Rene Guenon and Traditionalism

[Anonymous No.11769072]

Since there isn't one in the catalog, I'm taking the liberty of making one. The regular Guenon posters can feel free to post whatever links and copypastas they like. But I'd like to start off the thread with some critical remarks and questions from a Christian POV. Hopefully this will stave off some of the annoying shitposters who like to claim these threads as some sort of hivemind or even more laughably as one guy, the so called guenonfag, holding a conversation with himself. While I do find that the guenon posters can be a little too dogmatic, they are far more tolerable and open to dialogue than the shitposters whom I haven't seen contribute anything besides either whining or diverting the discussion to offtopic things like their pet favorite philosopher or occultist.

Anyway, Guenon claims that Christianity originally was consistent with his concept of esoteric tradition, but over time degenerated and lost this esoteric core, and that therefore Christianity has basically lost its traditional legitimacy. But I wonder, at what point in history did Christianity have this esoteric-initiatic filiation? The Apostolic varieties of Christianity have always been more or less stable, besides Catholicism, but in their case we know when they developed which doctrines and why since they documented this themselves. For the other apostolic denominations (e.g. Orthodox, Coptic, Armenian etc), what they teach now is basically what they have always taught, and the religion as they practice is the religion as they have always practiced it. From this we should conclude that either
1. Christianity was never traditionally legitimate.
or
2. Guenon's esoteric thesis is basically wrong, or a gross exaggeration.

continued in next post

[Anonymous No.11769074]

>>11769072 continuing OP post
Guenon also seems to show some special favor toward Nestorianism. In his book "Lord of the Worlds", in a footnote, he quite unambiguously hints that they carried this initiatic filiation and subsequently even initiated Muhammad, hence establishing the initiatic regularity of the Islamic tradition and hence of tasawwuf. While I don't think it's unlikely that Muhammad had contact with Nestorians, in fact, it seems rather very likely, what proof is there that the Nestorian Church carried an initiatic teaching, and that the learning which Muhammad received from them was anymore than ordinary religious teaching, such as learning the stories of prophets and the exoteric beliefs of their church? On the whole, it seems like a pretty absurd thesis.

The exceptions to the non-initiatic nature of Christianity would be groups like Freemasonry and Rosicrucians, but they emerged rather late in the history of Christianity, and have little to do with the teachings of the Church Fathers. Not to mention that Guenon's Vedantic metaphysics are immensely different from and inconsistent with traditional Christian views. So how do posters who subscribe to Guenon's thesis about the transmission of this esoteric tradition square these circles?

We should also keep in mind that according to Guenon esoterism isn't the inward dimension of the exoteric religion (this is Schuon's thesis), but that esoterism is something entirely separate from exoteric religion and only incidentally takes its point of departure from exoteric religion. They are not two complementary and inseparable components of one thing, according to Guenon. This is his explicit view in Perspectives on Initiation.

Friendly reminder that Guenon threads are effortposter threads. If you just wanna shitpost and post ebin maymays do it somewhere else please.

[Anonymous No.11769089]

On a positive note, I will also add that while I don't buy into Guenon's overall esoteric thesis, and I don't subscribe to Vedantic metaphysics, I find his studies of symbolism, in books like Lord of the Worlds, Symbolism of the Cross, and Symbols of Sacred Science, to be extremely valuable.

[Anonymous No.11769169]

guénon fag doesn't exist but there are some people who have an irrational hatred of guénon on this board for whatever reason. they honestly sound like huge schizos.

t. read some guénon and left it at that. never sperged out in favor or against the man

[Anonymous No.11769180]

>>11769169
I think its because Guenon quite a bit farther than many people

When most theists stick to their own religion, Guenon goes for perennialism

When most theists are conditioned to put science above faith, Guenon says intuition should guide us

When most people say everyone should be included, Guenon praises esoterism

He is hard to digest, I personally am quite indifferent to him but he is very extreme and I think thats what draws an extreme reaction back

[Anonymous No.11769516]

bump

[Anonymous No.11769564]

>>11769089
This is what turned me off Guenon. You need to subscribe to Vedanta or else it doesn't work. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the legitmacy of Sufism is questionable within mainstream Islam. Would Guenon have converted to Islam without Sufism? Or would have gone straight for the Hindu larp?

[Anonymous No.11769584]

>>11769072
I don't think Orthodoxy is compatible with Perennialism. They're often the ones who will critique Guenon but still engage with him. Guenon's interpretation of the Grail is suspect imo.

[Anonymous No.11769606]

>>11769564
No, it is certainly not. Sufism is the traditional word and is derived from a group of the companions who dedicated their life in an ascetic way. They were called souf hence the name Sufi. However, the word can also be used to denote as a state one strives to reach. Moreover, the traditional Islamic tradition if we suppose the orthodoxy in contrary to the normal orthodoxy in other religions Islam is Presbyterian in this regard, but in the view of historical accuracy to that of the early Islam, Sufism is well within the tradition.

[Anonymous No.11770098]

>>11769606
That's not what I've heard from Muslims irl.

[Anonymous No.11770165]

>>11770098
Muslims who condemn Sufism as heterodox typically are either unaware of or choose to ignore that the vast majority of the most important Islamic poets, thinkers, philosophers etc throughout history were Sufis.

[Anonymous No.11770198]

>>11769180
I don't think double spacing is enough.
Quadruple is where it's at.
I've been told things are much easier to read with spaces
And this is why people do them.
I think I'm starting to agree.

[Anonymous No.11770260]

>>11769564
>>11769074

It's wrong to regard Christianity as strictly incompatible with Vedanta. Ishvara is regarded as the 'creative principle' of Brahman and is one of the first distinctions/determinations that happen (conditionally) within It. In 'Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta' Guenon explicitly says that Ishvara is the God that is worshiped by the Abrahamic religions. He doesn't go in-depth about this, but we can pretty easily infer from his other writings that what he means is that the 'default' and exoteric understanding of God in Christianity and Judaism, and to a lesser extent Islam is the worship of Ishvara, essentially the supreme godhead in it's manifestation as or state of creation and activity.

Does that mean that Christianity et al are wrong? Not necessarily, in Hinduism worship of Brahman in It's aspect as Vishnu, Shiva, Devi etc is more common than the worship of Nirguna Brahman Itself, despite the common understanding among most educated Hindus that Brahman underlies all the deities, one can worship the supreme godhead as its various aspects without it meaning that one is worshiping incorrectly. From this perspective, the exoteric exterior of the Abrahamic religions is not the complete truth in itself, but it's still correct insofar as the creator/architect/judge/etc deity they worship does exist (within Brahman, as does Shiva et al). Obviously from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy one can find all sorts of theological arguments to use to disagree with this, but I just wanted to illustrate how from a certain perspective they are not incompatible. Islam is the best example of this that we have in practice, where the teachings of Sufis emphasize some sort of Vishishtadvaita-like understanding, which exists alongside the exterior teaching of the 'Other', and for most of history this was more or less accepted until 20th century when the Saudis funded the spread of Wahhabi ideology all throughout the Islamic world (this is not to say nobody regarded it as heterodox before Wahhabism but it was way more accepted generally-hence why most of the important Muslim thinkers were Sufi).

I don't know enough about the Nestorian thing to say anything of importance, although I'd note that Guenon was generally careful with what he said and he probably had a good reason for thinking that if he included it in his books. It's a common observation that Jesus's gospels are some of the closet thing to eastern in all of the Bible, and there are certain verses that hint at some sort of transcendence, e.g. the kingdom of heaven is within and about the rich man never reaching heaven. I've seen some people claim Paul was responsible for eliminating/minimizing these aspects from the teaching but I haven't studied that enough.

[Anonymous No.11770264]

>>11769606
Guenonfag is here.

Remember, Guenonfag is a towelhead Sufi himself, and ONLY posts rabidly biased defenses of the things he likes. Guenon is perfectly correct and orthodox, Vedanta is perfectly correct and orthodox, Shankara is perfectly correct and orthodox. Guenonfag is always correct and orthodox about everything, until someone who actually knows about Hinduism shows up and fucking wrecks his shit.

Sufis are degenerates and Islam is a slave religion.

[Anonymous No.11770303]

>>11770264
>Sufis are degenerates and Islam is a slave religion.

BASED my fellow MAGApede, fuck this towelhead trash, we need to save EVROPA by reading BASED-EVOLA and by bringing back CHRISTIANITY (never mind that Evola shat all over it btw). Fucking brown sub-humans. All of you are to blame for modernity. Don't even mention that faggot Abdul Yahya Guenon, no I can't read primary texts in Sanskrit, Arabic and Chinese like he could but those are brown poo-poo people languages so there's no need, lmao.

[Anonymous No.11770322]

>>11770264
Just a warning to all the posters in this thread:

The only way to keep this thread from devolving into another shitshow is to IGNORE POSTS LIKE THIS. DO NOT REPLY TO THEM, DO NOT ENGAGE WITH THEM, DO NOT FEEL THE NEED TO "CORRECT" THEM OR "SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT", DO NOT ARGUE. LEAVE THEM BE. Thank you for your cooperation. Regards, OP.
>>11770260
You say that "from a certain perspective" they arenmy incompatible, but the point I was driving at is that such a perspective was never taught by any Church Fathers which suggests that they do not have a traditional filiation in the way Guenon understands it. I agree that some stamementa in the Gospels are similar to Hindu philosophy, but many are quite different and unique to Christianity. I don't think we should expect Christianity to be completely different from other religions, because after all the Truth is the Truth regardless of where you find it or how it is expressed. Still, the question remains: where can one find the *fullness* of the Truth. Personally, I think it is in Christianity where one meets the Truth as a person, where the Truth himself speaks to us an dies for us. I believe that are many true things that can be found outside of Christianity, however.

[Anonymous No.11770433]

>>11770322
>but the point I was driving at is that such a perspective was never taught by any Church Fathers which suggests that they do not have a traditional filiation in the way Guenon understands it.

Yes, but virtually every religion or religious movement/philosophy begins with the premise that it's fundamentally correct and that other views are incorrect or flawed. This is the same even of the vedanta held up all the time by Guenon as basically the gold standard of 'perennial truth', in Shankara's commentaries he constantly brings up the views of Buddhists and even other Hindu schools like Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Yoga, dualism etc to argue that they're wrong and to demonstrate that he's right. The fact that almost every religion and every religious teacher/philosopher does this doesn't preclude the possibility that in the essence of their teachings that most of them are different ways of expounding the same truth. This idea is already found to an extent in Christianity, it's already implicitly contained in Jesus's teachings where he talks about how he is the fulfillment/continuation of the same religion/teaching as the OT (which itself is acknowledging that the truth may take different forms at times) and then later where you have early Church doctors talking about 'the eternal truth' and about how Plato and Aristotle were virtuous pagans who were in line with the truth but just didn't know and then you have Renaissance-era people talking about philosophia perennis.

With regards to the specific question of why didn't any early Church Father explicitly teach X idea, I haven't studied early church history to know exactly how it all went down but my general impression (which many other posters seem to agree with) is that it was sort of a clusterfuck and there was a bunch of stuff added in and earlier stuff left out, that personal/ideological/political motives and conflicts played no small role in determining what went into the final text of the NT, and that there were numerous varying sects that were popular, which were only marginalized and finally eliminated because the people who happened to have institutional power at the time settled for one faction over another; that with slightly different circumstances it could have gone a completely different way.

[Anonymous No.11770895]

>most of the important Muslim thinkers were Sufi
Lol. [citation needed]

[Anonymous No.11770929]

Many Christians have a pluralistic understanding of religion much like Vedanta. Particularly the hermeticists who might be said to be the forerunners of masons and rosicrucians and theosophists and traditionalists. Both perennial philosophy and prisca theologia have their origins in the Catholic Church.

[Anonymous No.11770975]

>>11770895
Ibn Arabi, Al-Ghazali, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Rumi, Sanai, Ibn Sabin, Sayyid Haydar Amuli, Abdul Karim Jili, Jami, Bahāʾ al-dīn al-ʿĀmilī, Najmuddin Kubra, Muhammad Iqbal, Mulla Sadra etc Ibn Khaldun also wrote a work on Sufism. Furthermore, when you add in all the Neoplatonist Muslim philosophers and Ismaili thinkers (which in their conception of the 'One' as applied to Islam reach a similar understanding as Sufism) there are even more. Avicenna was also influenced by Neoplatonist ideas and didn't consider them heretical.

Sure, maybe I wasn't specific enough but many of the more well known Muslims of history were Sufis and when you add in all the sects that arrive at the same idea through different means, it's been a pretty common thing in the history of Islamic thinkers.

[Anonymous No.11771013]

>>11770929
Sadly, it seems the apple has fallen far from the tree.

[Anonymous No.11771056]

The initiatic-groups in Christianity may have been affiliated with the Gnostics. The Gnostic tractates discovered at Nag Hammadi reveal some teachings which are quite compatible with Guenon’s idea of the Tradition or Traditional metaphysics. For instance, from the Gospel of Thomas:

Jesus says:

(1) “The one who seeks should not cease seeking until he finds.
(2) And when he finds, he will be dismayed.
(3) And when he is dismayed, he will be astonished.
(4) And he will be king over the All.”

It may seem like a leap but it seems to me this refers to the process of the limited atman astonishedly realizing it is merely a manifestation of the Brahman and thus going on the path of becoming “king over the All.” You don’t even need to look to the Gnostic tractates for “Traditonal” ideas as according to Guenon. Some passages from the Gospels seeming to refer to the fundamental unity of atman with the Brahman include:

>And when [Jesus] was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:21)

>Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? (John 10:34-39)

>34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25)

The Kingdom of Heaven (transcendence, divinity) is within. Is it not said in the law ye are Gods? Whatever we do to the lowliest and poorest person, we do to God. Even more generally: Jesus is supposed to be an incarnation of God and we are meant to model ourselves on Jesus and to be like Jesus, thus being like God. We participate, through Jesus, in God. Also the idea from Genesis that we are made in the image of God. If what Guenon calls “the Tradition” really exists (I don’t necessarily agree with him on it on every point, although I think he’s a genius), it’s possible to see examples of it running throughout Judaism and Christianity.

[Anonymous No.11771077]

>>11769072
Are you sure he wasn't referencing Protestantism, anon? I suppose I've only read The Reign of Quantity.

[Anonymous No.11771131]

>>11771056
(Continued)
Also the major symbolism of Christianity itself (Guenon writes a whole book on the symbolism of the cross!): the death and rebirth of Christ. This mirrors other Traditional teachings of the death of our clinging to our phenomenal surface selves and a rebirth into a higher reality. It’s the Hindu/Buddhist moksha, Sufi fana (annihilation of the attributes of the self) and baqa (subsequent subsistence in God).

Esoteric Christian ideas of the necessary death and rebirth of the self, the second birth as Christ mentions to Nicodemus and as is brought up here: >>11770929 in that pic, seem to have been included in/transmitted in Hermeticism, alchemy and Kabbalah (which heavily intermingled with Christian mysticism, even having its own form scholars classify as Christian Kabbalah), the teachings themselves of which were incorporated into initiatic guilds like the Freemasons and Rosicrucians claiming to have an ancient mystical tradition which (Masonry particularly) is inclusive of all the world’s religions as long as one believes in a deity. And Masonic rites in particular, from what I know, include deliberate emphasis on and rites of symbolic death and rebirth. The alchemical transmutation of lead to gold was symbolic of the transformation of man’s consciousness from enlightened to unenlightened, and Christ’s death and rebirth was linked to this process — we must all undergo a “death” like Christ did, death as “lead” (a low level of consciousness trapped by ordinary perceptions of the self and of the sensory world) to be reborn as “gold” (enlightened). If you study these traditions, it’s possible to conceive of a long-reaching secret Gnostic Christian tradition concerning the psychological self-transformation of man hidden and surviving/popping up in various movements such as alchemy, Hermeticism, Kabbalism, Freemasonry, and Rosicrucianism.

[Anonymous No.11771149]

>>11771131
>claiming to have an ancient mystical tradition which (Masonry particularly) is inclusive of all the world’s religions as long as one believes in a deity
*with an overall Christian bent, I’ll add for clarification.

[Anonymous No.11771170]

>>11771056
Interesting post, I'd have to agree.

>And he will be king over the All.

Vedanta texts and also the Upanishads speak about one who 'attains all things' and who has 'become the lord of the world'. The idea expressed in your quote reads very similar to a translation of them. You sort of already noted the connection. The Ashtavakra Gita specifically uses this line:

>Rare is the man who knows himself as the nondual Lord of the world, and he who knows this is not afraid of anything. 4.6

The idea being, that once you realize (and actualize) the non-difference between the Atma and Brahman, that everything is perceived as the Self, hence everything in contained in the Self, and in this sense one is the lord of everything in the same way that you are lord over your body.

> The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

This sounds the same as the 'not this, not this' used in the Upanishads to describe or denote Brahman indirectly through negation, coupled with a 'thou art that'. Of course, when comparing very old translated texts one can always find infinite comparisons to make and one shouldn't make the mistake of assuming you always know what is meant by inference but the parallels in this specific case seem pretty clear.

[Anonymous No.11771232]

>>11771131
>psychological
ya dun goofed

[Anonymous No.11771268]

>>11771232
Psyche = etymologically, the soul
Logical = logos+ ic, logos as in the divine ordering principle of the universe.

If you want to use spiritual, inner, internal, or whatnot, use it. I used it because I’m not used to talking to people who agree with me and am more used to making things sound more secular, palatable — probably a vice on my part, I’m realizing.

[Anonymous No.11771338]

[Anonymous No.11771347]

>>11771338
translation?
>inb4 pleb

[Anonymous No.11771446]

>>11771347
Example of a Christian Hermeticist attempting to derive authority from not simply the pope but the great pagan sages such as zoroaster and plato and hermes as well, sadly he failed to achieve his goal of a new universal philosophy and did not receive papal approval.

[Anonymous No.11771456]

>>11771446
>sadly he failed
After the reformation, neoplatonism was taken to be decadent and linguistic analysis eventually showed hermeticism to be younger than christianity in language if not ideas as well.

[Anonymous No.11771497]

It does not seem like an appealing idea to be a Christian Perennialist in 2018, not only is Christianity dying in the West but it was these esoteric non-orthodox groups themselves (mainly Freemasons) who pulled the trigger. What reason could you have to further disturb its twilight years?

[Anonymous No.11771534]

I have to say, this thread is going really well so far. Good job, guys. Keep it up. Great discussion.

[Anonymous No.11771605]

>>11769584
What interpretation are you referring to? From what I'm aware the grail, being a cup, a container, is a symbol of the heart.

[Anonymous No.11772029]

>>11769072
>>11769074
Guenon also thought that Buddhism was a heterodoxy, but he later changed his mind due to influence from some of his like-minded contemporaries I suppose if he lived longer he wouldve done the same for christianity, since that is what Schuon did and some others.

Jean Borella wrote a whole book on the subject: 'Guenonian Esotericism and Christian Mystery'.

I've only just started to get into the thought of these people so I wouldn't be able to give any details, I just know these things.

[Anonymous No.11772077]

>>11769180
it's because Guenon posters are pseuds or insecure Indians scared talking about Evola will get them labeled /pol/tards.

[Anonymous No.11772082]

>>11771456
>but it was these esoteric non-orthodox groups themselves (mainly Freemasons) who pulled the trigger.

Those people were not the continuation groups of the original masons, but were newly ascendant victors in the occult war between the old masons and the satanic pedophile masons who turned masonry into a dark nest of power, influence and nebulous activity. If any people survive who received an effective initiation in the masonic mysteries and not a modern substitute they don't make any waves and remain inconsequential. Modern masonry is largely either anglo-ivy league networking or/and the above satantic stuff.

[Anonymous No.11772090]

>>11772082
meant for >>11771497

[Anonymous No.11772577]

What is this "intelectual intuition" Guénon talks about?

[Anonymous No.11772692]

>>11772577
It's a form of knowing that's direct and immediate, as opposed to reasoning which is discursive and mediate.

[Anonymous No.11772710]

>>11772029
While Guenon did change his mind about Buddhism, that was because of some very specific circumstances which are not the case with Christianity and so I think it's a mistake to assume he would change his mind about it. The reason he changed his mind about Buddhism is that he had never studied Mahayana in depth but was extensively familiar with Shankara's commentaries where he criticizes ~8th century Indian Buddhism as being contradictory nonsense (which it arguably was). From the portrayal of it found in Shankara's writings it's not entirely unreasonable to see it as a kind of degeneration of prior Hindu or general primordial wisdom. Coomaraswamy and Marco Pallis were responsible for convincing him that he was wrong, both of them wrote to him letters containing excerpts of Mahayana texts and Coomaraswamy went further in writing a book that pointed out that Buddha never denied Atma and that his doctrine of anatta really refers to the non-Atma aspects of the being as unreal in a similar way to Vedanta. Mahayana and Yogacara Buddhism have a long history of interacting with and being influenced by Yoga, Tantra and Daoism and so in part due to this there are many teachings found in Mahayana texts which are often identical or highly similar to those found in Vedanta, Daoism, Sufism etc. So, with regard to the religion that he changed his mind about, it was greatly influenced by other eastern doctrines he regarded as 'traditional', their texts mirror many of the same ideas, and he was relying on a fairly novel and unusual take on Buddhism that virtually all Theravadins and many Mahayana Buddhists themselves would disagree with unless for some reason they were extremely well-read in other eastern thought and were willing to admit that many Buddhist schools had gotten their understanding of Buddha's teachings wrong (based on the misunderstandings of early Buddhist commentators that became the standard interpretation).

This same set of circumstances isn't the case with Christianity generally. Guenon was raised Catholic and was familiar with protestant and catholic thought, he as indicated from his writings was also fairly familiar with various gnostic and early spinoff sects. He criticizes Protestantism pretty consistently in his writings and when it comes to Catholicism respectfully tips his hat at it being one of the few 'traditional' things or vestiges in the west while at the same time noting that there isn't anything really metaphysical in it's 'official' doctrine. He writes that the doctrines of the Neoplatonists and Hermetics was traditional metaphysics (more or less, he never sets them on the same level as the eastern doctrines) but the influence of these in the modern church is negligible. There isn't really any reason to think he would change his mind about Catholicism and definitely not protestantism.

[Anonymous No.11772717]

>>11772710
Yes he might have been willing to admit that if you go back far enough there was some genuine traditional metaphysics in the church but he is pretty clear it's empty of that now. As to the separate question of whether there are any active esoteric groups within western Christianity teaching 'metaphysics' in 'East and West' he admits it's possible they still exist but says if they do they are extremely small in size, inaccessible and have no real effect on anything. The only way to really arrive at a 'traditional understanding' within Catholicism today would be to study the works of certain Christian mystics and implement their lessons as this poster notes >>11770929
although even then, there exists nobody and no group which can perfectly teach this (which traditionalism stresses the importance of), the texts don't formulate these ideas as well as eastern texts and much of the conclusions one arrives at would conflict with official church doctrine if you tried to write them down as a coherent thought.

The subject of eastern orthodoxy is a separate conversation. Guenon never really wrote about it but he probably had at least a general understanding of it. Eastern orthodoxy is marginally more metaphysical than Catholicism. You already have some very weak and indirect pantheism with Aquinas and EO takes this one step further. It seems to be closer to (neo)platonism as well. From what I understand EO writings talk about achieving 'mystic union with god' etc and 'sharing, merging with etc His divine energies' and so on. This of course has traditional characteristics to it but then several problems arise if you try to claim it's on par with eastern doctrines. Why do the vast majority of eastern orthodox believers not regard it as anything like a transcendental unity and instead view it as just a slightly more mystical dualism? (used in the sense of implying a distinction between Self and God and not dualism as in the non-trinitarian Christian heresy). If EO was actually traditional most people should be able to at least partially pick up on it, even most average-intelligence craftsmen and merchants can still pick up on the transcendental aspects of the Tao Te Ching and Bhagavad Gita.

[Anonymous No.11772722]

>>11772717
The only way out of this is to say that actually there is an exoteric and esoteric component as in Islam and that the traditional metaphysics in taught by esoteric groups, but is that actually the case? From what I understand there isn't really a strong strand of esoterism in EO and priests and monks etc are just taught and themselves teach what is considered official EO doctrine that everyone is aware of. In 'Intro to Hindu etc' Guenon talks about the difference between mysticism and metaphysics and writes about how mysticism is essentially a passive experience where you let something occur and that it sometimes touches the same ideas as metaphysics but doesn't go as far as it and that mysticism alone is not enough to reach any sort of final liberation or deliverance, while metaphysical realization is an active experience that is predicated upon acquiring and actualizing Self-knowledge. I'm sure he would regard EO as more mystical and in that manner better than the bland moralism of Protestantism but I don't think he would claim it's metaphysical. He says basically the same thing about Shia Islam, where he says it's closer to mysticism and that the metaphysics is mostly found in Sunni Islam (I'm assuming that he writes this because of Sufism being mostly a Sunni phenomenon in the last few centuries).

This is of course just a brief and relatively shallow overview of the subject, but it's something to be aware of. Jean Borella's books are good and definetely worth reading if you want to explore Christianity from a traditionalist perspective. Philip Sherrard while not officially a traditionalist, has written books on EO which I'v heard are good and in like with traditionalist ideas. Coomaraswamy also constantly references in his books Christian thinkers who were able to reach metaphysical ideas like Bohme, Eckhart, Clement of Alexandria, Nicholas of Cusa etc.

[Anonymous No.11772733]

>>11772717
Doesn't this just confirm OP's point? Since Eastern Christianity does not conform to Guenon's criteria of a proper tradition, and to all appearances never did, it contradicts Guenon's thesis of a common traditional origin and continuous initiatic filiation. It means Christianity was always something rather different than what Guenon meant by "tradition", no?

[Anonymous No.11772812]

>>11772733
>Doesn't this just confirm OP's point? Since Eastern Christianity does not conform to Guenon's criteria of a proper tradition, and to all appearances never did, it contradicts Guenon's thesis of a common traditional origin and continuous initiatic filiation.

I was not specifically arguing against anything OP wrote in that post. Yes, the modern main church denominations are not 'traditions' in the sense Guenon uses but that has little to do with the possibility that in the very beginning this understanding may have been taught and then later lost, as this poster talks about >>11771056. The possibility that in the beginning Jesus and some of the early sects taught about a transcendental divine unity which was then lost in the squabbles and in-fighting that occured during the formation of the church as a formalized religio-political organization, is in no way incompatible with anything I wrote in that series of posts. I don't know one way or another. I'm inclined to think it's true because of the eastern-like aspects even in the canonical gospels although the only thing I know for sure is that the modern churches do not have transcendental teachings aside from occasional passive mysticism.

[Anonymous No.11772822]

>>11772722
Where does he write about Shi'a Islam?

[Anonymous No.11772830]

>>11772812
What I don't get is why any Thomist would opt for Guenon's metaphysics? Why would a Catholic think a return to Thomism and virtue ethics isn't sufficient for a revival of Europe and what's actually needed is a Guenonian transcendental unity?

[Anonymous No.11772872]

>>11772692
How can I use it?

[Anonymous No.11772939]

>>11772830
Because those were already the norm for a long slice of western history and for whatever reason was not compelling enough to stop people from abandoning it for the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and finally modernity. It's already failed once why try it again? Transcendence is important because it can be directly experienced even at the intermediary stages before final deliverance and so the question of belief or lack thereof doesn't even enter into the equation. In India among the various sramanic groups you had all sort of proto-18th C. Enlightenment groups in the 1st millenium BC espousing various forms of atheism, determinism and materialism but they never caught on and were resigned to the margins of history in no so small part because people found the transcendent teachings of the time more compelling.

[Anonymous No.11772969]

>>11772822
He notes what I mentioned briefly in his review of Arthur de Gobineau's ' Les religions et les philosophies dans l'Asie centrale', which is found in the edition of 'Studies in Hinduism' published by Sophia Perennis (the red and white covers), which at the end of the text has another 150+ pages of reviews by Guenon of various books and articles ranging from orientalists to Coomaraswamy, Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi etc.

[Anonymous No.11772988]

>>11769169
>guénon fag doesn't exist
hello guenonfag, you gonna samefag this thread again?

[Anonymous No.11773015]

>>11772969
Thanks, I'll look into it. Is that about all he had to say on Shi'ism?

[Anonymous No.11773174]

>>11773015
If I recall correctly he says that Gobineau is wrong when he claims that the metaphysics/mysticism/philosophy in Shia Islam comes just from the Zoroastrians and other non-Islamic groups and instead Guenon says those were already contained within Islam (or the seeds of this were etc). I have not read his 'Insights into Islamic esoterism and Daoism' but as far as I'm aware it doesn't focus on Shia Islam. In his other books that I've read he mostly focuses on Sufism generally, largely drawing from Ibn Arabi's writings. Given that he joined a Sunni Sufi order and lived in and was active in Sunni Egypt it's not surprising that he wouldn't focus a lot on Shia Islam. Nasr is the traditionalist who writes the most about Shia Islam, William Chittick and Henry Corbin are also two writers on Shia Islam who although not traditionalists, seem to have been influenced by or at the very least aware of Guenon and they focus on its metaphysical and mystical aspects and are worth reading if you are interested in that.

[Anonymous No.11773233]

What's the difference between Guenon and Eliade?

[Anonymous No.11773262]

>>11772939
Can't you say the same thing about the East? Obviously Vedanta was unable to be innovative enough to compete with modernity and was unable to stop the colonialization of the indian subcontinent. Why then would we choose such an inferior school of thought?

[Anonymous No.11773277]

>>11773233
Eliade stills plays the western academic part, even though he holds traditionalist beliefs (which you will seldomly find in his books).

[Anonymous No.11773280]

>>11773233
Eliade takes many of the ideas of Guenon (and Evola, Coomaraswamy etc) and cloaks them in a language and format which makes them more accessible (at the cost of dumbing some of it down) and more acceptable to academia. He is still interesting and worth reading although a lot of his books just repeat the same ideas over and over.

[Anonymous No.11773320]

Isn't it kind of disappointing that there are a decent amount of people here on 4chan of all places who seem to be knowledgeable and capable, with a respectable prognosis of modernity, metaphysics, and spiritual function, that will never get together and organise into something greater, something that could seriously impact the world. It's both a wonder that people can be gathered together like this and a curse that it will never actually be tangible.

[Anonymous No.11773369]

>>11773320
>isn't it kind of disappointing that Guenon is a literally-who author outside of 4chan trad threads and will never inspire said neckbeards to do something productive instead of guenonposting?
What's more disappointing is that you're still here trying to recruit anons into some cringe Trad cult studying brown man scribbles from an effeminate 20th century frenchmen.

>René Guénon died on Sunday, January 7, 1951; his final word was "Allah".[20]
this is the man you idolize, let that sink in.

[Anonymous No.11773381]

>>11773320
What of all that that would make us unite?

[Anonymous No.11773407]

>>11773262
>Can't you say the same thing about the East?

No, not really. Modernity itself and the associated modes of thought arose on top of the corpse of Thomism whereas it was forced onto the east through colonization by the European powers. The difference is that modernity arose where Thomism was previously dominant because Thomism was not enough to prevent its emergence whereas the eastern doctrines were enough to prevent its emergence until they were literally forced to modernize at gunpoint. And even then, many regions of the east are only partially modernized or large segments of the population are not entirely modernized. In rural parts of the middle east, India and south-east Asia you still find many areas with people who are deeply religious and not very modernized aside from the most exterior aspects like living in places that have running water and phones etc.

>Obviously Vedanta was unable to be innovative enough to compete with modernity and was unable to stop the colonialization of the indian subcontinent.

You greatly mistake what I'm talking about if you think a metaphysical or religious doctrine translates to material or military power in such a way that would have allowed eastern countries to fight European armies.

And again that's not even really true because in many parts of Asia modernization has primarily been material and not mental or religious. Vedanta is still hugely influential in Hinduism, most Hindus in India are still deeply religious especially those who have not spent all their lives in the megacities, the caste system is still taken seriously, the traditional teaching of the doctrine and the conducting of rituals by the Brahmins has continued, there are still several million sannyasas who live as possesionless mendicents in India and they are regularly given alms to sustain them just as they were 2000 years ago. There are still various vedantic and tantric orders of traveling monks just as there have been for thousands of years.

>Why then would we choose such an inferior school of thought?

They are not inferior, Vedantic teaching has continued largely unchanged even with modernization (as has Sufism etc to a large degree also); if we are going by the standard that has been the focus of this discussion, namely transcendental metaphysics then Vedanta is unquestionably superior to Thomism as this is the main focus of Vedanta and is almost absent in Thomism unless you are scraping the bottom of the barrel of its implications. I'm not making any statement about their comparative overall merits but on that one specific mode of comparison alone Thomism is blown out of the water by pretty much every eastern doctrine. In terms of surviving modernity the eastern doctrines have also done better, Thomism is not really taken seriously in a lot of academia or modern philosophy and is the special purview of catholic priests while Vedanta, Buddhism and Sufism still give profundity to the spiritual life of many millions.

[Anonymous No.11773486]

Anyone here speak Sanskrit? What is the best English translation of the vedas? Preferably in print.

[Anonymous No.11773503]

>>11773280
You say that as though he were derivative, whereas he reached his own conclusions independently of Guenon et all, through his own research.

[Anonymous No.11773504]

>>11773486
It's pretty expensive but the Jamison and Brereton Rig-Veda translation is the first unabridged translation done by academics in over a century. I would probably recommend that one if you can afford it.

[Anonymous No.11773507]

Does anyone have a pdf of a good abridged version of the Mahabharata?

[Anonymous No.11773511]

>>11773503
His conclusions are more interesting. Eliade might have been an armchair theoretician but at least his interests were broad enough to include other forms of religion like shamanism that don't neatly fit into a traditionalist framework...

[Anonymous No.11773514]

>>11772830
Thomism is love, Thomism is life. No Thomist therefore has any need of this stuff.

>>11772939
Guenon leaves out a very important detail in the development of modernity, the fact that it was precisely this lust for transcendence (of human limitation) in the form of magic (hermeticism) that led to the abandonment of that most beautiful bloom of philosophy, medieval Scholasticism. This lust at the time seemed innocent enough, but would prove fatal. Its cure will involve a change of heart, real repentance, nothing a metaphysical system will solve. But given the foolishness of its most captive disciples, only real painful consequences will likely do it. Jesus Christ is "the Way and the Truth and the Life." Going to some false religion as an answer is not what needs to be done. One can only save oneself, and leave the rest to God.

[Anonymous No.11773517]

>>11773511
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He wasn't a traditionalist copycat (not saying that to demean traditionalism, I respect them), he did his own thing and reached his own conclusions independantly. He's good to read side by side with traditionalists. Same with Georges Dumezil and Henry Corbin. Interesting thinkers that have some point of contact with traditionalism but reached their conclusions independently of that stream of thought.

[Anonymous No.11773525]

Friendly chart for anons who want to start with Guenon

[Anonymous No.11773529]

Any flowchart or chronological /trad/ reading list?

[Anonymous No.11773532]

>>11773504
I think I found Guenonfags amazon account! :o

[Anonymous No.11773558]

>>11773532
>being such a schizo autist that in your attempts to expose a 'Guenon-fag' that you don't even realize that the reviewer in your pic is criticizing the book blurb which I just repeated, the exact opposite of what I recommended

[Anonymous No.11773559]

>>11772939
Not to be a marxist but you don't think that had anything to do with material circumstances? Maybe the reason the philosophy fell was because of various developments in capitalism and technology and not the other way around...

[Anonymous No.11773567]

>>11773558
The thread has been going swimmingly. Must you spoil it by responding to shitposters? Just ignore them. Nothing good will come of this.

[Anonymous No.11773575]

>>11773558
Relax, it is a joke...

[Anonymous No.11773578]

>>11773559
The practice of philosophy may have been affected by changes of circumstance, as in, people were less inclined to practice it in certain circumstances, but I don't think the validity of any particular school of thought, the correctness or incorrectness of their conclusions, can in anyway be affected by a change in material circumstances. Do you think otherwise?

[Anonymous No.11773591]

>>11773575
lol I can't even tell anymore, some of these people are really unhinged

[Anonymous No.11773605]

>>11773503
That's partially true, but Guenon and Evola wrote to him asking why he was repeating their ideas without citing them and he openly admitted to them that he was influenced by them but didn't cite them for fear of it hurting his standing in academia.

[Anonymous No.11773628]

>>11773578
I think if your religion makes philosophical claims that can be disproved by science for example regarding the nature of the stars or age of the earth then scientific evidence can be good reason to suspend faith on those articles of belief. For example, as pointed out in >>11771456 , linguistic studies curbed the influence of the attempted renaissance hermetic revival within Catholicism.

[Anonymous No.11773636]

>>11773605
Well, it's hard to cite a self-proclaimed "super-fascist" without raising eyebrows...

[Anonymous No.11773646]

>>11773636
>>11773575
>>11773559
>...
Stop doing this

[Anonymous No.11773675]

>>11773514
>Guenon leaves out a very important detail in the development of modernity, the fact that it was precisely this lust for transcendence (of human limitation) in the form of magic (hermeticism) that led to the abandonment of that most beautiful bloom of philosophy, medieval Scholasticism.

And WHY did they abandon scholaticism? Because it was flawed and not complete. If it was a satisfactory teaching people would not have abandoned it en masse in the first place. Your argument makes no sense unless everyone in the west all of a sudden were randomly possessed by mass delusion and lust despite temptations like Neoplatonism and Gnosticism existing from the beginning. It makes no sense and only carries any water if there was something important that scholasticism was lacking which caused them to look elsewhere. This view is also retarded because if it's this that's responsible for modernity why is that modernity arose in the west despite those concepts being the dominant mode of thought in the east for thousands of years? Lastly your point ignores that despite a brief moment in the renaissance, the mentality of modernity is extremely anti-transcendental and tries to eliminate and cheapen any idea of transcendence by reducing it all to psychological, psychoanalytic and neurological explanations.

[Anonymous No.11773680]

>>11773486
Like the other anon said, Jamison and Brereton for the Rig Veda, you can find a pdf of it if you search around online. The print version is not very affordable. There's a cheap reprint of older translations by BK Classics (ed: Jon William Fergus). Bear in mind, they're literally Victorian and the scholarship behind them is way out of date.

"The Vedas" is a confusing label. I assume you're referring to the hymns (the Sanhitas) which most Hindus will never read, just memorise some popular mantras from them. To them are attached later ritual and philosophical texts. The latter are the Upanishads, and get the most attention of the core Vedic texts. They would be something better to start with.

Roughly, each of the four Vedas is structured like this:

1. Sanhitas (hymns)
2. Brahmanas (ritual texts)
3. Aranyakas (ritual/mystical/philosophical)
4. Upanishads (mystical/philosophical)

These are not exclusive categories, some upanishads are embedded in Aranyakas which may be embedded in Brahmanas. The Isha Upanishad is a Sanhita hymn. But, they're important as the four categories are authoritative revelation (shruti). Associated with these is a mountain of material further explaining ritual, philosophy, law, etc. etc. Two well-known examples would be the Brahma Sutra (philosophy) and the Manu-smriti (law).

>>11773532
I checked out that guy's suggested translations and they're ridiculous. One is by an electrical engineer, another translates the hymns to be about spaceships.

[Anonymous No.11773694]

Anybody have that story somewhere or where did I read when Guénon was in France or something, he fell into some hole wandering in a forest in the middle of night and miraculous hand/man manifested and helped him out of it and years later he recognized it as one of his Sufi masters?

[Anonymous No.11773704]

>>11773636
I don't disagree (although he himself wasn't entirely innocent in that regard) but that doesn't change that he was influenced by them and didn't entirely reach those ideas on his own. I don't really care or consider this stuff to be super important but the facts are the facts.

[Anonymous No.11773716]

>>11773694
Yeah. Here ya go. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the story, but it's still a cool story.

[Anonymous No.11773740]

>>11773704
He is both original and unoriginal. Same with Guenon. I agree it matters little however.

[Anonymous No.11773751]

>>11773716
Just for context, the guy who made that post visited Guenon's apartment in Cairo and spoke with his son. I assume he probably heard that story from his son. He made some other posts about his visit. Here's another.

[Anonymous No.11773795]

>>11773716
>>11773751
Egyptian Sufi masters (who never had visited France) miraculously manifesting themselves and materializing for a brief moment to help Guénon out of ditch?

Almost makes Blavatsky´s Mahatmas look more believable.

Not that I do not believe the story, I just think it is extremely absurd.

Guénon so deep in "perpatetic contemplation" that he fell into a ditch? That puts smile on my face

[Anonymous No.11773839]

>>11773680
>another translates the hymns to be about spaceships.
Based and redpilled.

[Anonymous No.11773851]

>>11773675
>Because it was flawed and not complete.
This alone flies in the face of the truth. Modern western philosophy is literally a stripped-down form of classical western philosophy, so by definition it is incomplete in comparison. And why a few, certainly not all, abandoned it at the time was because of misplaced pride in human achievement. Europe during the Renaissance era grew immensely wealthy, and this in turn led to significant technological development, a rediscovery of certain ancient philosophers who opposed the dominant philosophical strains of Christendom at the time further fueled this pride in man. To reduce it to a single factor, and to ignore the historical context is simply to lose all perspective on the matter entirely. It also ignores the Reformation, another major factor.

>This view is also retarded because if it's this that's responsible for modernity why is that modernity arose in the west despite those concepts being the dominant mode of thought in the east for thousands of years?
Western intellectual history is simply not that of the East. It's a somewhat complex topic, but the research on the subject definitely exists.


>Lastly your point ignores that despite a brief moment in the renaissance, the mentality of modernity is extremely anti-transcendental and tries to eliminate and cheapen any idea of transcendence by reducing it all to psychological, psychoanalytic and neurological explanations.
My point still stands. The thinking is both transcendental and immanent, take transhumanism, for example. It desires to transcend human limitation, but entirely in material terms.

The image I shared explains it all in the simplest of terms.

[Anonymous No.11773855]

>>11773795
The funny thing is that Guenon himself, while acknowledging that magic and other supernatural stuff was sometimes real; himself talked about how its nothing more than a distraction and potentially dangerous impediment to spiritual progress, he specifically talks in his books about how (without mentioning that specific indicent) supernatural feats such as those are nothing more than accidental manifestations that can coincide with attaining higher states and that the proper course is to give them no importance and to continue on as before.

[Anonymous No.11773952]

>>11773851
>This alone flies in the face of the truth. Modern western philosophy is literally a stripped-down form of classical western philosophy, so by definition it is incomplete in comparison

Did you entirely miss the context I spelled out for you? The relation of Thomism to modern philosophy is besides the point, which is that it is only a flawed/incomplete teaching would would be abandoned en masse. If it was perfect or the highest we could reach without reaching perfection than it would not have been abandoned. It already failed. The level of wealth reached during the renaissance was also reached at times in the east and modernity didn't happen to them, that's not a satisfactory answer. I agree there were multiple causes but blaming modernity on anything having to do with transcendence is completely retarded. The answer is the opposite, transcendent teachings being the norm in the east for thousands of years prevented modernity from arising and it was this being lost in the west (despite haphazard attempts to bring it back) which led to rationalism, the enlightenment, widespread atheism, modernity etc.

>My point still stands. The thinking is both transcendental and immanent, take transhumanism, for example. It desires to transcend human limitation, but entirely in material terms.

That's incorrect, escaping the limitations of the body has nothing to do with transcendence in the sense we are talking about and has to do with materialism which is the opposite of this kind of transcendence. Genuine transcendence involves going beyond the present state of existence and one's understanding of reality, to the degree that one realizes that they are not actually their body but something else; this is the complete opposite of a materialist- and fear-driven reaponse to escape death through transhumanism. Transcendence implies losing fear of death and this is what the texts of every eastern doctrine talks about. You are using that word in such a literalist way that under the way you use it I could say a bunch of stuff in christianity such as desiring to reach heaven or desiring to know and be saved by Jesus is because of a lust for transcendence. You are either arguing in bad faith or don't understand what you are talking about.

>The image I shared explains it all in the simplest of terms.

No it doesn't the eastern doctrines that people in this thread are talking about have nothing to do with magic or technology but see themselves as establishing the nature of reality and god, just as you see Thomism. Just because it involves transcendence does not automatically mean it has to do with magic anymore than being saved by Jesus involves magic, Vedanta sees itself basically as a science of reality/divinity that establishes the exact nature of reality and god by applying rigourous logic to transcendental texts. Adi Shankara is basically the Aquinas of Hinduism and uses many of the same arguments for the existence of God ~500 years before Aquinas did.

[Anonymous No.11773993]

>>11773839
Ancient technology bullshit is oddly popular among Hindus.

[Anonymous No.11774054]

>>11773952
>that it is only a flawed/incomplete teaching would would be abandoned en masse.
Catholics still exist who see Thomism as being in no need of successor, sufficient unto the day. Certainly then this matter must falls to the eye of the beholder. But here follows a question that should provide some clarity to this fog of seeming opinion: If your life's goal is to discover the elixir of immortality, which metaphysical system would you most recommend to the task?

>That's incorrect, escaping the limitations of the body has nothing to do with transcendence in the sense we are talking about and has to do with materialism which is the opposite of this kind of transcendence.
That may be but a system of belief doesn't need to transcend in any real sense of the term in order to satisfy such a desire. Simply the desire and the effort toward it should suffice. Scientism then meets the religious needs of certain insectoid mentalities, even if it doesn't qualify as a religion, properly speaking.

[Anonymous No.11774078]

Read Rene Guénon's Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines. Unlike Western Kantians and historical materialists like Sam Harris, Guénon is a strict adherent of Adi Shankara (pbuh), and they have exactly the same metaphysical doctrines as both the writers of the ancient Vedic texts and the prophet Muhammad. Of course, you will eventually have to convert to Islam to understand Hindu philosophy in its true essence, but that will come later, after you have read all of Guénon's writings and helped me fend off the Theosophical spies who beset me at all hours of the day and night. I recommend that you read Guénon's Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion before beginning your studies as it will help you to understand that Kant was a Theosophist and historians like Stephen Pinker are helping Theosophists to climb in my bedroom windows at night and troll my threads.

[Anonymous No.11774141]

>>11773952
If Hinduism was perfect then why did Jainism and Buddhism and Sihkhism form?

[Anonymous No.11774185]

>>11774141
I never said Hinduism was perfect, but if you are trying to equate it with what happened to Thomism and scholasticism that's wrong. The reason those arose is because when a religion is around for thousands of years it's inevitable that some spinoffs become popular due to them being particularly suitable for a specific people in a specific era and culture. The key difference here is that Hinduism was not abandoned en masse, there are over a billion Hindus on the planet and the same 1st-millenium BC Upanishads still form the main texts for most of them thousands of years later.

[Anonymous No.11774262]

Does anyone have any particular arguments as to why the "Supreme Reality" would be impersonal, as it is for Advaita Vedantists? For Christians, for example, that Reality is personal, three persons, in fact, one of whom, Jesus Christ, is literally a person in the way we ordinarily use that term. I have a hard time imagining a Universe coming about through some kind of impersonal emanation. Why would something impersonal cause anything to come about at all? The world seems to have a definite intent and will behind it.

[Anonymous No.11774334]

Imagine being a guenonfag in 2018 spamming /lit/ with /x/-tier garbage and samefagging it to keep it bumped up. This whole tradcore/perennial bullshit is retarded and guenonfag freaking out whenever his hero is insulted just proves vapid his whole shtick is.

Pic related: Guenonfag being exposed for samefagging multiple threads. You can all go home now, mods will delete this thread soon.

[Anonymous No.11774357]

>>11774334
I remember that thread lol

[Anonymous No.11774362]

>>11774334
BTFO

[Anonymous No.11774363]

>>11770303
>poo-poo people languages
Based and redpilled. We need a religion that will put women back in the kitchen, cull all the gays, and btfo modern degeneracy.
But not Islam because they're smelly.

[Anonymous No.11774398]

>>11774363
>yes lets adopt a sandnigger cult because some french author praised it
Cringe and bluepilled

[Anonymous No.11774410]

>>11774334
I always wondered why trad threads weren't a thing anymore

[Anonymous No.11774427]

>>11770303
seething

[Anonymous No.11774447]

>>11774363
>>11774427
Don't respond to shitposters, please. It always ends up killing the threads.

[Anonymous No.11774745]

do jews have an esoteric component to their religion? is this an elaborate way of saying that all religions are correct except the evil jewish ones?

[Anonymous No.11774836]

>>11774745
The Kabbalah....................

[Anonymous No.11774932]

>>11774262
Anyone?

[Anonymous No.11775327]

>>11774334
Genuinely in awe of this, not even sure what to say anon

[Anonymous No.11775372]

>>11774334
I thought /lit/ is drama free, but that is some impressive autism from both sides

[Anonymous No.11775385]

>>11774262
>>11774932

The Vedantic conception of Brahman is both more impersonal and and a more direct 'being' than the Christian conception. If you accept the premise that God is infinite and unlimited then it logically follows that it is unchanging and impersonal, because were it to have any distinct 'person' or 'personality' than it would no longer be infinite (literally: without limit) because than it would be delimited by the specific attributes that give it it's personhood/ality. This concept is sometimes noted as 'divine simplicity' in western theology but they never follow it to it's inevitable conclusion, maybe because it goes against the OT descriptions of a jealous and spiteful god. (the hindus solve the paradox of Vedic descriptions of deities with attributes/personality by regarding them as manifestations of the one Brahman, higher up the hierarchy and closer to the source than humans but still ultimately unreal).

But at the same time it's not regarded as a spinozian substance but is pure awareness and consciousness, (sometimes a sanskrit phrased is used to describe Brahman which translates to existence-consciousness-bliss) although it's awareness without second, without thoughts or cognition. This same awareness is regarded as the only thing which exists, the same awareness animating all beings; and at the same time all phenomenon from living beings to empty space just being superimposed by ignorance upon the infinite awareness which is the substratum of everything. It's sort of a mindfuck but if you read enough of the texts eventually you see that it makes a lot of sense. So in one sense it's impersonal because it's devoid of attributes and personality but at the same time it's the most intimate and closest thing to yourself and a living being possible because it's the awareness sitting behind (figuratively) the mind, sleep, cognition etc observing it and giving it its seeming reality.

>I have a hard time imagining a Universe coming about through some kind of impersonal emanation. Why would something impersonal cause anything to come about at all? The world seems to have a definite intent and will behind it.

The reason this seems confusing it because it's not taught as what happens with the "impersonal" god of vedanta. It's not regarded as an emanation but only exists conditionally as a kind of mirage that only subsists because of ignorance. Emanation implies emerging from god while actually nothing ever emerged, nothing ever changed or happened, all this is just pure awareness. This god is regarded as infinite and unchanging, so there is no reason to ask why an impersonal god 'created' the world because this god is the only thing which exists, has ever existed and will exist. There are all sorts of qualifications one could go into like how its actually beyond both existence and non-existence and how time and hence past and future doesn't really exist in it etc but you get the idea.

[Anonymous No.11775399]

>>11774334
So who cares if it's the same guy every time?

[Anonymous No.11775407]

>>11774334
>one sperg lied about creating the same thread twice and so now everyone who's ever created a guenon/trad/eastern thread or who's ever posted favorably about him are all actually the same person
ok

[Anonymous No.11775409]

>>11775372
Trad threads have a ton of drama for some reason

[Anonymous No.11775428]

>>11775399
>>11775409
it's mainly because guenonfag gets really really aggressive to the point of being outright delusional, you can see it in the thread he reposted with the "GET OUT SAM HARRIS"

there was another incident where he was very rude and dishonest while arguing with someone who actually knows hinduism better than he does (and not just from guenon), and the guy finally got him to concede, and then in a later thread a week later guenonfag claimed the guy actually agreed with him.. only for the guy to show up and call him out on it

he always got the trad threads deleted because any dissenting opinion was met with walls of text that easily caused flamewars.

[Anonymous No.11775437]

>>11775428
oh and then he samefags with the exact same posting style so it's obvious that it's him, and either defends himself or says "Why do people hate on this 'Guenon fag' so much??," to the point of samefagging multiple times in a row

[Anonymous No.11775441]

>>11775437
i dont understand the reasoning behind samefagging, do they think that if people see one guy agreeing then they will be more likely to agree?

[Anonymous No.11775444]

>>11775409
People who have invested years reading western philosophy, Christians and certain Buddhists often react like they are being personally attacked when they post in those threads. Before non-Buddhist eastern thought started to get more popular a few years ago on /lit/ I'd say that was actually most of the board so it's easy to see where the hostility comes from.

The people that are just into fiction or the atheists don't really care and just ignore it but Christians and Buddhists both seem to get really angry, of course because of the history between Christianity and Islam and because it implies Christianity is lacking in some way. I'm not so sure why so many Buddhists seem to get as angry, maybe because in many Buddhist books there are almost obligatory intros about how Hinduism was just 'primitive and empty rituals and superstition until Buddha came along' and so when that paradigm is challenged they feel like they have to attack other eastern doctrines to defend the truth of Buddhism. Guenon and the other people shit on a lot of philosophy so it's no surprise those people get angry too. A more nuanced reading would note that many of the same criticisms and the positions he took against it are found mirrored in various western thinkers and philosophers too but most people don't care for the nuance.

[Anonymous No.11775464]

>>11775385
Great response. I would say from the Christian standpoint it's not exclusionary. It's not that when the Christian says that God is a person (and not just any person but the particular person Jesus Christ) they are denying that he is an infinite impersonal being. The point, I think, for the Christian, is that God is just as fundamentally this person as he is that impersonal infinite, and therefore Christianity maintains this identity of the person and the transcendant essence, which is a divine mystery. It's sort of a paradox because if you deny the infinity he is hardly worthy of being called God, before if we reject the personhood the possibility of explaining our reality is greatly diminished and we're left with fundamentally unsatisfying answers like "it's just an illusion". We have to maintain both his personhood and his infinity, maintain that both are equally fundamental, and their identity and coeternity. Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.11775474]

>>11775464
>before
but*

[Anonymous No.11775497]

>>11775385
>The Vedantic conception of Brahman is both more impersonal and and a more direct 'being' than the Christian conception. If you accept the premise that God is infinite and unlimited then it logically follows that it is unchanging and impersonal, because were it to have any distinct 'person' or 'personality' than it would no longer be infinite (literally: without limit) because than it would be delimited by the specific attributes that give it it's personhood/ality.

i had this feeling intensely when i woke up this morning, there was sun coming in my curtain and i felt this sudden presence of like a million points of light in the sky but it wasnt actually in the sky it was like an intermingled associated glow that was one thing, really bright and glowing, but not in a visual way, almost like it was this mind, that was constantly 'welling' or like burgeoning in every point. I thought of God obviously but then i thought not God because God is a person sort of.

I have done a miserable job explaining the feeling but it was exactly this 'infinite merged static' thing, but it was like luminous and dark simultaneously. Now this makes no sense and has nothing really to do with the Vedanta stuff you guys are discussing, but when I read the opening of your post it made me think of the thing.

I cant reconcile the feeling of the thing with how i see the world, but it felt very much that the thing was somehow inside me or was me, and was everything, even the night, which is my favorite, but i have no way to make any of this make sense.

[Anonymous No.11775509]

>>11769072
my objection to Guenon is just that God isn’t real, noesis is the most pathetic form of union, Guenon abandoned Christianity for Islam, he was functionally an atheist, and priests are pedophiles, also the Vedic cult was nothing like Hinduism and was for the ruling race of Aryan warriors not the shudras and chandalas

[Anonymous No.11775691]

>>11775464
>Thoughts?

I think most of your post has to do with how western and eastern thought approach apparent paradoxes in different ways. With Christianity at least they leave the paradoxes of the trinity as a mystery, 'only god knows' etc. It has to be either one way or another, or it can't be answered at all - which is the position usually settled for. Eastern thought holds that it's possible to explain these sorts of paradoxes. Buddhism, Hinduism and to an extent some Sufi thinkers talk about multiple levels of truth, or an absolute reality and conditional realities that are simultaneous with it. Buddhism uses this extensively as does Vedanta, an example in Vedanta would be such as how I already mentioned in that there is a manifested world, and gods that oversee it, but all these worlds and gods are in their absolute essence just conditional realities (and hence from an absolute perspective not real).

Another example with a direct connection to Jesus would be how avataras are regarded. Avataras are essentially incarnations of a god (and ultimately of the supreme Brahman that these gods are manifestations of) that reflect and establish Dharma. Hinduism also faces the similar problem, how and why do avataras (and by extension the various gods) appear when the Upanishads talk about an infinite, spotless, unchanging Brahman? They answer this by various means, such as that the Brahman, despite being beyond good or bad in the sense of those being moral judgments, is Itself perfect and as such even in the illusions that appear within It (manifestation/the universe) there is still a divine harmony and order to it all (dharma). Very early in the hierarchy of distinctions descending from the unconditioned Absolute is Ishvara which is sort of a creative principle/action and it is these various early distinctions which cause avataras to descend to establish and restore Dharma. Shankara, despite being one of the main thinkers behind Advaita which holds that there is only an infinite unchanging Brahman; still wrote a commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita explaining how through these various principles the supreme godhead ensures order within Itself.

In the first few pages of his Gita commentary, he provides a TLDR:

>When, owing to the ascendancy of lust in its votaries, religion was overpowered by irreligion caused by the vanishing faculty of discrimination, and irreligion was advancing,- it was then that the original Creator, Vishnu, known as Narayana, wishing to maintain order in the universe incarnated himself as Krishna....
>He appears to the world as born and embodied and helping the world at large; whereas really He is unborn and indestructible, is the Lord of all creatures, and is by nature Eternal, Pure, Intelligent and Free

This is not to say the eastern way of explaining it is better, but different strokes for different folks

[Anonymous No.11775716]

>>11775497
>Now this makes no sense and has nothing really to do with the Vedanta stuff you guys are discussing,

Idk bruh, most of the descriptions in your post sound pretty similar to Vedanta/Daosim. Have you tried reading any of the texts? The part about a burgeoning or welling at every point in particular reminds me of some tantric stuff I've read, maybe look into Kashmir Shaivism.

[Anonymous No.11776641]

>>11772710
>Coomaraswamy went further in writing a book that pointed out that Buddha never denied Atma and that his doctrine of anatta really refers to the non-Atma aspects of the being as unreal in a similar way to Vedanta.

The root of his whole doctrine was that there is no Atman, or Soul (as ill translated), meaning a substance incapable of change. Thus, like Lao-Tze, based all his doctrine upon a Movement, instead of a fixed, immutable point, like Vedanta does (that is Brahman/Atman).

I do not know what kind of mental gymnastics and outright lies one would have to invent to get to the point that one comes to conclusion that "Buddhism never denied existence of Atman" while it forms the very basis of the whole doctrine.

Seems to me only someone heavily biased towards Vedanta would say anything of the sorts, someone with an agenda on their mind.
Just like Coomaraswamy would.

Posters in these threads who read nonsense like "Buddha never denied Atma" should understand to take the extremely biased Guénon -poster and Vedanta poster and their posts with a heavy grain of salt. They are not experts on the matter: more than anything: they parrot dubious claims like that of Coomaraswamy about Buddhism and the doctrine of Gautama who rejected the Hindu contemplation for rigorous analysis.

[Anonymous No.11776945]

Is there any exposition of traditionalism, I read the Transcendent Unity of Religions by Schuon and my understanding still seems incomplete.

[Anonymous No.11777174]

>>11773507
Rajagopalachari's is very popular, here you go

https://libgen.pw/download/book/5a1f04d73a044650f506a214

[Anonymous No.11778058]

>>11774334
>guenonfag: only filthy western gaijin shits in the toilet
How can western philosophy compete with such noble ideas?

[Anonymous No.11778246]

>>11776641
When Mahayana Buddhism talks about things like “inherent Buddha-mind” and “inherent Buddha-nature” in all things, it’s hard not to interpret this as atma-like speech... it’s not a very controversial claim, honestly. It’s just that, whereas Vedanta speaks of the Brahman more as a fullness, an infinitude, a conscious and eternal creating self manifesting itself throughout all and also existing in an unmanifesfed state, Buddhism tends to speak of this primordial Buddha-nature in terms of emptiness, unconditionedness (similar to the Tao, as you mentioned). Brahman is more conceived of as “∞” and Buddha-nature more as “0” but the paradox is they’re both functionally equivalent in being limitless and unchanging. The very emptiness behind all phenomena is what (for some Buddhists) constitutes a base of unchanging reality behind it.

[Anonymous No.11778388]

Dispute this chart. Protip: you can't.

[Anonymous No.11778663]

>>11776641
>I do not know what kind of mental gymnastics and outright lies one would have to invent to get to the point that one comes to conclusion that "Buddhism never denied existence of Atman" while it forms the very basis of the whole doctrine.

I already pointed out in that post that the vast majority of Buddhists would disagree with that view, I just mentioned as part of why he changed his mind of Buddhism. Coomarasway builds a pretty good case for it in his book, if you want to check it out it's on lib-gen. I'm inclined to trust the verdict on this of someone who could read both Sanskrit and Pali. As the other person who replied to you already noted there is a bunch of stuff in Mahayana which reads like crypto-Atma. Then there is also that Buddha never described Nirvana as a void or nothingness.

The only times he describes a negation is in reference to samsara, the negation being the end of illusion and bondage; but in the PC where he describes Nirvana or mentions it he never describes it as a void but uses terms like unborn, unconditioned and unchanging which the Upanishads also use to describe Brahman/Atma. In the PC are recorded Hindus that debate him or their ideas are brought up and Buddha responds to those idea, in none of them do they ever describe Atma but just argue for the immortality of the conventional self or ego which Buddha denies as does Vedanta. There isn't anywhere in the PC where Buddha is recorded as denying anything with the description of Atma. Aside from the fact that he doesn't use the word 'self' and denies that there is a 'self' all of his descriptions of Nirvana rather align with the Upanishad ones of Atma/Brahman. Neither me nor Coomaraswamy in his book are claiming that he was a crypto-Hindu or something but just that it's way closer than is commonly assumed.

>instead of a fixed, immutable point, like Vedanta does (that is Brahman/Atman)
This is wrong, Brahman and Atman are not regarded as either a point or a substance

[Anonymous No.11779510]

bump for interest

[Anonymous No.11779543]

>>11776945
Guenon is generally seen as the man who explains it best. His intro to Hinduism book (or at least the first 2/3rds that barely mention Hinduism) is sort of a TLDR, and he fleshes out his views on Traditionalism and anti-modernity more in his two books 'Crisis of the Modern World' and 'Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times'; those will make a lot more sense if you read his intro book though. The rest of his books mostly focus on eastern thought.