/lit/ - Literature

Descartes, Discourse on Method
>we observe two things:
>the faculty of observation
>and the thing observed.
2 is not 1.

>>20573239
That's just consciousness.

>>20573231

>>20573375
Christianity did not deserve the genius of Aquinas, Augustine and Vitória.
Still better than atheist and liberal philosophy by miles.

>>20573522
based high-iq midwit

>>20573375
Kek, Julius Evola took jabs at Aquinas' weight too.

>>20573231
>Any books that refute Shankara and non duality? I literally can’t refute non duality. I think this is the end of the road.

Read about Hinduism. The arguments against Shankara are literally Hinduism.

>>20573375

>>20573231
>Any books that refute Shankara and non duality?
What did Shankara say in the first place?

Aren't there dualistic versions of Shankara?

>>20573941
The world is bullshit and duality is of the world so it's bullshit too and all of that bullshit will pass away until the ultimate reality behind the curtain is revealed to be just pure conciousness or self that we're all apart of.

>>20573993
Why'd he figure that? The world seems pretty real to me

>>20573993
ah, so he's just the world's ultimate deboonker

>>20574008
He sounds like an asshole

>>20573810
>(Buddha) denied God
>(a Hindu) wrote hymns about God
it's always funny that that the christian troll presents the person they like as the 'chad' comic, which they think is positive.

This surprised me actually they claim the hindu because I would've thought Buddhas religious devotion to asceticism, then his rejection of it when he was on the brink of having almost completely starved himself to death; becoming only then "enlightened", was far more resembling of the later christians who did the exact same thing.

Perhaps they dislike the warrior nobility of buddhas caste and identify with the shoveling or haggling caste of shankaras non-warrior and non-king caste.

>>20573993
>to be just pure conciousness or self that we're all apart of.
That's pantheism, not non-dualism. Non-dualism makes the reverse assertion that pure consciousness is in all of us but we are not all in it, yet it is still metaphysically infinite, which gives rise to the paradox which results in the conclusion that our perception of duality is a mere illusion.

>>20574026
That's what I said.

>>20573239
>>[we observe] the faculty of observation
This was refuted by Shankara's analogy of the knife cutting itself. This is an impossibility.

>>20574032
No it wasn't, word need to be used more carefully. There are big differences and ramifications between the two statements metaphysically. It's why so many Western philosophers confuse Advaita Vedanta with pantheism, it's simply a misunderstanding.

>>20574041
>word need to be used more carefully
Oh okay.

>>20573569
that fat ox

>>20573239
Okay now define one without the other.

>>20573231
Kant. The Brahman becomes the ding an sich and the Atman is obviously the aggregate of perception which is excessively dualist

>>20574756
>Kant. The Brahman becomes the ding an sich and the Atman is obviously the aggregate of perception which is excessively dualist
How does that refute anything? The Atman and Brahman are the same thing in Advaita; this is why Brahman isn't unknowable to us like Kant's ding an sich because it's self-disclosing or self-revealing to us in each moment as the space of our immediate awareness which is always immediately known to us and self-evident without ever having to be inferred and the presence of which is presupposed by the knowing of any object or 'intentional' quality

>>20574824
um, it refutes it because Kant literally proves that what you just said is absurd. You can’t have knowledge about the thing in itself and no trick you come up with will solve it because it is due to the limitations of pure reason itself.

>>20574034
An analogy can’t prove or disprove anything.

>>20574824
>it's self-disclosing or self-revealing to us in each moment
So Brahman is in time?

>>20574854
It can, it disproves that consciousness can know be conscious of itself, just as it disproves that the knife can cut itself.

>>20574860
>it disproves that consciousness can know be conscious of itself
>>20574824
>Brahman isn't unknowable to us like Kant's ding an sich because it's self-disclosing or self-revealing

Pick one

>>20574834
>You can’t have knowledge about the thing in itself
Kant never said that. He just said you can't know it via the categories of reason, and that we aren't aware of any consciousness which could come to know the thing in itself. He never proved it's not possible in general, just that it's not possible for the normal human being.

>>20574862
Why do I need to pick one? That anon is actually wrong in claiming that Brahman is knowable "to us", Brahman is Atman and is only disclosed by pure non-dual awareness. Brahman can be "known" as a logical postulate, but that is no where near the same thing, it is just a convention of language. A consciousness cannot know itself as a distinct subject and object which would create an infinite regress, instead Brahman=Atman implies that object and subject are one, which is pure non-dual awareness. Consciousness is not "known" by itself, except in the sense of a convention of language.

>>20574855
Bump

How does an eternal consciousness perceives temporal things

>>20574869
>He just said you can't know it via the categories of reason
Which encompass all thought. Look,
1. If consciousness is the same as “ultimate reality”, then the cause for the particulars of this universe like the earth and moon and physics must be within consciousness. So why and how does consciousness act as the cause for particular perceptions?
2. If the thing in itself can be known through avenues besides the categories, then this isn’t knowledge at all and is completely useless because it tells us nothing about the universe. If it isn’t within the categories then it doesn’t properly even exist and we wouldn’t even be able to have memory of our experience of it because we can only remember something if we can say that the thing we remembered is itself and therefore we can make judgements about it.
3. If the cause of perception is perceivable at all, then it must have a property that makes it perceivable. This is impossible because the cause of perception can have no properties since those things are found only in perception.

>>20573231
Don't know but I have this book and the first few pages it talks about non-duality. Don't think it's refuting it though, but rather arguing for it.

>>20574906
>Which encompass all thought.
No, it only encompasses the type of thought Kant and most humans are aware of. Kant always said it's impossible to disprove the possibility of "intellectual intuition." He just didn't believe in it because he was never able to acquire it.
>1. If consciousness is the same as “ultimate reality”, then the cause for the particulars of this universe like the earth and moon and physics must be within consciousness
Ultimately yes, although as already stated they are not "within consciousness", rather it's more accurate to say that consciousness is "within" all of them. Vedanta is not pantheism; Brahman is not a containing vessel. If you even read the Bhagavad Gita you will learn quite a bit; the net of cause and effect in terms of jivatma (the "individual" manifestation of atman) is self-renewing (karma), in general reality is quite complicated. It involves the gunas (sattvas, rajas and tamas), along with many other lesser faculties of manifestation which are all ultimately Brahman, but take on limited and contingent individualities which presents duality.
>2. If the thing in itself can be known through avenues besides the categories, then this isn’t knowledge at all
It is, it's just not knowledge according to your narrow Kantian definition.
>3. If the cause of perception is perceivable at all, then it must have a property that makes it perceivable.
How is this relevant to Shankara? This seems like an incredibly vague statement anyway so there is not much use in giving an answer. "Cause" can mean multiple things.

>>20574834
>You can’t have knowledge about the thing in itself and no trick you come up with will solve it because it is due to the limitations of pure reason itself.
Brahman isn't the exact same thing as the ding an sich and so obviously not every limitation of the ding an sich from Kant's theories is going to be automatically true of what Advaita is talking about; Brahman and Atman are the exact same thing according to Advaita and the Atman is the luminous self-revealing immediate unaffected awareness thats always present and always immediately disclosed to us as the foundation of all particular knowledge; if this self-disclosing awareness is "like" the Kantian ding an sich by virtue of being the underlying reality that is the basis of the phenomena or display then that same self-disclosing awareness is not unknowable like the ding an sich because they are not the same thing. The flaw in the Kantian conception simply does not apply here.

>>20574932
>intellectual intuition
It’s true because you feel like it’s true. This is useless. Even if you can intuitively feel non-dualism, you would still never be able to prove that what you feel through “intellectual intuition” is the truth about reality since your intellectual intuition is outside reason which is the only place you can prove things. In other words, in order to accept advaita vedanta, I have to have faith in something outside reason that I can’t prove. just more bullshit

>>20574938
The ding an sich is literally defined as the cause of perception so if they aren’t the same thing then what exactly does non-dualism prove about reality? In your entire post all you said was that “consciousness allows perception” which
a. Isn’t true because an ant can still perceive things
b. Doesn’t explain where perception comes from
c. Doesn’t tell us anything since we don’t know where consciousness comes from and could be caused merely by the brain thinking about thought

>>20574952
>It’s true because you feel like it’s true.
That is called an opinion. Non-dual awareness is a real possibility, and the type of "knowledge" it confers is something many orders of magnitude in greatness above anything that Kantian categories will ever provide to you. It is knowledge so supreme that there is simply no necessity to argue about it with anyone, "prove" points, and so on, except for the purpose of helping others who are willing to attain to the same clarity. Any arguments given, like those from Shankara, are usually reliant upon a combination of scripture and philosophical argument, but philosophical argument is always capable of dispute for the simple fact that humans are congenitally feeble, and unable to grasp at what is good for them if they don't already have the correct disposition to receive it.

>>20574932
>"Cause" can mean multiple things.
It may seem to be the case tht Jim was found rifling through a dying mans pockets, stealing money and shoving it into his own pockets, and that Jim had earlier purchased a kitchen knife that day, inquiring of the clerk, "is this good for sticking pigs with, will they struggle a lot when their neck is cut?" but really the cause of the loss of the money or the murder is shrouded in mystery and beyond knowing. Jim is free to go.

>>20574952
>>intellectual intuition
>It’s true because you feel like it’s true. This is useless.
I don't think 'feelings' and '(intellectual) intuition' are supposed to be conflated; intellectual intuition would be reason itself, in the way you phrased it there,
>(being) the only place you can prove things.
Feelings are Pathos; Reason is a struggle against Pathos, whereas logic (Logos) is the faculty of discerning and proving things in and of the world, along with Ethos - although Ethos may be superfluous here.

>>20574905
>>20574855
Vedanta btfo

>>20574984
Awareness isn’t knowledge. If you need scripture to prove it then it isn’t knowledge. If people should believe it because it’s “good for them” it isn’t knowledge. Nobody needs “the correct disposition” to “receive” that 1 + 1 = 2. This isn’t religion and it isn’t knowledge, it’s faith, and even is I experienced this “non dual awareness” (which if it is what you say should be impossible not to experience) then I would have to have pure faith in my experience even though any feeling can be produced by a combination of brain chemicals. And even if you’re somehow right about everything, it seems like nothing here changes anything about reality. So if you want to have faith in a bunch of meaningless nonsense that changes nothing, I can’t argue with you. I literally can’t argue with you because arguments involve reason and proof.

>>20575075
>this isn’t religion
Is*
>even is
If

>>20574984
Kant was retroactively refuted by Leibniz

>>20575075
"Awareness" is a shorthand (as I've already said, all language here requires discernment in order to be used properly), in normal human life awareness is only a limited sort of knowledge, non-dual awareness is the ultimate knowledge. The uses of the two terms do not square up in the magnitude of the difference between them.
>Nobody needs “the correct disposition” to “receive” that 1 + 1 = 2
Actually they do, because there are people who still disagree with this proposition or cannot understand it. It's just that the disposition required to receive it lies within the grasp of most human beings because it is relatively simple. Animals also cannot understand this fact because they lack the disposition for it, even though they are conscious beings.
>then I would have to have pure faith in my experience
Do you put pure faith in the fact that you exist? The answer is yes, non-dual awareness brings you a sureness of truth which is actually even more certain than your normal waking belief that "you" (really a phantom entity which is not strictly real) exist. It is direct awareness of the highest reality, beyond discursive thought.

>>20574025
>shankaras non-warrior and non-king caste.
retard he was brahmin ie the highest caste

>>20575118
There’s nothing to refute here, this is just mysticism, like I said

>>20573239
>the faculty of observation
And how do we do this?

It’s experiential. Not conceptual. All the definitions and assignments of so called “truths” will lead one to miss the point. Just simply BE the entire experience of existing which makes up awareness/consciousness (the five senses or whatever). That’s it, as far as I can tell.

>>20575146
Of course not, I already refuted your claim that Kant refuted Shankara. That's all the discussion was about.

>>20575129
>highest brahmin
dotard, i figured he probably was, but the meme poster sad he was a poor man; as if he was a working class chap resembling the target demographic.

>>20575195
Delusional

>>20574034
>>20574860
Shankara mentioning the knife being unable to cut itself is only intended to illustrate the complete illogicality of awareness becoming its own object in a subject-object relation. The analogy is not intended to refute and is indeed unable to refute the premise (which is accepted fully by Shankara) that reflexive self-disclosure is the very nature of consciousness, and that this self-disclosure is a kind of fundamental and extremely simple self-awareness or self-knowledge which involves no distinction of subject vs object or knower versus known. An object like a knife imparts a cutting effect unto other things in a way that involves an agent-action-object distinction; but when reflexive self-disclosure is the very nature of awareness then consciousness is reflexively conscious of itself without any difference of agent, action and object being involved like a knife cutting something else since there is just one partless thing remaining identical with its nature. Consciousness has to have this kind of reflexive, immediate access to or knowledge of itself qua consciousness or it’s not different in practice from there being no consciousness at all.

>>20574862
>>it disproves that consciousness can know be conscious of itself
>Brahman isn't unknowable to us like Kant's ding an sich because it's self-disclosing or self-revealing
>Pick one
see >>20575515
The point about how Brahman cannot become a knowable object is used by Shankara to point out that Brahman is never an object of the subject because partless undifferentiated awareness is not able to divide itself into being both the subject and object of itself. However, the reflexive access that the subject’s awareness (or Atman) has to itself means that the Brahman-Atman is self-disclosed to us as our very own foundational awareness in a way that doesn’t involve subject-object distinctions or any other kind of distinctions and this allows. This ties into why in Advaita it’s said that all sentient creatures already have knowledge of the Brahman-Atman in an incomplete, general way already even when unenlightened, because even when they don’t fully understand what awareness is and often confuse it with the intellect etc they still have immediate self-evident knowledge of the fact that they are sentient, that they are not insentient. Nobody wonders if they are actually an insentient rock.

Thus, while Brahman is never an object of the subject and hence never knowable via subject-object-relations, You as Brahman (Awareness) are intrinsically self-knowing to yourself and so Brahman can be and is known, but just not as an object.

>>20574855
>>it's self-disclosing or self-revealing to us in each moment
>So Brahman is in time?
No, Brahman is just self-disclosing by nature regardless even though Brahman is beyond time, for embodied creatures who have this Brahman as their innermost self they obviously are time-bound and as such use time as a frame of reference in how they conceive of and perceive things even though Brahman is beyond such contingencies.

>>20574905
>How does an eternal consciousness perceives temporal things
It doesn’t, the mind/intellect in the perceiver. Consciousness is like an unchanging partless light that allows the mind/intellect to perceive things by its presence when that intellect is lit up with the light imparted by consciousness. The consciousness of the Atman just remains itself timelessly, from beyond space and time, and then the intellect of the time-bound and space-bound creature is illuminated by the light of this eternal Atman and thereby allowed to function and see things in the world.

>>20575819
>the mind/intellect in the perceiver.
Then why do we need consciousness for if i can perceive with my intellect

>>20574906
>Which encompass all thought.
Brahman is not known via thought anyway, Brahman is ‘known’ or self-disclosed as the revealing of non-conceptual awareness to itself, non-conceptual awareness doesn’t involve the Kantian categories afaik, they only become relevant when other things are known in relation to that non-conceptual awareness, but in itself it has nothing to do with them.

>>20574952
>In other words, in order to accept advaita vedanta, I have to have faith in something outside reason that I can’t prove.
All philosophical positions involve doing so too so you should get used to it.

>>20574977
>The ding an sich is literally defined as the cause of perception so if they aren’t the same thing then what exactly does non-dualism prove about reality?
Non-dualism is not a “proof”, it’s a statement of truth, namely of the truths that there is no difference between one’s self and ultimate reality, and that ultimate reality itself abides without duality or multiplicity characterizing it.
>In your entire post all you said was that “consciousness allows perception” which
>a. Isn’t true because an ant can still perceive things
What!? Ants are still conscious i.e, sentient beings, they are not unconscious automatons like robots even if they dont have a super complex infernal mental life like humans.
>b. Doesn’t explain where perception comes from
Awareness i.e. Atman-Brahman is eternal and beginningless and doesn’t come from anywhere because its without origin and unborn, the minds within the maya-matrix that can perceive objects etc when imbued with the light of the Atman are parts of the beginningless maya-matrix that is sustained through being cast by Brahman like a spell, that’s where perception comes from.
>c. Doesn’t tell us anything since we don’t know where consciousness comes from and could be caused merely by the brain thinking about thought
Those sorts of hypotheticals are not ‘refutations’ of anything

You know, a point you're overlooking is that the 'brahmin' does not represent the ideal, the kshatriya (warrior caste) represents the ideal, whereas the brahmin is the steward of the land, the kshatriya is the enforcer of the steward. In other words, each caste excels at what they do and there is no sense of Jesus Egalitarianism to be found - where all people are setup to be members of the impoverished leper caste.

>>20575037
‘Vedanta btfo’ is an oxymoron

>>20573242
consciousness needs something to be conscious of

>>20575075
>Awareness isn’t knowledge
Awareness obviously is knowledge, otherwise saying “I have knowledge that I am aware” or “I have knowledge of my own awareness” would be meaningless statements but they aren’t.
>If you need scripture to prove it then it isn’t knowledge.
Advaita doesn’t say you need scripture to prove anything
>If people should believe it because it’s “good for them” it isn’t knowledge.
Nobody said that’s what knowledge is
>Nobody needs “the correct disposition” to “receive” that 1 + 1 = 2.
agreed
>This isn’t religion and it isn’t knowledge, it’s faith,
Accepting the metaphysics involves taking things on faith but talking about awareness being self-disclosing or reflexive is a fairly simple philosophical or epistemological concept
>And even if you’re somehow right about everything, it seems like nothing here changes anything about reality.
Except that completely realizing non-duality frees one from fear and unhappyness and replaces them with bliss.
>So if you want to have faith in a bunch of meaningless nonsense that changes nothing, I can’t argue with you.
So you are admitting that you have no argument that refutes Advaita? It’s okay, that was a given already anyway. If you want to try though there is a whole page of philosophical positions here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/shankara/

>>20576118
>All philosophical positions involve doing so too so you should get used to it.
retard
>Brahman is ‘known’ or self-disclosed as the revealing of non-conceptual awareness to itself
Meaningless
>Atman-Brahman is eternal and beginningless and doesn’t come from anywhere because its without origin and unborn
Violates Principle of Sufficient Reason (when you try to bring under reason what doesn’t belong there you will always fuck it up)
>Non-dualism is not a “proof”, it’s a statement of truth
I refuse to accept any statement without a proof, if you are willing to believe in whatever random bullshit makes you feel good go ahead
>the minds within the maya-matrix that can perceive objects etc when imbued with the light of the Atman are parts of the beginningless maya-matrix that is sustained through being cast by Brahman like a spell, that’s where perception comes from.
Meaningless

>>20573231
the main problem of advaita vedanta is maya, to put it simple, if brahma is everything, then maya must reside in brahma, sinc ethere's no other place it can be, but if that's the case then brahma is victim to the illusion of maya, so maya needs to be in other place, but if there's other place where maya can be, then brahma is not the onlything that exist
non-duality defeats itself since it needs to create a duality of maya/brahma to explain reality but then tries to negate that duality to explain brahma

>>20576254
I already disproved it.

>>20575191
>awareness/consciousness (the five senses or whatever).

>>20574869
>you can't know it via the categories of reason
you can't "know" nything without the categories of reason, that's what the categories of reaosn are, that which let us know things

>>20573231
here's a few

Kratu Nandan has posted 3 criticisms by Ramanujacharya.

Paraṃ brahmaivājñaṃ bhramaparigataṃ saṃsarati - The Parabrahman, (somehow) itself becoming devoid of knowledge and getting caught in an illusion, has become subject to transmigration;
Tatparopādhyālīḍhaṃ vivaśaṃ - It has becomes conditioned by some alien adjunct (Māyā) and hence has becomes helpless, (and therefore)
Aśubhasyāspadaṃ - It has become the abode of inauspicious (of the interminably sorrowful transmigration; who will be our Saviour, if such be the case?!).

by Sri Madhvacarya in his Dvadasa Stotra 3.5; कथमेव तु नित्यसुखं न भवेत, that if I am the master of this creation, I should be able to enjoy endlessly. But because we cannot, that itself is an evidence that the world is created by someone else, who is different than us, and we are ever dependent on him. Like these, there are infinite logical inconsistencies in Advaita, it doesn't make sense, top to bottom.

>>20575232
how exactly do you think Kant refutes Shankara? You never laid out the argument in this thread but you just said Brahman is like the thing-in-itself and said this is ‘excessive dualism’, but that’s just a rhetorical attack and not an actual logical argument that identifies something illogical and describes exactly what it is and why its wrong/illogical

>>20574869
>Kant never said that
yes he did bro, read the critic of pure reason, the whole book is about exactly that

>>20574869
>just that it's not possible for the normal human being.
what proof do you have that a "non-normal human being" can exist?

>>20576371
Kant is dualistic because the cause of perception is so far outside our minds that we can’t apply any reasoning processes or ever perceive it. We can only perceive perceptions and the principles by which we understand and think about things only apply to perception. But according to the PSR there is another incomprehensible world that causes perception. This is clearly dualistic and anyone who says that we can in any way perceive “ultimate reality” is thereby refuted

>>20575987
>Then why do we need consciousness for if i can perceive with my intellect
The intellect needs consciousness present in order for it to perceive anything because the intellect is insentient and is like an organ or an accessory and is nothing without consciousness. If the light of consciousness was removed from the intellect it would cease to produce the experience of perceiving objects instantly. What is the difference between there being no thoughts and on the other hand thoughts occurring with nothing aware of them? The answer is that there is no practical difference between them as neither produce the knowledge or experience of thoughts in anyone or anything, consciousness is the crucial ingredient whose presence or absence means the difference between being aware of your thoughts (or the intellects activity in general) and not being aware of them.

>>20576276
okey guenonfag got BTFO really hard on this one

>>20573231
Stirner.

>>20576276
>retard
That’s not an argument but is the ad hominem logical fallacy, and I have yet to see a contrary example of a philosophy that doesn’t take something on faith; even empiricism involves accepting certain things about the alleged reliability and validity of empirical knowledge on the basis of faith.
>>Brahman is ‘known’ or self-disclosed as the revealing of non-conceptual awareness to itself
>Meaningless
No, that’s not meaningless unless you are ESL or still have 2nd-grade vocabulary;
self-disclosure = awareness is disclosed to itself and not anyone or anything else
non-conceptual awareness = awareness which is just simply present without imputing categorizes and concepts to things
>Atman-Brahman is eternal and beginningless and doesn’t come from anywhere because its without origin and unborn
>Violates Principle of Sufficient Reason (when you try to bring under reason what doesn’t belong there you will always fuck it up)
No, it doesn’t violate the PSR that’s a pseud claim to make. Leibniz’s PSR is only in reference to contingent things that have been put into manifestation, the PSR is not ‘all things have a cause’ but ‘Any contingent fact about the world must have an explanation’; Brahman is not a contingent thing put into the world but Brahman is the non-contingent basis of all contingency; i.e. exactly what the PSR is designed to point to. The PSR is supposed to point us back to an ultimate non-contingent ground or source of all contingency since contingency cannot be explained or accounted for via reference to other contingency without a regress. The PSR presupposes a final non-contingent source or basis of all contingency like God or Brahman, to which the PSR doesn’t apply. The PSR itself doesn’t apply to the non-contingent ground of contingency, which obviously is not contingent upon anything else. Leibniz argued for God’s existence using cosmological arguments and he didn’t think that God was contingent on something else. He would have laughed his ass off at anyone saying God or Brahman being eternal and uncaused violates the PSR.
>Non-dualism is not a “proof”, it’s a statement of truth
>I refuse to accept any statement without a proof
Okay, that’s a silly worldview but it’s not a refutation of Advaita
>the minds within the maya-matrix that can perceive objects etc when imbued with the light of the Atman are parts of the beginningless maya-matrix that is sustained through being cast by Brahman like a spell, that’s where perception comes from.
>Meaningless
Again, not meaningless unless you are ESL or have only 2nd-grade vocab. It’s basically saying “perception and everything within multiplicity is generated as a display by God’s power”, if that’s too hard to grasp then maybe you should go back to materials like the The Very Hungry Caterpillar that might be closer to your reading level.

>>20576279
>the main problem of advaita vedanta is maya, to put it simple, if brahma is everything,
Wrong from the very start, Advaita only says Brahman is what’s real, not that Brahman is also identical with falsehood/illusion/unreality.


then maya must reside in brahma, sinc ethere's no other place it can be, but if that's the case then brahma is victim to the illusion of maya, so maya needs to be in other place, but if there's other place where maya can be, then brahma is not the onlything that exist
non-duality defeats itself since it needs to create a duality of maya/brahma to explain reality but then tries to negate that duality to explain brahma

>>20576284
No, you didn’t refute anything, you just slavishly insisted that Kant was right without being able to explain why. You basically lazily compared Advaita’s Brahman to Kant’s thing in itself and assumed that the problems of Kant’s thing-in-itself would apply to Advaita’s Brahman even though there is no reason why that’s the case since they are two different concepts, all you really did was highlight Kant’s faults, kek

>>20576292
>you can't "know" nything without the categories of reason, that's what the categories of reaosn are, that which let us know things
That’s just begging the question. Simply saying “that’s what they are” does nothing to actually show or prove we can only know things through them and not otherwise

>>20576366
The first criticism is likely actually addressed at Bhaskara’s version of Bhedhabheda Vedanta in which Brahman is actually bound, but Ramanuja doesn’t say who that particular passage is directed at so we don’t know. If it’s directed at Advaita it’s a mistake since in Advaita the Atman-Brahman isn’t bound or affected by maya at all and thus isnt helpless.

As for Madhva’s argument, just because the Atman is the basis of the entire cosmos it doesn’t automatically follow from this that the Atman or the creaturely body in which the Atman is housed would automatically stay enjoying that creation forever or even that the Atman enjoys particular things at once like embodied creatures do, madhva’s reasoning there is a non-sequitor

>>20576390
As a Kant expert you wrong and the other anon right. It's more nuanced than you think. Read CPR again.

>>20574932
Advaita bro I'm a long time Kant student. What's a good book to transition from Kant to Vedanta. I'm very interested in latent human abilities and also correspondence between terms in kantian philosophy and advaita vedanta.

>>20576496
>The intellect needs consciousness present in order for it to perceive anything because the intellect is insentient and is like an organ or an accessory and is nothing without consciousness.
Prove this
You just said that its the intellect that perceives

>>20576402
>Kant is dualistic because the cause of perception is so far outside our minds that we can’t apply any reasoning processes or ever perceive it.
The cause of perception is not available to us in Kant’s system because it’s not our awareness, however the cause of or reason for the intellect’s perception is our own awareness/consciousness according to Advaita, and our awareness is what is the closet and most intimate and available thing to us that we can talk about; and Kant doesn’t provide any argument refuting this.
>We can only perceive perceptions and the principles by which we understand and think about things only apply to perception.
define ‘perceptions’
>But according to the PSR there is another incomprehensible world that causes perception.
No, the PSR just means that every contingent thing put into a state of contingency has a reason for being so, the reason or cause for perception taking place is the Brahman-Atman, but since the Brahman-Atman is realizable as our own consciousness its not completely unknowable or completely cut off from us.
>This is clearly dualistic and anyone who says that we can in any way perceive “ultimate reality” is thereby refuted
Only if you pretend that they are strictly talking about Kant’s thing-in-itself and not something else entirely from another philosophy or metaphysics. Nothing you just wrote refutes the premise that we as Brahman can know ourselves qua Brahman via Self-realization or Self-knowledge.

>>20576510
that post was refuted here >>20576648

>>20574025
>they
Get a real pronoun lol

>>20576937
>What's a good book to transition from Kant to Vedanta
I dont know of any books that especially focus on Kant vis a vis Advaita Vedanta, but this article by Swami Krishnananda may fit what you are looking for

https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/com/com_kant.html

You may also be interested in the book: “Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics an Outline of Indian Non-Realism” by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, he discusses in an academic manner what the title conveys and contrasts it with people like Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and modern analytic philosophers

Need a book who compare vedanta with aristotelianism/platonism

>>20577281
There are actually a few for Dvaita and Vishishadvaita. There's not a lot of interest in India or the West around Advaita, however.

>>20577206
Much thank you kind anon shanti

>>20576662
>not that Brahman is also identical with falsehood/illusion/unreality.
if that's the case then falsehood shouldn't be able to manifest, since it's manifestation would entail a new susbtance that enable it's presence on our experience making advaita a dualist ontological system

>>20576784
no that's just establishing what a category of reason is in the kantian system, saying that there's ways of knowing according to kant are outside the categories of perception is just false

>>20576887
>As a Kant expert
>you wrong

lol

>>20573231
advaita refutes itself, the most obvious contradiction is when pose that maya is being and non-being atthe same time, breaking the law of non contradiction

>>20576571
and buddha, this is exactly what buddha taught, the self as negation, the non-self

>>20576496
not really, you're taking for granted that the intelect "needs" the awareness, but you're using an idea of awareness in this precise moment, that is you need the idea of awareness to be aware of awareness, so both the intelect and awareness seems to be interdependent, both need each other, awareness can only manifest thanks to ideas, when i'm aware of a chair, i need a chair to be aware, when i'm aware of a dog, i need a dog to be aware, and when i'm aware of my awareness, i need the idea of awareness that i created by a process of abstraction from the particular moments of awareness, like when i was aware of the dog or the chair
there's no moment in my experience where awareness exist by itself, or at least you can't just take for granted that awareness is more fundamental than the intelect, since that's not how is presented in our experience, w eneed conciousness to be aware of things, but we need things to be aware of conciousness

So basically, no

Not exactly against Shankara but there is a group of plotinians who argue against monism

>>20579034
For Zaehner it is the mystic mistaking the immortality of his soul as God

I am also not sure if Ananda Coomaraswamy and Guénon were strict shankarians since AKC says this in a letter (see picture).

And Guénon, according to his son, said:
>Guénon’s library, his son informed us, was in virtually the same condition he had left it, with nothing having been moved — this being the consequence of a very specific request he had made of his wife shortly before his death. “I will be present, and here with you so long as my books are kept where they are.”

Some sufis even claim to have seen him after death. What kind of non-dualism is this?

Will this fucking thread ever stop showing up on /lit/? It's been years are you not tired

>>20579129
Posted the wrong picture. Here is the actual quote from AKC

>>20576366
advaita cant explain how illusion and karma arise

>>20573231
Ordovician universal hydrogen>>20573231 the sound of the word time for language itself

>>20573231
There isn't any. You can lie to yourself that he wasn't right but that won't change the truth.

>>20579129
>Some sufis even claim to have seen him after death. What kind of non-dualism is this?
Guenon says that after you are liberated, you can still enter the manifested world in a way or another. Still, if Guenon wrote about Moksha that doesn't mean that he also acvhieve it lol

>>20576276
>>Brahman is ‘known’ or self-disclosed as the revealing of non-conceptual awareness to itself
>Meaningless
correct.

>>20576648
>>Meaningless
>No, that’s not meaningless unless you are ESL or still have 2nd-grade vocabulary;
Absolutely is meaningless (even if we ignore that Brahmin was a hereditary caste; like a Roman Patrician vs. a Roman Equite) as there's no such thing as "non-cocneptual awareness" - can you define this or offer some examples of things which exist that don't exist with any observable; demonstrable, proofs that they 'do' exist in reality?

How does one have a "non-conceptual" "awareness"? And what would one have a "non-conceptual" "awareness" of?

>non-conceptual awareness = awareness which is just simply present without imputing categorizes and concepts to things
Such as - an awareness of what? Name one thing that exists in reality that is 'not' tangible (i.e. one thing which is not reliant upon "(the) input* (of or from) category and (or) concept").

>self-disclosure = awareness is disclosed to (the) self and not anyone or anything else
e.g. I think I'm talking to a fairy, you insist you're not a fairy, but I decide to pretend you're a fairy, because "it's real in my mind" - although there's no proof (i.e. input cat., concepts) for me to have reached that conclusion in the first place.

>proofs that they 'do' exist in reality?
or: proofs that (things) 'do' exist 'in' reality; or can you cite an example of a thing that exists outside of reality?

>>20579395
>>20579395
>after you are liberated, you can still enter the manifested
what "you"?

see. this demolishes the whole not-two notion

>>20579561
the manifestation of Brahman which was regarded as you in your earthly life

>>20579129
I understand that Atman is Brahman with no distinction for Shankara, but can't "unity with distinction" be regarded as an extent of unity without distinction? Many of these debates seem to be just a question of language or isolated quotes, I am sure that you can also find in Shankara something similar to "unity with distinction".

>>20573239
They're one because one can't exist without the other.

i love these threads. schizo goodness.

>>20579678
there is nothing schizo here, back to r/atheism

>>20579134
Yes, Coomaraswamy was an Advaitin in his personal leanings, thats why he wrote a whole book (Perceptions of the Vedas) which endeavors to find Advaitic teachings in the pre-Upanishadic Vedic layers, and which goes on and on about Shankara and Maya but basically never mentions Ramanuja or Vishishtadvaita, even on the book’s chapter on Bhakti which again mentions Shankara and Maya but not Ramanuja.

>>20579540
>>>Brahman is ‘known’ or self-disclosed as the revealing of non-conceptual awareness to itself
>>Meaningless
>correct.
It follows, then, that there can be no injunction to acquire knowledge of the Self. All that requires to be effected is the cessation of the superimposition of name and form and other items of not-self onto the Self There is no question of having to acquire knowledge (vijnana) of the Self as consciousness, for the latter is already known .under the forms of all objects projected through nescience. That is why the Vijnanavada Buddhists came to the conclusion that nothing except cognitions exists, and were persuaded that the latter did not require the application of the empirical means of knowledge to be known, as they were already self-luminous. Therefore, all that has to be effected is the cessation of superimposition onto the Absolute. No positive efforts towards knowledge of the Absolute have to be made as one is (in a sense) familiar with it already. In the case of those who cannot practise discrimination, knowledge of the true nature of the Self is obscured by the particular manifestations of name and form that are imagined through nescience. Hence it comes about that that which is in closest proximity to them, which is their own Self, which is very well known and perfectly familiar, appears as if it were unfamiliar and hard to know and as if it were another. But in the case of those who have withdrawn their minds from preoccupation with external objects and who have received illumination from the Teacher and the Self, nothing else is such a joy as the Absolute, nothing so firmly in their grasp, nothing so well known and close.

>>20580697
Some persons, however, believing themselves to be very wise, say that the intellect cannot attain to the Self because the latter is formless, so that perfection in knowledge is difficult to attain. True indeed, it is difficult to attain for those who have no Teacher and belong to no tradition, who have not heard the upanishadic texts in the traditionally prescribed way, whose minds are deeply attached to external objects and who have not pursued the right path with diligence. But for those who are the contrary of all this and have all these qualifications, the (opposite) idea of the reality of the dualism of the empirical perceiver and his object of perception is even more difficult to attain, since they are aware of nothing else except the Self as pure (homogeneous) Consciousness. It follows, therefore, that it is only the cessation in the mind of all notion of distinction based on external forms that can lead to true knowledge of the Self. For the Self is never at any time (completely) unknown to anyone, neither is it susceptible either to acceptance or rejection. Indeed, if the Self were entirely unknown, there could not be a motive for any of our actions (and hence we would not commit them, which is absurd). Nor can we conceive of them as being performed for the sake of the body or any other non-conscious being. And neither happiness nor misery exist for their own sakes, while all practical activity leads ultimately to experience for a Self.

>>20580713
Therefore, just as (on account of its immediate proximity) no special means of knowledge are required in order to take note of one’s own body, so none are required in order to take note of the Self, which is the inmost principle of all. Hence it stands proved that, for those who can practise discrimination, establishment in knowledge of the Self is already accomplished fact. Even those (the Purva Mimamsakas of Kumarila’s school) who try to maintain that knowledge is formless and not itself immediately known, have to admit (according to their own theory) that knowledge, just like happiness and other attributes of the mind, is evident to immediate inspection, for awareness of an object can only occur through knowledge. Further, it is (logically) impossible to seek for knowledge of knowledge. If knowledge were initially unknown, like the object of knowledge, then we should have to seek knowledge of knowledge, just as we seek knowledge of an object. In the case of an object of knowledge, like a pot, the knower seeks to encompass the object with his knowledge.4 If this were also the case with knowledge, the knower would seek to encompass every cognition with another cognition. But (this would lead to infinite regress and) we do not find that this is so. Knowledge, therefore, is immediately evident, as also is the knower. Hence no effort has to be made to gain knowledge of the Self. It is to put an end to false identification of the Self with the not-self that efforts have to be made. The path of knowledge, therefore, is something perfectly within our grasp.

>>20576662
>Wrong from the very start, Advaita only says Brahman is what’s real, not that Brahman is also identical with falsehood/illusion/unreality.

terrible rebuttal

>>20579129
Advaita and Buddhism are just preliminary purifications and not ultimate mystical ranks. A shame more people don't understand this. Reified nihilism isn't the truth.

>>20580811
The whole post is talking about the wrong starting premise elaborated in the first sentence and then talking about its implications so by pointing out thats not what they teach the rest of it doesnt really apply. Advaita says the Absolute is invisible, unconditioned, transcendent etc so if you do as that poster did and say "if the Brahman is everything then what about X imagined spatially related to it (in/out)" then thats not talking about the Brahman and maya Advaita is talking about but is a misunderstanding or strawman since maya is not another physical location or substance or reality or anything that has real existence like Brahman does so to speak of it related spatially is ultimately meaningless and inaccurate and only has relative value through its usage in things like metaphors symbolism etc for specific purposes. Even space itself as a frame of reference is part of the relative contingent illusory apparatus and the Absolute itself is beyond spatial terms or limits. Brahman is unconditioned and totally unaffected by maya/avidya; maya is a like a spell cast by It

>>20580959
All your doing is repeating the sales pitch back to me.

>>20581013
you're*

>>20581013
I have no sales pitch, its just an explanation of how the whole post failed to refute anything or demonstrate any contradiction in Advaita, thats not a ‘sales pitch’ but the metaphysics of Hinduism its referencing is an abstruse subject thats usually the subject of academic monographs and not sales attempts.

I'm not saying you should all stop talking but almost everyone in this thread is missing the point of nonduality. This is why the Buddha preferred to stay silent, why Nagarjuna attacked the validity of anything you could say about it, and why Chan Buddhism is a bunch of dudes enlightening other dudes through seemingly nonsensical means.

Initial insight into nonduality is simple. When you talk about it, you're trying to wake up the ego/intellect. Neither of these can ever wake up. Here's a simple experiment to try earnestly with an open mind, you may or may not "get it" immediately but if you do "get it" it'll be self-evident and obvious, if you're not sure then you ain't "got it":
Look at any object i.e. place attention on it, kind of feel your attention out there on the thing. Now place attention on that attention. Without intellectualization or relying on thought, memory, belief, or language: "trace" that attention "back in" from where it seems to be coming from. Where does the object end and attention start, and where does attention end and you start? What can you really find here right now? Is there not just attention? If this "clicks", could it have ever been otherwise?
If either one of the perceiver and perceived can't be found distinctly then neither can the other, i.e. not two, and all that's left is perceiving, if that.
Again I have to stress, if you're trying to get this solely by thinking about it you never will. It's not about adding or gaining anything, it's about realizing what's not really here. The fictional "you" you believe you are that's thinking about it doesn't wake up, that which is perceived wakes up.

>>20580721
>>20580713
>>20580697
Thanks for your contributions anon, I enjoyed reading. Written better than I could.

>>20581392
From my light
The body and the world arise.

>>20581126
>its just an explanation
no is not, it's sales pitch, that's the whole point, you're backtracking into your dogmas instead of engaging on it's criticism
the only way brahma is real is if maya is false, but the only way you have to prove that maya is false is by accepting the dogma that brahma is real, you're commiting a peitio principii fallacy, or begging the question, or how that other anon said, you're just repeating the sales pitch back as a refutal
you're using your dogma to prove that same dogma

>>20581392
>"trace" that attention "back in" from where it seems to be coming from.
back in to*

>>20581479
Not that guy, but Brahma and Maya are not mutually exclusive. Maya is the world as we perceive it, the apparent reality which manifests itself through Brahma... Maya is an activity of Brahma, or in other words an object of perception.

Nagarjuna predates Adi Shankara and also retroactively refutes him.

One difficulty with views distinguishing what is absolutely from what is relatively real is that their theory doesn't allow the two terms required for any relation to take place. If you say for any empirical thing that it is only real to the extend that it participates in the absolute, we can respond that unless you admit that something exists independently of the absolute, you don't have two distinct things to use as terms for the relation of "participating in". And if you admit that a thing exists independently of the absolute, you have already dropped the theory of being as participation to the absolute, and replaced it with the theory of being as a simple occurrence (something either exists or it doesn't, with no degrees in between).

>>20581809
Nagarjuna doesn’t have a single argument that refutes anything in Advaita

>>20573231
All poo are a waste of your time.
>>20573375
See this shit? Subversive and satanic.

>>20576967
>Prove this
Advaita doesn’t deal in proofs as they are all fallible; no system proves its claims or itself as a system from the ground up but all proofs only provide evidence of which is the conclusion that accords best with reason; but thats not the same as proving it true.
>You just said that its the intellect that perceives
Only when its invested with the light of the Atmans awareness, like how a lamp needs to be lit before it can reveal objects. The reasons why the intellect is revealed by an awareness that is non-identical with it have been discussed by Advaitins in their texts refuting positions of other schools, especially in the writings where Shankara, Vimuktaman and others refute the Yogachara Buddhist position that changing mental actions like thoughts are self-aware through being non-different from the awareness that registers them.

In short, to say that the intellect knows things without any separate awareness revealing it contradicts both our experience and is illogical. It contradicts our experience because all mental content is presented to a witnessing awareness-presence which registers that content as an internal mental object in an analogous matter to perceiving physical objects, thoughts are always presented to you as something distinctly know, you never experience yourself as the perspective of the thought knowing itself. The very concept of a ‘stream of thoughts’ presupposes and only makes sense with a separate observer for whom the thoughts and other acts of the intellect become an observed stream of changing contents that we continuously know. A temporary thought that has arisen for a moment or several moments would have no access to or perception of the greater stream of thoughts when its awareness arises and falls with it (so its not present for the other thoughts and cant know or detect them) and so this model doesn’t account for and indeed actively conflicts with our lived experience.

And its logically not very coherent since it involves positing something (the intellect) being both the subject and object of a subject-object distinction at the same time, this violates the LNC by attributing two things with mutually exclusive meanings to the same thing or entity at once.

The Advaita position has none of the above flaws and is more coherent. You can find within the west or Islamic thought people who have reached the same or similar conclusions about consciousness such as Suhrawardi who was deeply rooted in Neoplatonic thought and Aristotelianism but who still concludes that the self or consciousness is best explained as a luminous incorporeal self-disclosing presence that underlies and is prior to subject-object distinctions. It is actually Aristotle who appears to Subrawardi in a dream and encourages him to seek the self and to understand awareness/consciousness as presence in order to resolve some of the subtler problems with the Platonic and Peripatetic conception of how knowledge takes place.

>>20581392
Adding to this. Authentic nondual texts and interpretations whether Buddhist or Advaitan or some other, are not so much about philosophy and logical arguments and conclusions, but better read as descriptions of experience.
So whether a Chan koan or a structured Advaita text/interpretation, it's less like someone blind philosophizing his way to seeing color, and more like someone who's seen color trying to describe what he sees to the blind, within the context of the time and culture.
After nondual insight, the "referent" of these texts is apparent, and what didn't make sense before now makes sense (even if you disagree with specifics or the description of it), and often many of your interpretations you thought were right were not even close. And anything else still unclear will only become clear with deeper insight.
Most disagreement between these kind of traditions is either philosophizing and arguing that's largely irrelevant to realization, or genuine attempts to describe the same "experience" with language which can never quite get it.

>>20582591
>are not so much about philosophy and logical arguments and conclusions, but better read as descriptions of experience.
They are not since non-duality first is not even buddhist and second is not an experience, but only a mental masturbation by intellectual monks who suck at jhanas, let alone understanding the path.

>>20576249
Correct; itself

>>20578114
>not that Brahman is also identical with falsehood/illusion/unreality.
>if that's the case then falsehood shouldn't be able to manifest, since it's manifestation would entail a new susbtance that enable it's presence on our experience making advaita a dualist ontological system
That argument which you put forward actually relies on multiple unproven and highly questionable assumptions which would first have to be proven before the argument would have any relevance as an argument against Advaita. Since they are unproven the argument on its own is completely worthless and refutes nothing.

The two unproven and questionable assumptions which your argument relies on are
1) manifestation is synonymous with existence—Advaita rejects this and says that illusions or what is metaphysically false appears without having actual or real existence. Manifestation etymologically just means appearance or a display manifested to an observer to and not existence but this is an aside. Unless you show why manifestation has to equal existence your argument is worthless.
2) That everything has to be explained in terms of substances—Advaita is not a substance-based ontology and so they reject this entirely. If you are not working within the context of a substance-based ontology with assumptions or an a priori commitment to cast everything as a substance then there is no logical necessity whatsoever why maya would have to be explained as a substance. Unless you first prove why everything admitted has to be explained in terms of being a substance your argument is worthless.

>>20582235
>this violates the LNC by attributing two things with mutually exclusive meanings to the same thing or entity at once.
who gives a shit. non-contradiction is a creation of rationalists. Only those subhumans care about it.

>>20578122
> saying that there's ways of knowing according to kant are outside the categories of perception is just false
Yes, but that’s only within the internal rules of his system i.e. he didnt say there was a way himself, but he doesn’t show why that’s necessarily the case universally or for everyone and he doesn’t disprove that there are other means of knowing like the self of consciousness having non-conceptual disclosure to itself.

>>20582747
Fuck I'm so tired of you faggots just stating shit and not explaining. Go ahead, what is the real path? If you are going to say you know the truth, why not share it with the rest of us?

>>20582235
>Advaita doesn’t deal in proofs as they are all fallible
based crypto-buddhist poster

>>20578139
> advaita refutes itself, the most obvious contradiction is when pose that maya is being and non-being atthe same time, breaking the law of non contradiction
No they don’t, that’s a lie and it’s one you have been called out for telling before. Does Advaita make you so upset that you’d rather just tell lies about it instead of attempting to make decent arguments?

Advaita says that Brahman is unconditioned pure bliss existence, and that maya is the ontological category of falsity, Advaita does not say that maya is both being and non-being at the same time that’s wholly untrue. Advaita doesn’t say anything that violates the LNC.

Just like how a neutrally-charged molecule has neither a negative nor a positive charge and affirming this does not violate the LNC, similarly saying that Maya is neither the unconditioned pure existence of Brahman nor nothingness does not violate the LNC because its not attributing two mutually exclusive properties to anything. “Not positive” and “not negative” are not exhaustive and thus are not mutually exclusive, a neutral molecule is both at the same time. Similarly “not nothingness” and “not unconditioned pure independent immutable existence” are not exhaustive or mutually exclusive.

>>20582865
>everyone who isn’t a logical positivist or a rationalist is secretly le buddhist!!!
this is so stupid

>>20582891
>IFLS, therefore Shankara
kek how very modern of you

>>20582893
>be poo
>argue that you can't use any argument to arrive at the absolute
>focus on "refuting" other systems instead
yeah it's buddhism; did no one tell you? prasangika madhyamaka with extra steps

>>20582911
> >be poo
>argue that you can't use any argument to arrive at the absolute
>focus on "refuting" other systems >instead
>yeah it's buddhism; did no one tell you? prasangika madhyamaka with extra steps
No its not you fool, rejecting independent rationalistic means of arriving at the ultimate truth doesn’t make one into a Buddhist automatically. Advaitins reject independent rationalistic means of arriving at the Absolute and say that only a divinely-revealed scripture like the Sruti can lead us to the truth about the Absolute, Buddhists reject this and say you dont need any sort of revealed scripture to arrive at the Absolute or the truth about it; thus their positions are different. Plus according to how Buddhists themselves understand Prasangika they typically claim (whether coherently or incoherently) that Prasangika makes no assertions about anything and doesn’t claim or assert any positions of their own; while on the other hand Advaitins DO make assertions and claims about many things such as unique Advaita doctrines they assert to be true; Advaita just doesn’t care about trying to rationalistically prove everything they say in a system of logic which is a misguided goal that’s not the point of spiritual teachings and it never actually works anyway. Also Advaita doesn’t focus on refuting other systems as much as Madhyamaka does but they spend more time talking about Advaita stuff, the refutation of other schools is incidental or unessential to Advaita and it only comes up in certain sections of their works.

>>20582957
>Advaitins DO make assertions and claims about many things such as unique Advaita doctrines they assert to be true
Which they admittedly can't or won't prove, so why should we care?

>>20582991
It’s self-evident

>>20583001
>it's self-evident that my dogmatic jargon is non-dual with my other dogmatic jargon
i guess?

>>20583006
Yes.

>>20583024
Then the poopoo is the peepee. Q.E.D.

>>20582900
It has nothing to do with loving science, its just a specific example of an instantiation of an abstract idea, you can also use more generic ones from empirical experience if you want.

>>20573239
>Descartes
More like Rene Gaycartes.

>>20582747
You're kind of right in that "experience" is misleading, but you only think it's intellectual mental masturbation because "you" haven't "experienced" it.
>>20581392
Try this with an open mind if you wish. But if you do it and there's no immediate "shift" don't take that to mean you're right. I assure you the point is not intellectual mental masturbation.

When I say "descriptions of experience" I'm also including the paths, methods, pointers, and practices suggested to come to this "experience". The Buddha preferred to just talk about the path rather than try to go into detail describing the experience or what was realized, Nagarjuna then used language to show why the Buddha did this.
In my opinion, Advaita is effectively just positively stated Buddhism tied to the cultural context of its time. Both have value though. Both ultimately point to a realization of non-self which is simultaneously a realization of "this", call it Brahman or whatever or don't call it anything.
Advaita tries to speak where the Buddha was silent or vague. The Buddha obviously wouldn't have called "it" or conceptualized "it" as Brahman and especially not "Self", and Advaita differs to Buddhism in many of it's interpretations of "it" but this is merely interpretation, "it" is not the interpretation.
So whether you think Advaita said it well or not is up to you. Personally I have several issues with Advaita's language, but I still find it valuable. I don't mean to downplay the differences between these traditions either, their culture and paths and understandings/interpretations etc can vary significantly.

>since non-duality first is not even buddhist
Realization of non-self is an inherently nondual "experience". When you "remove" the subject/perceiver from experience/perceiving, what's left? Just the object/perceived? No, "object/perceived" requires a "subject/perceiver" to have any meaning. So it is nondual, not two; that doesn't necessitate "Brahman" or anything, it's "not two" not "is one". Whether that's then described as Brahman or emptiness or any other name for it or just left unspoken is the issue I was getting at.

>>20583070
And I don't deny that Advaita and Buddhism differ in their explications of ontology and epistemology.

>>20573239
2 begets 1. It all just returns to the source.

>>20581392
>This is why the Buddha preferred to stay silent, why Nagarjuna attacked the validity of anything you could say about it, and why Chan Buddhism is a bunch of dudes enlightening other dudes through seemingly nonsensical means.
You mean because they are all incapable of presenting actual justification for their experiences? In Buddha's defence, he did not stay silent, he expounded a whole metaphysical doctrine in the Nikayas. It's just that he did not try to justify them rationally, he simply called it the "lion's roar."
The rest of your post is basically nothing that hasn't already been said. It could easily be condensed down to a single sentence. Not sure why you posted anything at all given it's all already been said here.

>>20573231
Read Buddhism lmao.

The core of Hindu is the idea of selfhood. There's no selfhood ontologically in Buddhism, three marks of existence dependent origination, sunyata, anatman, skandha refutes any such notion throroughly.

From that on, Hindus could argue that well its not the self, but the meta self, which is just playing hide the ball. And doesnt' have any coherent answer to any of the Buddhist arguments.

>>20583151
Buddhism does not have any arguments.

>>20583155
Sure it does. I just listed some of them. The arguments are endless in Buddhism.

>>20583151
Buddhism and Vedanta come to the same conclusions, Buddhism is just a negation

>>20583151
If there is no self then there is no point to Buddhist practices because nothing would need to escape le samsara. If there is an imaginary self then that is still a self because there is no strong real/imaginary distinction in Buddhism.

>>20583163
The problem for buddhism isn't that there isn't a self, its that we believe there is and act in such which causes suffering to us as persons. If we act and think in selfless manner, like how reality is, then the problem of suffering would go away.

>>20583171
Also

It is to be understood that we are not selves, that which controls the body, that which steals bodies, that which leaves the body, that which joins in greater brahman, that which reincarnates. We are people/persons that which is made up of host of relations with others.

>>20583158
Statements are not arguments. If you say, "there is no self", you have to prove how reflexive consciousness is actually unreal (not just say "it is"), or why dependent origination refutes the existence of Brahman, when Vedanta already acknowledges the existence of Maya/Samsara, which if anything points to the existence of Brahman, because everything contingent (= conditioned) requires a cause.

>>20581419
Those three posts are actually quotes from Adi Shankara’s writings, its not my writing, the translation of them is by AJ Alston in his work ‘A Sankara Sourcebook’ which is almost all selections from Shankara’s works arranged by topic interspersed with essays by the translator. Its useful as a resource to consult what he said about any given topic without having to remember where in his commentaries he addressed it, and the translation of Shankara’s way of writing or speaking is more readable than Gambhirananda’s even if its less literal.

>>20583171
That's basically it. The other guy's "if there's no self then let's all be nihilists" is just coping. It's the same rhetoric people who misunderstood Nietzsche use to defend a theism they don't believe in anymore either. Buddha did it way earlier.

>>20583186
Why should one have to disprove what you refuse to prove? What have you against a barren woman's son?

>>20583186
Those statements are arguments against the argument of the existence of atman that which you believe in.

The jivas are the poos, Self is the loo, there is no loo, therefore there are no poos

>>20573375
Akikenas levitating summons the image of baron Harkonnen

>>20583195
It's already been proven in this thread, which you can go back and read. In brief, if consciousness is not reflexive and immediately present then all manner of absurdities follow; reflexive consciousness is necessary in order for us to know anything at all, which means that without it you could not even know that "there is no self", which is self-refuting for Buddhists. In other words if reflexive consciousness is false then there could be a supreme self, you would just never be able to know, and so Buddhism is unjustified in its claims to knowing anything. It's also a matter of direct experience that there is a conscious self which is fundamentally independent of all conditionings (but which does not negate the dross which covers it in the form of body, mental states, and so forth). If there were not, we would not even be writing right now because we would not be simply conscious. Secondly, you cannot prove how conditioned arising is valid without presupposing the unconditioned. In the Dhammapada it is stated that there is an unconditioned, the word literally translated, "no-formations" ("formations" is usually translated as "conditionings"), when referring to the arahant who has achieved nirvana. So not even Buddhist texts agree with you here.
>>20583202
No, they're just statements. Arguments require logical connections.

>>20583241
>No, they're just statements. Arguments require logical connections.
Unpack them lmao

>>20583241
Buddhoids don’t care about logical consistency, they only want to get inside their AmaZen cuckbox and unplug bro

>>20583241
>It's also a matter of direct experience that there is a conscious self which is fundamentally independent of all conditionings
If by "direct experience" you mean a mystical state interpreted through the lens of Vedantist orthodoxy, then you can assume that. But from the Buddhist side, a non-dual absolute reality is not defined as such. Nor in ordinary experience are we ever merely self-conscious in a way wholly independent of everything else, unless of course what you mean by this is that every object taken up by consciousness is just our self reflected back at us... but now you've become a vijñanavadin who happens to affirm the Vedas. If what you are trying to say is that in our experience we have some pure self absent of all other things, we are back to you merely having a mystical experience read through Vedantist orthodoxy, which as you have repeatedly insisted, you do not have to prove. And since there is no proof, if your opponent does not accept the authority of the Vedas there is nothing to say.

>>20583271
>im literally >>20583268
god and the entire world is fake
idk to me that sounds way more cuck/incel/slave moralist whatever you want to call it. bodhisattva chads will keep living their best life for the benefit of all sentient beings while the rest try to escape deeper into delusions

>>20583284

>>20583271
>im literally god and the entire world is fake
idk to me that sounds way more cuck/incel/slave moralist whatever you want to call it. bodhisattva chads will keep living their best life for the benefit of all sentient beings while the rest try to escape deeper into delusions

>>20583241
>if consciousness is not reflexive and immediately present then all manner of absurdities follow
Its both. Its instant for the physical senses and reflexive for the conscious mind that which is made up of those instant sensory conscious + stored memories + our habits.

Regardless of what Buddhists think, this reflexive consciousness doesn't lead to a self that is inside the body, that which escapes the body, that which merges with greater brahman, that which becomes one with the universe, reincarnates, that which enters a body, that which leaves the body. So the hindus claims are nonsensicle.

The consciousness

>>20583294
>The consciousness
Ignore these unfinished thoughts.

>>20583131
>You mean because they are all incapable of presenting actual justification for their experiences?
Yes, because the "experience" is beyond justification. Advaita is not a justification either, it's a description. But I'm not denigrating it, it's about as coherent as a description of something beyond language that it can get.
>The rest of your post is basically nothing that hasn't already been said.
Maybe, point it out if you're up for it. I didn't read every post in detail, which is why I said "almost" everyone.
>It could easily be condensed down to a single sentence.
Maybe. I'd like to hear it.

>>20583274
>If by "direct experience"
I mean this in a non-mystical way. It can be verified by everyday experience.
>Nor in ordinary experience are we ever merely self-conscious in a way wholly independent
The self is the base of all experience, you are conscious of it without excluding or depending upon anything else.
>every object taken up by consciousness is just our self reflected back at us
This is true but not necessarily related to the above point. According to Vedanta, just like the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, the Supreme Self is in everything. But knowing self as Self is the most direct way of knowing, external objects are seen in relation to self rather than as Self.
>>20583294
>this reflexive consciousness doesn't lead to a self that is inside the body, that which escapes the body, that which merges with greater brahman, that which becomes one with the universe, reincarnates, that which enters a body, that which leaves the body.
It necessarily reincarnates (when this term is taken in its proper usage, meaning the dross is left behind but also reshaped and taken up again in a new form), in this context the self is known as jivatman, it is the same principle behind reincarnation in Buddhism. Buddha never denied reincarnation and he did not deny a reincarnating self. But to say that it is "inside" the body can only be used as metaphor, as when it is said that the seat of Brahma is in the heart. Jivatman is not a material or spatial entity. In the Bhagavad Gita it is said the splendor of Brahman is eternal motion and work, Brahman is the source of all that changes and becomes, he is the shaper par excellence who moves everything without ever tiring from his action or being conditioned by his own work. There is no freedom from anything in this world without correct action, presupposing either knowledge or devotion (which is why Brahman is both the source of supreme action and supremely free, glorious, etc.). Besides, you already demonstrated the necessity of reincarnation with your assertion that the self is not the body or "in" the body; if the self is none of these, then how can your body's death prevent your consciousness from taking on another form (form used in the Hindu sense of rupa), along with the re-emergence of the manas. By denying the self's attachment to body, matter, or any spatial condition, you implicitly affirm the necessity of continued existence in Maya (which is not good or bad in itself for you, it just is what it is), because the self is not dependent on materially or temporally conditioned things and is thus eternal. In any case, I can't see how you are not just an ordinary atheist, you don't seem to hold any views which are specific to Buddhist doctrine.
>>20583308
>Yes, because the "experience" is beyond justification.
No, it's beyond description. It can obviously be justified, just as you can justify your own existence without thereby disclosing everything about yourself.

>>20583422
>you are conscious of it without excluding or depending upon anything else
experience is always self plus this or self plus that, otherwise there is no experience to refer to. you (vedantins) are saying the self is what is real and the other part is fake or illusion. the buddhist is simply saying both the self and the other things lack any inherent or permanent essence, which is what accords with our experience of things coming and going, and those things would be selves unto themselves if we accorded them the same privilege we give our own sense of self rather than relating them to us as mere objects. but under analysis neither half of the experience, the self or those things it relates to, has that inherent or permanent essence, which as always you refuse to offer proof for since "i don't need to because its true"—the road to nihilism if there ever was one since what is believed in is imaginary and what is lived in experience is disbelieved

>>20583422
You're pushing baseless nonsense. Nonsense in saying that consciousness reincarnates, nonsense in saying consciousness is self, nonsense in saying Buddhism supports this nonsense, nonsense in saying it a demonstrated necessity.

This is why Hindu and the abrahamic soul based ideologies are all same garbage cut from the same cloth. Its pure nonsense.

>>20583465
Go ahead and explain. Fuck off with this "You're wrong" shit.

>>20583473
Its not "you're wrong" shit, its that you jump from statements of consciousness to magic soul that migrates from body to body, positing some nonsense about merging with another bigger cconsciousness.

Its a baseless jump and there is no argument there. Its just a baseless jump which makes no sense. Hence baseless nonsense thats built upon other baseless nonsense, upon other baseless nonsense.

>>20583484
I'm not the guy you're debating - I'm just following the thread and trying to learn, which is extremely hard when there are posts like yours which don't explain their position

>>20583460
Experience is nothing without consciousness, ie the self. There is no reason why awareness could not be pure, even if most people do not attain it.
>you (vedantins) are saying the self is what is real and the other part is fake or illusion.
That which is not Brahman-Atman is an illusion.
>the buddhist is simply saying both the self and the other things lack any inherent or permanent essence, which is what accords with our experience of things coming and going
And Vedanta states that things lack any essence which is not Brahman (actually, Brahman is even beyond "essence", essence is Ishvara). Impermanence and becoming are the demonstration of Brahman's glory, it is not real as such, which is what Buddhists believe, at least the last point that it is not real as such.
>but under analysis neither half of the experience, the self or those things it relates to, has that inherent or permanent essence
They do, otherwise they would not even appear as transitory manifestations. Nothing comes from nothing. This is self-evident and does not require further proof, unless you can show how nothing can become something without something which is. Christians admit that this doctrine (creatio ex nihilo) which they believe is a "mystery of God" which cannot be rationally justified; you will have to assert the same if you want me to comprehend your meaning.
>>20583465
>Nonsense in saying that consciousness reincarnates
What is consciousness then? How did it get where it is now?
>nonsense in saying consciousness is self
How would it not be the self? It's the only thing that can be said to be "you." You already admitted it yourself: "[there is no] self that is inside the body, that which escapes the body, that which merges with greater brahman, that which becomes one with the universe, reincarnates, that which enters a body, that which leaves the body" The question remains: what is this consciousness then? The only answer is that reflexive awareness which is always us because there is nothing else.
>nonsense in saying Buddhism supports this nonsense
I have a Buddhist text open in front of me right now which affirms it. It's one of the right views with respect to action, which is a basic tenet of all Buddhist ethics, that all action (and even thought) has consequences in this life and the next.
>nonsense in saying it a demonstrated necessity.
You've been unable to refute anything so far. All you've said is that it's nonsense without any justification for that assertion. You've even contradicted yourself, if you were clever you would assert that the self is material, because that way it could possibly die or be disintegrated. But even this can be refuted too, even empirically refuted because we have never found a soul which is spatially or materially composite.

>>20583512
>Nothing comes from nothing.
Right, so since brahman is non-demonstrable it is nothing as far as experience is concerned and cannot explain the causality of phenomena >show how nothing can become something without something which is. Christians admit that this doctrine (creatio ex nihilo) which they believe is a "mystery of God" which cannot be rationally justified
Indeed this is a problem for the THEIST which you are a species of. It is not the Buddhist's problem, as he does not posit a god who is the ultimate transcendental reality which by its nature invalidates all of experience and life itself as illusions (or bad copies of the original) by existing completely on the outside of all things. For the Buddhist, the absolute is void of these transcendental properties, and it is instead the nature of all transient things or phenomena or experience to only ever appear in the first place because they lack a permanent transcendental substance. Your permanent trancendental substance is the nothing which has given rise to something and you are the one who resorts to a "mystery of God" with your constant refrain of "i don't have to prove this / it is self-evident / the Vedas say so" all of which are permutations of the same platonist handwave.

>>20583512
>What is consciousness then? How did it get where it is now?
Consciousness is simple awareness. Our awareness of the computer screen infront of me comes when our eyes in conjunction with monitor in front. This is physical sensory organ. There's no need for some super god bullshit. We can test this whether or not we have this eye consciousness by closing the eyes. Then there is the consciousness of the mind. The mind is all the activities that takes place in the brain. Aka the consciousness of the monitor, the past memories, the habits/inferences we've built to discriminate things, etc. The conscious mind is merely when the mind is actively engaging with memories/physical consciousness and inferencing them with help from our past habits. Sweet and basic consciouensss. There's no super god involved. Nothing super natural involved. No brahman. No atman. Etc.
>how is consciousness not self?
The atman is that which transmigrates/that which resides inside/that which drives the body/the little man inside/the cosmic ghost/the body stealer/etc. The consciousness is clearly not the case. Again, this reflex consciousness has not been demonstrated to exist as anything other than host of functions of the mind. It hasn't been demonstrated or established that it is capable of escaping the body and stealing other people's body. Nor has it been demonstrated or established that it exists as anything other than the functions of the physical mind.

>I have buddhist texts
With your shoddy understanding of what constitutes a consciousness, I'd be wary of hearing your take on Buddhist texts. LMAO. Stick to what you know first and argue from there.

>>20573231

Generally the critiques I've seen are.

> 1. It's trivial without the religious overtones. Ok, everything is one thing, monism. What can you say about this one thing and why should I believe it. Physicalism is monist too. For all the fault of physicalism , and they are many, it makes explicit claims about what the one thing is.

2. Philosophers go back and for over if the entire idea of Maya falls into the excluded middle. If all is Brahman then Maya doesn't exist, no point expanding on the ways in which a false thing is false. But there are a bunch of truth statements about what Maya is- these don't make sense because they aren't actually describing Maya because it's actually all Brahman. You can find spins on this claim of contradiction in the Hindu tradition (some dualists emerged) or in modern takes, but they really haven't changed much over the years. Shankara wants to be an epistemological realist and acknowledge what people experience but also wants to claim this all as falsity, but opinions vary in how big the issue is.

>>20583241
"Consciousness" is folk psychology rambling on par with shit cooked up about demons and souls and magic.

There is just one thing and it is material. It's that simple. The hard problem is not that hard, its been solved. Hinduism makes very, very little by way of predictions. It gets mere lip service from Indians and gets obsessed over by incels who read Guenon here. Meanwhile everyone in the world, including India, learns materialist doctrine and uses its fruits.

It over, of course it has been refuted. All that's left is a bunch of moist robots having their threat circuits tripped by challenges to their identity.

>>20583555
>Right, so since brahman is non-demonstrable
How is it non-demonstrable? It is the only demonstrable thing if anything.
>Indeed this is a problem for the THEIST which you are a species of.
No, it's only a problem for those who assert that something can come from nothing. Not once have I asserted that, instead you are the one who make that assertion. It's extremely ironic that both atheists and Christians (and now Buddhists it seems) tend to make this same logical error. Maya is eternal and uncreated, therefore did not come from nothing, Brahman is eternal and uncreated, and is the motive and principial source of maya, but not its creator (ie ex nihilo). Therefore Vedanta and other Hindu schools do not ever assert the emergence of something from nothing, except in a relative sense where "nothing" is used equivocally, but this has nothing to do with Brahman or maya itself.
> For the Buddhist, the absolute is void of these transcendental properties
If the Buddhists were logically consistent, samsara would not exist at all because something cannot come from nothing. Properly speaking, in the Nikayas Gautama asserts that manifestation (the formal realm) has its origin in the descent of a Brahma and Devas, so that actually clears up that issue, but I doubt that you are an adherent of actual Buddhist theology which is found in the Nikayas.
>Your permanent trancendental substance is the nothing
No, it is Being and Consciousness as such. Why are you putting assertions in my mouth?
>>20583559
>Consciousness is simple awareness.
Ok, so please refute my arguments about the corollaries of this fact here which you have been refusing to answer:
>>20583512
>>20583422
>>20583241

>The atman is that which transmigrates/that which resides inside/that which drives the body/the little man inside/the cosmic ghost/the body stealer/etc.
No, that is jivatman.
>has not been demonstrated to exist as anything other than host of functions of the mind.
Wrong, reflexive consciousness is pure awareness (which you already admitted existed), the mind is illuminated by awareness.
>It hasn't been demonstrated or established that it is capable of escaping the body and stealing other people's body.
Jivatman, as has already been stated more than once, does not possess dimensions and therefore is not "in" the body to begin with. Let's make this simple: Do you believe the self is in the body or not? A few posts ago you said it was not, and I was tailoring my arguments based on that assertion of yours.
>With your shoddy understanding of what constitutes a consciousness, I'd be wary of hearing your take on Buddhist texts.
You've demonstrated you don't know what consciousness is, you just conflated it with the mind. That is not Buddhist at all, and it is the exact opposite of what Vedanta states, and what I have been asserting. If you would like you can let me know which texts and segments you're reading from the Tripitaka so I can see what you're reading from.

>>20583588
Consciousness is not material, you are ipso facto refuted.
> The hard problem is not that hard, its been solved.
This is not a problem at all, the answer is consciousness is not material, it only manifests material as a cause and principle.

>>20583588
>abstracting a map from the immediately apparent territory and then confusing the map for the territory
LMAO ngmi

>>20573231
Anything on Ramanuja, Abhinavagupta, Madhva. The Hindu tradition itself refutes Shankara.

>>20583631
>the motive and principial source of maya, but not its creator
That's bullshit; if both brahman and maya are eternal and uncreated then brahman pretty much IS maya but you can't admit that because scripture is in the way. You are dishonest if you think your theism isn't like the others just because it is from India. It is still about a transcendental substance which is refused any connection with the real world, the world you insist must be false in order to make what you imagine into the real.

>>20583631
>No, that is jivatman.
It doesn't matter. Its atman in other names. Just because you scale the atman and call it something else doesn't change it. Again, this is playing hide the ball with silly nominal designation change.
>pure awareness/atman/jew-atman
It means shit all since its just the mind at work. Within my mind, I can imagine a large elephant. It doesn't mean the elephant it outside. If I imagine the elephant disappearing in the mind, leaving a blank space in its place, it doesn't imply the blank space extends outside the mind/body. Its pure retarded to think what the mind is perceiving is real.
There's no self inside the body, no self outside the body, no self in the universe, no jivatman inside the body, no jivatman outside, no jivatman anywhere. The consciouness is merely a physical phenomena in the brain and thats all it ever is. Claiming some spooky ghosts lives inside the body, lives outside the body is nonsensical. Claiming the mind is a cosmic ghost is a nonsensical.

Can someone tell me where I can actually read about Shankara?
/lit/ seems to know so much about him but when I searched up books about him 6 years ago I could barely find anything in English, no academic translations of his works, no academic works on his system either

>>20583692
Shankara is trash. Just take standard Hindu believe about souls, then add in the notion that we're not multiple souls, but we're all part of a giant soul. Then add in bit about how everything else is just illusion except for this giant soul.

>>20583663
>brahman pretty much IS maya
Brahman is the principle of Maya. When we say "maya is eternal", the copula is used equivocally. It is coeternal with Brahman like jivatman but is only relatively real, ie it is illusory when Being is taken qua Being (Brahman-Atman).
>You are dishonest if you think your theism isn't like the others just because it is from India.
I still don't see how it is substantially similar to the others, it appears more similar to Platonism, but even that is fraying the line.
>>20583667
>Just because you scale the atman and call it something else doesn't change it.
Jivatman is fundamentally Atman, but jivatman taken in isolation is a delimited and illusory modification. Distinctions are important for intellectual clarity, otherwise you could fall into the illusion that your everyday ego is Brahman-Atman unqualified, which is a grave mistake.
>The consciouness is merely a physical phenomena in the brain and thats all it ever is.
So now you're asserting that consciousness is in the brain, which is the exact opposite of what you claimed earlier. So if we take these two presuppositions as true: A) that consciousness is in the brain; that B) consciousness is simple awareness (both of which you've agreed to in the previous posts), if consciousness is both simple and in the brain, then there is absolutely no reason why consciousness could not leave the body, because consciousness as something simple and physical is separable, therefore consciousness can leave the body because leaving the body is a corollary of "separable." So your previous argument is refuted by its own presuppositions. What you probably mean though is that consciousness is not simple and that it is a physical mechanism; however, this is again refuted by my previous post >>20583241 because if that is the case then non-reflexive awareness would not be possible and we could not know anything at all, not even our own emotional or mental states, and we would also not know whether a Supreme Self (Brahman) exists because again we would not be capable of knowing anything at all.

>>20583703
Alright but my response to that is obviously going to be, 'how do you know that?'
What have you read which allows you to so confidently describe what his system was

>>20583712
>I still don't see how it is substantially similar to the others,
Transcendental god who causes things while being entirely unlike them. Something from nothing indeed. As you've said, brahman is the source of illusion and you do not need to demonstrate brahman.

>>20583692
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/shankara/
You can start here, but an anon also posted quotes from a translation earlier in this thread.

>>20583712
>argument is refuted
LMAO. Your arguments are weak. Consciousness is a physical phenomena and it can also be pure. Its pure in that sense that its a direct consciousness form our physical sense and its conditioned in that our habits/memories can color the consciousness of the mind. This isn't an ontological sense, this is a functional sense. You're still trying to say that a little man lives inside the mind without any argument for it. Explain to me how a little ghost lives in the body.

Blah blah blah god/brahman, doesn't get you no where.

>>20583726
>Transcendental god who causes things while being entirely unlike them.
Like can give rise to unlike, that is still something (lesser) from something (greater) and does not violate any principles of reason.

>>20583715
You just have to take off the colorful clothes the Vedantas are wearing. Underneath the color clothes lies a heap of shit.

>But how?
Become skeptical of the claim, ask them to show line of reasoning. They just hide back deeper and deeper into words that dont make sense in English even though they are trying to argue you in English. Hence you know they're trying to obfuscate the argument.

>>20583692
>Can someone tell me where I can actually read about Shankara?
see pic related for his works and secondary sources and I also recommend the article at the stanford.edu link the other anon already posted

>>20583692
No one really cares about him except for (1) modernist Hindus showing off to 19th century European intellectuals that they have a system less dumb than the declining Christian-derived ones, (2) theosophists, (3) not-theosophists who are basically theosophists anyway, (4) tradlarpers who admire (3)

>>20583735
>Consciousness is a physical phenomena and it can also be pure
In which case your argument is already refuted, as per my previous post. However, there are no physical phenomena which are pure, because anything spatial can be infinitely divided (nothing in space can have a volume of zero), therefore if the self exists in space as a physical thing, it cannot be pure or non-composite because anything which exists in space is composite, and purity implies non-composition.
>Explain to me how a little ghost lives in the body.
I never said any ghost lives in the body, that's your assertion. You have to explain how consciousness can exist in the brain. I never made that assertion, only that reflexive consciousness is self-subsistent and non-destructible qua consciousness.

>>20583749
>In which case your argument is already refuted, as per my previous post. However, there are no physical phenomena which are pure, because anything spatial can be infinitely divided (nothing in space can have a volume of zero), therefore if the self exists in space as a physical thing, it cannot be pure or non-composite because anything which exists in space is composite, and purity implies non-composition.
LMAO What the fuck nonsense are you arguing?

>>20583749
>I never said any ghost lives in the body, that's your assertion
So jivatman isn't in your body? It doesn't leave the body? It doesn't enter the body? Reincarnation is fake?

Oh come on. You're just being silly now.

>>20583739
>does not violate any principles of reason
Yeah that's the problem with reason, it lets you reify things you've imagined since they become necessary to hold up the other imaginary things. Why should there be a greater thing? Merely to account for the lesser things? And there is no greater than that greater thing because.... the Vedas say so? Even though we are saying there is causality, it is abruptly thrown away should it endanger the revelation. The appeal to logic is merely a long winded appeal to "I don't have to demonstrate brahman."

>>20583756
Please point to exactly what you're having trouble understanding and I will elaborate.
>>20583768
>So jivatman isn't in your body? It doesn't leave the body? It doesn't enter the body?
Yes, it is non-spatial and non-temporal, that is what I've been asserting the entire time. Are you not following the argument?
>reincarnation is fake
That does not follow unless you're conception of reincarnation is one of the above, which I have not once asserted it to be. Reincarnation is simply the perpetuity of reflexive consciousness, it has nothing to do with entering or exiting bodies.

>>20583773
>it lets you reify things you've imagined since they become necessary to hold up the other imaginary things
Reason allows us to understand reality. You haven't shown any flaws in any reason so far, so until you can I will not treat this post seriously.
>Why should there be a greater thing? Merely to account for the lesser things? And there is no greater than that greater thing because.... the Vedas say so?
Already given in the previous posts.
>Even though we are saying there is causality, it is abruptly thrown away should it endanger the revelation.
Temporal causality is a universal feature of maya, it is never thrown away.

>>20583779
You're arguing about something that exists as a thing, as a non-spatial non-temporal consciousness. I'm saying that's not the case because we can become unconscious just by patting the back of the head, or simply by closing the eyes where the consciousness of the eye is shutoff. Its pure in the sense that there's no impediment to physical-sensory consciousness as its a direct consciousness. While you're trying to argue your non-spatial non-temporal consciousness is indivisible.

The body's function is enough in explaining how consciousness works, we can experiment with it, we have experimented with it. Thats how it is. You're arguing something immaterial that has not been established nor argued for. Hence you're trying to show something that hasn't been established either logically nor through experimentally.

>>20583792
> because we can become unconscious just by patting the back of the head,
There is no proof that consciousness actually shuts off then, you can only try to fallibly infer it based on what the material body is doing, however you cannot personally experience that yourself and get hit in the head and verify that you became unconscious yourself without being conscious of the experience of unconscious at the very moment its happening which would refute what you are trying to establish. Your assumption is basically an act of faith.

>or simply by closing the eyes where the consciousness of the eye is shutoff.
eyes are not conscious or sentient but are an insentient physical object, did you mean to say visual data or qualia?

>>20583804
>There is no proof that consciousness actually shuts off then
Sure there is. We can tell when someone is unconscious vs someone who is just closing their eyes with MRI

Modern science has come far in disproving all the nonsensical claims about god/souls/self/conscious

>>20583804
And you're still not trying to establish your own position of greater consciousness/soul/atman/self whatever you want to call it and how they are established logically, we can rule out experimentally since its based on shoddy logic and shoddy faith based interpetrations.

>>20583811
>Sure there is. We can tell when someone is unconscious vs someone who is just closing their eyes with MRI
LOL there is no proof yet that the brain waves that MRI's measure are actually what consciousness is; the notion that they are the same or that consciousness emerges from them is total conjecture

>>20583784
>Reason allows us to understand reality
Not quite, not if you are instead 'reasoning' that a transcendental permanent substance is causing illusions and that reality is therefore anything but what is real, since everything in experience is considered fake except your self-consciousness, considered to be permanent without any demonstration and unlike the fake phenomena. Where is the reasoning behind that? You keep insisting you don't need to prove it, so why insist on reason's allowing us to understand reality? It would seem rather that reason merely produces explanations, necessary to life insofar as we need to identify causes and their effects well enough to perform our tasks. Obviously these explanations do not have to be correct, and if you refuse to demonstrate large chunks of the explanation you are just bullshitting

>>20583792
No. You can experiment with feelings, thoughts, memories, etc. You cannot directly experiment or even witness the "I". It's none of the above. Thoughts and feelings come and go yet you stay the same. Unchanging. It's not rational and can't be debated or explained as such. Look at and point your finger at your own head, what are you pointing at? There is no head like you see on everyone else. Is it nothing? Everything? You are either the light from which all things appear, or the emptiness. Your "I" can also be arbitrarily placed in a completely different world and body in a dream state which can fool you into thinking you are that body-mind at that moment. Explain it with your material sciences and how it differs from your current experience.

>>20583811
Okay, establish the connection between the two. You can't. Science is approaching things from a utility perspective, ignoring one of the most important parts i.e the way we perceive it, and conflating it with "objective reality" whatever that means.

>>20583820
>And you're still not trying to establish your own position of greater consciousness/soul/atman/self whatever you want to call it and how they are established logically, we can rule out experimentally since its based on shoddy logic and shoddy faith based interpetrations.
Have you forgotten what thread you're in? this is a thread asking about books mentioning arguments that refute Advaita; if you come into the thread and assert X thing about consciousness in an attempt to say that it refutes a doctrine of Advaita; then if what you say about it involves an act of faith (it did) then it can be dismissed as something that fails to refute what Advaita claims. Whether or not the initial Advaita doctrine was proven or not is not relevant to determining whether an argument refutes something thing they say.

>>20583823
We can tell when a person is dead with MRI, we can tell when a person is in coma, we can tell when a person is dreaming, we can tell when a person is closing their eyes, etc

Distrust of modern science isn't a sign of confidence.

>>20583838
>you haven't refuted what i haven't proven
levels of jeetcope that shouldn't be possible

>>20583835
>You cannot directly experiment or even witness the "I".
That's because there is no "I" to begin with. We as humans are only ever feelings/thoughts/memories/etc. There's nothing about the "I" that is coherent. We've known that memories/feelings/thoughts/consciouenss is physically tied and we can physically test them with our brains/our sensors/etc. But there's never anything that establishes the I that is unchanging, the I that is the ghost, the I that is ever present, the I that is inside the body and outside the body, etc.

What we have, those that are physical are all thats needed to explain a human behavior/motives/intentions/emotions/feelings/memories/etc. The I has no special role at play and hence is largely a vestigial remnant of a defunct faith

>>20583422
>No, it's beyond description. It can obviously be justified, just as you can justify your own existence without thereby disclosing everything about yourself.
My language here isn't that clear. Maybe this'll make more sense but if not whatever. What I meant is that a justification is like trying to prove existence of a God that no one has ever experienced. My existence is only truly justifiable in experiencing the sense of existing itself, anything said about it is a description of this experience, or effectively an attempt to justify the justification. I could describe it well enough, and since you also experience a sense of existing (I assume) you get what the description points to, and since this is a common experience the description is widely understood. But it is only in the experiencing the sense of existing itself that existence is justifiable.
"Enlightenment experiences" are the same, if one could describe it well or coherently or skillfully enough to impart that "experience" to you, nothing would need to be said or done to justify it, since what is said or written about it is not the sense, not the experience, and not the justification, but merely various descriptions which are then no longer needed.

>>20583856
All that is, or could ever be known, is experience, and all there is to experience is the knowing of it. However, the knowing of experience is one phenomenon, not two, so one might legitimately question the validity of separating the knowing element of experience from experience itself... in other words: what separates your awareness from the objects that it is aware, including your own body?

>>20583839
> We can tell when a person is dead with MRI, we can tell when a person is in coma, we can tell when a person is dreaming, we can tell when a person is closing their eyes, etc
None of those prove that brain waves = consciousness or that its produced by the brain

>>20583692
Shankara sucks, mate. Only theosophists like Guenon and Blavatsky care about him.

>>20584643
major cope, Shankara is one of the most influential and widely studied Indian philosophers

>>20583635
Wrong.

>>20583882
This is perhaps a fair point to take upon serious investigation of the topic, but it is far from obvious.

Virtually all cultures developed a form of naive realism before developing any form of idealism. That is, the default beliefs were:
>The external world exists.
>The external world exists separate from perception.
>The external world was created by God or by Gods either out of nothing, or formless substance, or chaos. Humans were created as part of this external world, although they may have a special role to play in the world or be made of special substance or in a special type (e.g the image of God).

Existence being dependant on mind only comes later, as a fringe position, once writing and philosophy gets off the ground. This doesn't mean it is wrong, lots of well supported beliefs, like the Earth being round, showed up late and are unintuitive.

But unlike the world being round, the physical being mind dependant is not something you can know or disprove based on experience and empirical methods. It is a question on the wrong side of a potential "epistemic cut," between object and subject.

So I think physicalists have an ok argument for rejecting other ontologies in that rejecting realism vis-á-vis the external world violates our naive pre-philosophical intuitions without empirical support. However, the problem of the noumena, and how they are known, might be enough of a problem to bring physicalism and other monisms down anyhow.

>>20575515
Mistake. This is just a glorified denial of 'I think therefore I am'. There is nothing that shows consciousness is only or even mainly reflexively conscious in the manner you describe. I can always make myself see the world as my and 'others' and also act like it is so.

>>20584765
>Mistake. This is just a glorified denial of 'I think therefore I am'. There is nothing that shows consciousness is only or even mainly reflexively conscious in the manner you describe.
If consciousness is not reflexive it leads to a regress that makes knowledge of anything impossible. This is because if the consciousness which knows the object has no reflexive access to itself or self-awareness of itself as such it needs to be observed or known or perceived by a second awareness in order for it to generate knowledge or experience; however as this 2nd awareness is also non-reflexive it requires further ones ad infinitum, which is an absurd and unacceptable regress; thus consciousness is necessarily reflexive.
>I can always make myself see the world as my and 'others' and also act like it is so.
The way that one chooses to view the world mentally through a conceptual overlay has nothing to do with the reflexivity of consciousness

>>20584792
That is correct, nothing is knowable in it's strict sense. So we are things that can't know in a place full of things to be known. We also know we can't know, yet doubt this too. In both of these examples, we see dualism. This dualism only seems to regress ad infinitum, but we remember that each regression can be found both as an individual becoming of dualism and a part of the bigger whole in which this dualistic regress happens.

>>20584688
Oh look it's the Dennett guy again, who read "Consciousness Ignored" once and has now convinced himself that he doesn't exist.

>>20584927
>That is correct, nothing is knowable in it's strict sense.
Then why do we know things and ourselves as the knower? Non-reflexive “””consciousness””” doesn’t just rule knowing things “in a strict sense”, it actually rules out us knowing literally anything whatsoever, and yet we know things and know ourselves as a knower
>So we are things that can't know
the knower is always immediately self-evident to itself, in the very act of knowing the presence of a knower is disclosed, knowing can only happen for an intelligent someone or something
>In both of these examples, we see dualism. This dualism only seems to regress ad infinitum, but we remember that each regression can be found both as an individual becoming of dualism and a part of the bigger whole in which this dualistic regress happens.
This is a non-sequitur that doesn’t resolve the regress that sinks and refutes non-reflexive models of consciousness; the problem has nothing to do with ‘dualisms’. And it doesn’t just “seem to” regress forever but if certain Buddhists dont admit reflexive consciousness as a matter of principle then what happens is the knowledge is forever delayed and pushed off onto the next awareness that itself has no access to anything and this is repeated to no end such that knowledge or experience never takes place, the sole thing that that would end the regress and allow experience to take place already having been ruled out a priori because of Buddhist dogmas

>>20573375
this was made by a total hylic, in the most absolute and metaphysical sense which is beyond all forms, there is no difference between Shankara and Aquinas. midwit memes.

>>20583635
>Consciousness is not material
for that to be the case, you need to establish pretty specific and unfalsiable notions of whatis consciousness and matter
notions that you can prove are right

>>20582770
>he doesn’t disprove that there are other means of knowing like the self of consciousness having non-conceptual disclosure to itself.
>he doesn’t show why that’s necessarily the case universally or for everyone

lol yes he does, that's the whole poin of the categories, that they're universal, did you read the CPR? the whole point is that reality is arranged in a specific shape for consciousness, he even said that the noumena can actually not exist, that in the end is just a conceptual limit, an horizon for the mind

>>20585020
>there is no difference between Shankara and Aquinas
there is, read Guenon

>>20583292
>I’m god and the world is fake
Versus
>I’ll never achieve Nirvana let me help sentient beings to tickle my feefees
It’s really clear which one is cucked

>>20581392
ok, so now that I have read and understood this.
What do I do with it?

>>20581392
>wake up the ego/intellect
Wasn't the identification with the ego supposed to be the illusory and that with the Self real? That's what Advaita says.

>>20581995
Seethe harder

>>20573239
Fpbp

>figure 4chan might be a place where Eastern philosophers aren't given a pass for sloppy logic and ontologies, with potential contradictions or obscurantism always handwaved away as "part of the culture," or uncritiqueable because 'muh brown people religion.'
>Instead patron saints of incels Guenon and Evola are the biggest "philosophers," and Eastern = good because tradition.
>"Metaphysics," just means "like really deep stuff bro, like stuff normies don't think of."
>Can't point out logical failings that other Indians pointed out in their own shit over 1,000 years ago because Guenon didn't mention debate.

India needs to hurry up and become a super power so its thought can actually be debated critically because it's interesting, but not interesting to discuss when the view point is "yes, it is 100% true and great and wonderful and if you have qualms then you are variously rascist or not a patrician of the soul who can imbibe the magical mana of tradition."

>>20588208
Nice schizo posting

>>20588208
That's your takeaway from this thread?

>Can't point out logical failings that other Indians pointed out in their own shit over 1,000 years ago

Do you want to expound?

> I don't like the debate but im not going to contribute in a way to shape it into something I think is useful

fuck off then

>>20588208
>India needs to hurry up and become a super power so its thought can actually be debated critically
The opposite will happen actually, and is already happening. Most critical translation work was done in the twlight of European imperialism. The "rising" India is embracing Hindutva and somewhat hostile to attempts to study the history and culture critically, and with surprisingly long arms as even some Western based academics and activists have found themselves having to deal with a sort of far-right cancel culture that views anything potentially negative as orientalism or racism.

>>20588351
Yeah Hindus love revisionism, both in history and spirituality lol

>>20585546
Both of them don't exist

>>20588410
This is true most Indians are in fact anti-traditional, even the religous Hindus alot of them don't promote traditional data and dwell on historicity, aswell as westeen conceptions like race too... , most gurus in India are vulgarisers and frauds, and try to conform their traditional data to Western science, muh mantra is science and psychology! , even the advaita authorities are nowadays steeped in politics and so on, exclaiming their national pride on television, India like China has degenerated - I would say proper tradition is now visible it only exists with the ascetics and monks who will not be easy to befriend, and a person requires individual effort, not merely dependence upon a traditional organisation too many modern popular spiritual frauds.

>>20588544
*invisible, or you can just find a way to receive the initiation receive some teaching then be on your way. I wouldn't establish a long term dependence on any organisation.

>>20585497
>lol yes he does, that's the whole point of the categories, that they're universal,
the reflexive awareness of consciousness and the self-disclosure of sentient presence that this involves is non-discursive or non-conceptual and so it doesn't involve the kantian categories as they have to do with the understanding and grasping of phenomena by the intellect; there is no process of understanding or application of ideas/mental schemata or other mental discursivity involved in the non-conceptual naturally-present autoawareness of the consciousness that illumines all discursive content and this consciousness is beyond both acceptance and rejection
>>20577281
Paul Deussen has a short monograph originally published in german but which is now translated called "Vedanta Plato and Kant", I don't know about Aristotle but a Jesuit priest has a book called "Theology After Vedanta" in which he does a serous comparison of Advaita Vedanta and Scholastic/Thomistic metaphysics
>>20578203
>not really, you're taking for granted that the intelect "needs" the awareness, but you're using an idea of awareness in this precise moment, that is you need the idea of awareness to be aware of awareness
There is no proof whatsoever that you need the idea of awareness to be aware of awareness; you are just pointing to there co-association in the present moment and/or human life generally as somehow being a proof of their interdependence, but the mere fact of two things being apparently associated with one another itself proves nothing about their dependence on either each other or anything else, as two things that are not dependent on each other can become temporarily associated with one another for an endless amount of reasons like two strangers who have nothing to do with each other both sitting on the same bench or train carriage etc; the whole crux of your argument relies on a nonsensical and totally unjustified leap of logic that is really pseudologic.

>>20581479
>you're backtracking into your dogmas instead of engaging on it's criticismns.
No i've engaged them directly and explained how they dont refuted anything
>the only way brahma is real is if maya is false, but the only way you have to prove that maya is false is by accepting the dogma that brahma is real, you're commiting a peitio principii fallacy, or begging the question, or how that other anon saids.
No I'm not because I'm not trying to prove Advaita true, I'm simply explained how the arguments that some other people raised in this thread utterly fail to refute anything. You can only commit the petitio principii fallacy when trying to prove some positive assertion true but I'm not asserting that I can prove Advaita true. When going up against a school like Advaita that rejects trying to build a system of logical proofs to back all of its claims if you want to refute them then your only options are to try to explain how something they say violates logic or experience and so it becomes pointless to whine about them not proving things because that doesn't refute them in the slightest. If you don't even start out describing their position correctly (that original post was all wrong and was saying Advaita teaches stuff that Advaita would actually call retarded) then you have basically no hopes of ever refuting anyone's positions or philosophy ever

>>20578203
>and when i'm aware of my awareness, i need the idea of awareness that i created by a process of abstraction from the particular moments of awareness, like when i was aware of the dog or the chair
You can't be aware of the particular moments of awareness from which you would create the idea of awareness without the experience of those particular moments themselves making you already aware that you are aware i.e. aware of your own consciousness or sentiency. The undeniable fact that those particular moments are occurring for (you) as the knower or witness of them itself already reveals that you are aware in a way that is self-evident. According to you in order to be aware of having awareness you have to first abstract it on the basis of knowing particulars. But the paradox with this is that you have to first experience the particular and be aware of having knowledge of the particular in order to use it in abstraction but if its before you "created the idea of awareness" and thus before you can be "aware of awareness" then you can't even start on the process of abstracting the idea of awareness because you'll have no awareness of the particular moment of awareness since this would require you to be "aware of awareness" in this case a particular instance of it which according to you can only emerge later. As you can see this is plainly absurd.

>>20574041
Between which two statements?

Buddhism is atheism with bells and smells for deracinated Westoids

>>20573231
>I literally can’t refute non duality.
non duality main problem is that it can't explain the dual aspect of the world, the difference between the thing and the idea, the thing on itself and the thing for oneself, unity and muliplicity and so on and so on
all they can do is say that duality is an illusion and the thing on itself and the thing for oneself is the same thing, but they can't actually explain how, which still let unresolved the problem of duality, in advaita that is clear in the contradiction in the existence of maya, maya is being and not being at the same time, a contradiction in terms, the answer from advaita is that maya is not actually being nor non-being, "is something else" but by deffinition anything else outside being, that is non-being should be another substance, since a substance is anything that can exist by itself(it has is own being) thus making advaita a form of dualism, the answer from advaita is that maya depends on brahma, so it's not self sufficient, the problem now is that then brahma becomes maya's substance, subtratum, thus making maya a part of brahma, so now brahma has in itself the quality of change, so brahma is now changing and unchanging, another contradiction, the answer from advaita here becomes really mediocre, they just tell you that brahma just "cast" maya but it's not affected by it, this is a weird answer that don't resolve anything, if maya is not part of brahma, then how it manifest? how it develops it's functionality/being/meaning as an illusion? and more important, where is this illusion "casted upon"? the only logical answer is brahma itself, since brahma is the only thing that exist, the answer from advaita is even more medicore now, since they tell you that the illusion is cast upon itself, that is there's two illusion, one illusion becomes victim of the other, this is already disproven by the advaita system itself, in the eexample shankara gives about a knifte cutting itself, an illusion can't ofuscate itself, by deffintiion an illusion is something cast upon someone else, a mind, but according to advaita, the mind is part of the illusion, not a substance that can fell victim of it
the notion of "casting maya" also bring another problem, it don't resolve the infinite regress, since now i can say that brahma is an illusion casted by some othe rmore real entity, and there's no way to prove me wrong, just as a creator god can be created by something else, by virtue of his fucntion of creating leading to an inifnite regress, the act of catsin an illusion bring the same problem to te table, it don't resolve anything, just change the wording, but the metaphysical problem remains, you pose a sort of action to explain the difference between trascendnetal and inmanent reality, but now that trascendental reality can be in istelf the inmanent expression of an even more trascendental entity

>>20590048
>the answer from advaita is that maya is not actually being nor non-being, "is something else" but by deffinition anything else outside being, that is non-being should be another substance, since a substance is anything that can exist by itself(it has is own being) thus making advaita a form of dualism, the answer from advaita is that maya depends on brahma, so it's not self sufficient, the problem now is that then brahma becomes maya's substance, subtratum, thus making maya a part of brahma
This whole argument fails automatically because it's relying upon an unproven and highly questionable metaphysical assumption as explained here >>20582761 already; you are assuming that everyone has to be explained in terms of being a substance or substances being related to each other but Advaita is not a substance-based ontology and so they reject this entirely. If you are not working within the context of a substance-based ontology with assumptions or an a priori commitment to cast everything as a substance then there is no logical necessity whatsoever why maya would have to be explained as a substance. Unless you first prove why everything has to be explained in terms of being a substance then the argument is worthless and as this is impossible to prove the argument *is* worthless
>if maya is not part of brahma, then how it manifest?
Because manifest just means to 'appear' and it doesn't mean having independent or self-grounding existence; maya is able to manifest or appear because that appearance is projected/casted by and contingent by Brahman's nature as the illusory appearance that is neither Brahman/His nature nor a 2nd existent entity and nor is it nothingness but its but the 3rd ontological category of falsity instead
>how it develops it's functionality/being/meaning as an illusion?
It's 'development' is just the continued unfolding of what is being projected its not self sufficient and running itself from the ground -up but all functionality and meaning etc is automatically imparted from above through the same function of projecting; it's not entirely unlike the theological position of occasionalism

>>20590579
>>20590048
>more important, where is this illusion "casted upon"?
Spatial distinctions and multiplicity themselves are part of the illusion and don't exist in and don't characterize the Absolute abiding in Itself, they only appear to have any validity as part of the illusion but have no validity beyond that, your question is erroneously presuming that multiplicity exists in the Absolute independently of maya or that maya even needs to be casted upon anything else; there is no second object that the agent enacts an effect upon in this case because only the non-dual agent actually exists and its own inherent nature just naturally and effortless projects an appearance. There are not two existing things actually interacting. Maya is not an illusion as in the literal sense of visual illusion that needs a surface to interact with or have as its basis; whatever basis maya needs is perfectly fulfilled by Brahman's nature projecting or weaving it
>the only logical answer is brahma itself, since brahma is the only thing that exist, the answer from advaita is even more medicore now, since they tell you that the illusion is cast upon itself, that is there's two illusion, one illusion becomes victim of the others
No Advaita doesn't say this Advaita says that there is just Maya which contains a range of ontologically false possibilities; and that as some of these unfold they are illuminated by the light of the unaffected non-ignorant already-liberated awareness of the Self; and that this illumination accounts for the nature of embodied experiences; there is not 'two-maya's here and nor is Brahman being impacted or affected by anything

>>20589771
>deracinated
Oh!—he doesn't know. That's not actually your volcano you've been worshipping for ~1700 years. It belongs to another tribe, whose writings were used to justify what would today be considered culturally genocidal policies toward indigenous Italic/Greek/Germanic/Celtic/Syrian/Egyptian etc. peoples in the late Roman empire and beyond.

>>20590048
>>20590587
>if, this is already disproven by the advaita system itself, in the example shankara gives about a knifte cutting itself, an illusion can't ofuscate itself, by deffintiion an illusion is something cast upon someone else, a mind, but according to advaita, the mind is part of the illusion, not a substance that can fell victim of it
Shankara never says maya is an illusion obfuscating itself that's a nonsense strawman argument. An illusion is just something that appears true that isn't, unlike what you the word 'cast' has nothing to do with the definition of what an illusion is. In any case Advaita doesn't say or mean maya is the exact same as visual illusions we find in the world or that they are the same in every sense; they mean illusionary in the general meaning of something just being false. Maya doesn't need any prior victim or separate substance for it to just be cast as falsity because its not a simply visual illusion and also because no victim is actually bound; there is no existing subject or being who is actually bound; the solely existent Lord is ever-free while the light of His unaffected awareness illuminates and reveals what the insentient and ontologically-false mind-objects within the appearance-phenomena (which is similarly ontologically false) are doing; those insentient maya-minds being bathed in and permeated by unaffected awareness are not themselves an existing victim and nor are they obfuscating itself but instead their appearance and related obfuscation are brought into a state of appearing through the Absolute projecting them.
>the notion of "casting maya" also bring another problem, it don't resolve the infinite regress,
there is no real infinite regress in Advaita unlike much of buddhism which tries to explicitly ground contingency in further contingency or will often implicitly assume this
>t since now i can say that brahma is an illusion casted by some othe rmore real entity, and there's no way to prove me wrong,ng
that's just a random claim which you made up arbitrarily with no basis for it which is not a serious argument that refutes anything in Advaita and is basically worthless; the Absolute is eternal and has no need of anything to create it
>just as a creator god can be created by something else, by virtue of his fucntion of creating leading to an inifnite regress, the act of catsin an illusion bring the same problem to te table, it don't resolve anything, just change the wordingg
What you claimed was a problem with 'casting an illusion(falsity)' was refuted above and shown to be irrelevant and non-applicable to what Advaita is actually talking about

All these zoomers psyopped into Buddhism by Rene Guenon. The counter-initiation has come claiming it is reviving Tradition.

>>20590608
>those insentient maya-minds being bathed in and permeated by unaffected awareness are not themselves an existing victim and nor are they obfuscating itself but instead their appearance and related obfuscation are brought into a state of appearing through the Absolute projecting them
and people call Buddhists NPC's for denying this doctrine!

>>20579133
This is the first time Shankara poster dueled Kantian, and Shankara poster won.

>>20581809
>>20581983
Ignore the Nagarjuna schizo. Every Nagarjunist I've met is a suicidal freak.

>>20591106
You've never met a "Nagarjunist" or an Advaitan.

>>20573231
Non duality is refuted by non locality

>>20583268
>>20583271
He did his half, you do yours

Are Buddhism trannies so weak they freeze up when serious discussion is started? Not a good look for Buddhists.

bump

>>20591183
How so? Non-duality is a metaphysical statement and not a claim about something at the level of phenomena like physics and sub-atomic particles

>>20588795
>a Jesuit priest has a book called "Theology After Vedanta" in which he does a serous comparison of Advaita Vedanta and Scholastic/Thomistic metaphysics
Interesting…

>>20592220
Catholicism x Vedanta is something Guido de Giorgio tried to fuse
Evola didn’t like his “Vedantized Catholicism
In addition, it seems like Rama Coomaraswamy comes from a similar position and even outright calls Jesus an Avatar

>>20574025
It's because Buddhism in the United States is associated moreso with Jewish liberals than actual Indians. Hinduism is much more foreign and "third world" so it's assumed to be more based.

>>20583735
>Consciousness is a physical phenomena
Why? Can you answer why matter came into being? Or why stuff rather than nothing exists? Or what caused the Big Bang? Modern science hasn't even proven itself as an airtight system of thought yet buddy.

>>20584688
>Consciousness Oversimplified and Handwaved Away

*tips fedora*

>>20573231
Just look at how neurotic guenonfag is. He is the walking refutation of all of it.

No not really. The Kantfag was an embarrassment. Scientism anon is better but ultimately reductionist, and all autistic scientific monisms are retroactively refuted by Goedel.

>>20573231
I'm starting to think no one can.

>>20573239
/thread
pagan larpers seething

How the fuck do you people find time for this?
This is all over my head.

>>20573239
>>20573231
Enoch proved that that it's trinity born from nothing:
zero, dual, trinity
Zero is the largest form, dual is the immediate form, and trinity is the stable form.
But the totality is the monad, one.