting outside qualities, since only phenomena can posses qualities, cos qualities are part of multiplicity
awarness being outside of phenomena when the only way we can experience awarness is by phenomenical means, that is by being aware of objects in space and time
brahman creating the dharma of the castes, which are established in space, time and even a political context when brahma should be a being outside of causation
how can advaita can be free of solipsisism, when on his own epsitemology it can't account for the existence of anyone besides the one awarness being aware of himself? which at the same time creates contradictions with the caste system, since advaita can't explain the multiplicity of awarness in the world

and this are just a few, i can think about more

>>19783034
a third option is irrelevant, since such third option is made of contradictory elements
this shows that this third ontological space is illogical and poorly established, since it needs the articulation of contradictory concepts to work out,a negation of being(thus non-being) and non-being(thus being) at the same time
you're actually doing circular reasoning, since you can't prove that negating a concept and his negation can produce a third concept,(feel free to present logical proofs if you can think of any) you're just taking it for granted thus creating a petitio principii fallacy
on the other hand, saying that a concept and his negation are contradictory is not begging the question,just an analitical apriori,(one each student of logic learn on his first day at class mind you) no circular reasoning there

>>19782746
>The Advaita Atman is none of the Buddhist aggregates, and neither does it possess the characteristics of the Buddhist aggregates
So it can neither be a spectator of the world, not it's existence be proved by any philosophical inquiry. It remains as a contradictory, unfalsifiable dogma.

>>19783199
>because the Advaita Atma is so different from the other Darshanas Atmans that none of the Buddhist arguments against their Atmans are applicable to the Advaita Atman
You have a delusional view about what the advaita atman actually is.

Buddhoids use tactical skepticism.
>What about this and that Buddhist claim
Skillful means.
>What about this and that Buddhist tenet…?
Oh we don’t really believe in that. *actually believes in that * Otherwise Buddhism wouldn’t be different from standard skepticism.
They are very Jewy in that regard.

>>19778598
>>This is also the case in Theravada from what I've read of the Pali Canon.
In buddhism, the illusion is the one of non-suffering in the aggregates, that's all.
>>19778620
>Theravada keeps a skeptical or agnostic view on such matters.
The goal of buddhism is only to end suffering, and all the questions about metaphysics are useless to achieve the goal so they are not even talk ed about.
This drives the intellectuals mad.

writing once more as a Buddhology phd, a world authority on the subject, I would just like to once again state this thread is cringe.

>>19784920
There's no generic "Buddhism" that all these so-called tenets would adhere to except for what westerners have invented. So of course some schools will believe one thing and some another, because they are not reading out of the same exact body of texts and traditions. You are just ignorant and also bigoted anyway. I don't suppose you complain to Brazilian Pentacostalists that they aren't in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople?