/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13459456]

An American Vegan druggie low-test 'kinda-bi' crypto-materialist Buddhist professor was teaching a class on Gautama Buddha, known subverter of the Tradition. "Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Buddha and accept that he was the most brilliant individual the world has ever known and that he proved that there is no such thing as self!" At this moment, a brave, wise and virtuous autodidact former-NEET who had read all of Śaṅkarācārya and achieved atma-jñāna and who understood the necessity of combining positive descriptions of the Absolute with apophatism stood up and asked the professor "If the Self is just an illusion, then who or what is directing my body to ask this question?". The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied "a fleeting and changing bundle of mental aggregates which have no inherent existence, you stupid eternalist". "Wrong", the absolute madman replied, "the subject precedes its own negation, if Atma is an illusion with no reality sustaining and underlying it, then it wouldn't be consciously experienced as awareness, there are no examples of illusions such as mirages being self-aware like we are, you cannot have a dream without a dreamer, a illusory snake is never mistakenly seen in an empty room, but only where there is an existing real such as the rope upon which the idea of the snake can be superimposed. The Buddhist model contradicts empiricism, logic and common sense and as such must be rejected".

"T-t-this is all wrong, you just haven't meditated enough, if only you had you would understand that I'm right!" the professor screeched in a state of panic. "Meditation is a fool's errand my friend" the student wisely replied, "only knowledge leads to liberation as it's only knowledge which is mutually incompatible with ignorance just as light is to darkness, whereas meditation belongs to the sphere of action which can exist without opposition alongside ignorance". The professor was visibly shaken and dropped his copy of Mulamadhyamakakarika. He stormed out of the room crying those Buddhist crocodile tears. The students all applauded and began to recite Vedic verses. A eagle named 'Dharma' flew into the room and perched atop the shoulder of the brave student and shed a tear of joy. The works of René Guénon were read aloud from several times, and Kalki himself showed up and ended the Kali Yuga. The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day, he retreated to east Asia but soon died from the complications of a gutter-oil diet. ॐ

[Anonymous No.13459491]

>>13459456
based, except for the guenon part

[Anonymous No.13459493]

>>13459456
>only knowledge leads to liberation as it's only knowledge which is mutually incompatible with ignorance just as light is to darkness, whereas meditation belongs to the sphere of action which can exist without opposition alongside ignorance
dropped
is that his line or your own

[Anonymous No.13459569]

>>13459493
“Action cannot remove ignorance for they are not opposed. Self-Knowledge removes it as light removes darkness.” - Atma-Bodha

[Anonymous No.13459593]

>>13459569
Damn I should just become a monk right now I'm gonna die one day anyways lol

[Anonymous No.13459638]

>>13459456
>buddhism contradicts logic and common sense
I'm with you just I think it precedes not contradicts it
>only knowledge leads to liberation
???

(I don't disagree in principle)

[Anonymous No.13459658]

>Buddha into Shankara
>Shankara into Ramanuja
You're almost there, anon.

[Anonymous No.13459695]

>>13459456
I don't understand half of this but I wish there were more lighthearted Eastern philosophy memes and banter here. but meditation is vastly more important than ratiocination, a far better source of knowledge than the latter. Buddha understood this, even if you disagree with some of his specific doctrines

[Anonymous No.13459867]

>>13459456
kek

[Anonymous No.13459906]

>>13459456
This was fucking hilarious thank you anon

[Anonymous No.13459971]

>>13459456
Based and enlightenedpilled

[Anonymous No.13460020]

>>13459658
I have read some of Ramanuja and I consider them to be two different ways of understanding and approaching the same truth. I see Shankara as going deeper and being more correct in his metaphysical model and I find reading him to be more interesting, but at the same time I would agree with someone who says that following Ramanuja's teachings is a more practical way to approach bliss and liberation for someone who lived a normal householder life and wasn't a renunciant, one could say the same about Kashmir Shaivism as well.

[Anonymous No.13460041]

>>13460020
In a way, Ramanuja’s infinite qualities of Brahman remind me of the Orthodox doctrine of uncreated energies, while the radical non-dualism of Shankara reminds me of the Catholic doctrine of absolute divine simplicity. They aren’t exact equivalents, I would say the Hindu ones are more metaphysical and the Christian ones more theological, but they seem analogous. I don’t know of this is something that has been pointed out before, but it could make for an interesting comparative study.

[Anonymous No.13460055]

>>13460020
>>13460020
Here I'll defer to UG:
>I sometimes tease our Professor here, who is an advocate of Advaita (Sankara's monism), "You cannot go beyond Ramanuja's position (qualified non-dualism), as far as philosophy is concerned. There it stops. Monism is something which you cannot talk about - -- for all practical purposes it doesn't exist. That is the limit." I'm not proRamanujacharya or anti-Sankara. As I see it -- as a student of philosophy. I studied philosophy -- you cannot go beyond that chappie Ramanujacharya. You may not agree with me. As far as the philosophical position is concerned, Ramanujacharya's position is the limit, the ultimate. The rest of it? Maybe there is.... If there is a monistic situation, that is something which cannot be talked about, and which cannot be applied to change anything in this world.

[Anonymous No.13460286]

>>13460055
"You cannot go beyond Ramanuja" sounds to me like a furtive way of saying "I didn't understand Shankara's works". UG's statement is noticeably devoid of specifics. If monism/non-dualism is something that truly "you cannot talk about", than how did Shankara manage to do so over the course of the 4000-5000+ pages of brilliant writing that he was responsible for? UG ignores this obvious contradiction in his claim.

[Anonymous No.13460461]

>>13459456
You made that "Buddhist" from a strawman...

[Anonymous No.13460496]

>>13459456
Cringe

[Anonymous No.13460519]

>>13459456
>The works of René Guénon were read aloud from several times, and Kalki himself showed up and ended the Kali Yuga.

And Kalki was found to be Adolf Hitler, riding in a Vimana, a disk of light...

[Anonymous No.13460537]

>>13460461
treating what is obviously a low effort meme thread seriously at all is doing a disservice to the Buddhadhamma

[Anonymous No.13460566]

>>13460537
Oh, I dunno, it's good to laugh at ourselves, and it's good to be good-humouredly critical about the sort of "Buddhists" such as Professor Strawman in the above story. Unfortunately many such Straw-men, and Straw-women for that matter, walk about claiming to be teachers of a Dhamma they do not understand... Laughter is a great cure for such people.

[Anonymous No.13460786]

>>13460461
cope

[Anonymous No.13461184]

>>13460519
If Adolf Hitler was an avatar of Vishny you'd think he'd have won the war

[Anonymous No.13461198]

Buddhism is just one massive ressentiment wrapped in an exotic oriental cloth.

[Anonymous No.13461203]

>>13461184
Prophecies do not guarantee victory.

[Anonymous No.13461206]

>>13459456
Shankarabro, these memes and constant shilling are one of the only good things about /lit/ anymore.

[Anonymous No.13461217]

>>13461184
I thought that, too, but fear not! Serrano has rationalized defeat into victory...

[Anonymous No.13461224]

>>13460286
Hmm? Krishnamurti hates the holy men, he would just call him a liar if you prodded him enough. Me? I mostly side with, about the issues of Indian spiritualism, that they tend to be a matter of phrasing the same thing in such a way as to lose all significant contradiction (i.e. 'losing the light as they slip deeper into the jungle' might be his way of putting it. He, again, wasn't much of a proponent of Ramanuja, he was more just in lock-step with where Indian metaphyics ends on an, err.. It would be easier to describe if you were a bit more schizo, but he delineates where Indian culture "unconsciously allows itself to stop seeing." He's a very contingent speaker, you can take him as speaking absolutely in few critical places, but he never once made a universal statement; He thought of them as impossible.

[Anonymous No.13461239]

>>13461217
Ironic how Serrano and Savitri Devi hate Christianity but end up with a theology that is literally Pauline. "Dude, he died but not really and because of that he btfo Judaism forever."

[Anonymous No.13461268]

>>13461239
Devi is a hero worshipping chick writ large. Serrano is a product of Western Ceremonial Occultism, and Western Occultism is very much a product of its times. Whether in agreement with or in reaction to it, mainstream European Christian thought will be a greater or lesser influence.

[Anonymous No.13461270]

>>13461198

>t. nietzsche scholar that has only read orgy of the will and wikipedia pages about buddhism

[Anonymous No.13461293]

>>13461268
Yeah, but they're literally repeating Christianity except they've replaced Christ with Hitler.

[Anonymous No.13461328]

>>13461293
In a way, yes, but Christianity itself a repetition of earlier Solar death-and-resurrection cults which are ubiquitous amongst humans throughout history.

[Anonymous No.13461518]

>>13459569
meditation is not action
and action can remove ignorance
just not as well as other ways

[Anonymous No.13461722]

>>13459456
10/10 pasta

[Anonymous No.13462023]

>>13459456
>you just haven't meditated enough,

this is unironically 100% correct

[Anonymous No.13462049]

>>13461293
No.
>>13461328
No.
Read the fuckin book.

[Anonymous No.13462061]

>>13462023
>dude anyone who meditates enough will decide that Buddhism is true despite meditation predating Buddhism, despite meditation being taught and practiced in non-Buddhist religious traditions and despite the Buddha canonically being taught various types of meditation by non-Buddhists

[Anonymous No.13462213]

>>13462061
Those guys also hadn't meditated enough.

[Anonymous No.13462219]

>>13462213
delusional

[Anonymous No.13462437]

Advaitin shitflinging at all other doctrines is the best part of /lit/ these days. But there really needs to emerge a true Buddhist autistic NEET to oppose the advaitaposter. Right now it's usually too one-sided.

Who will save Buddhism on /lit/?

[Anonymous No.13463054]

>>13462219
cope

[Anonymous No.13463085]

>>13462437
is advaitafag and geunonfag the same person?

[Anonymous No.13463188]

>>13459658
Ramanuja is just Shankara but watered down for normies.

[Anonymous No.13463262]

Read Zhuangzi, advaitafags. All is based on ground assumption - the fish is happy because you see them, nothing more.

[Anonymous No.13463323]

>>13459456
That snake analogy is retarded.

[Anonymous No.13463333]

>>13462437
>a true Buddhist autistic NEET
Buddhism sort of shits on complicated metaphysics stuff, so potential Buddhadharma autist will see that, stop reading amassing arguments and sources, and just sit to meditate.

[Anonymous No.13463578]

>>13459456
This is pasta now.

[Anonymous No.13463668]

>>13463085
Don't think they are.
>>13463333
So I guess this is why Buddhism lost in India.

[Anonymous No.13463794]

>>13463668
it lost because of muslim barbarians

[Anonymous No.13463826]

>>13462437
atleast buddhism can manage to come with a comeback (being a chad indian tradition and all) unlike the dumbwit greeks, children's philosophers as they were called in those days

[Anonymous No.13463833]

>>13463794
>In particular, his defence against medieval Buddhist positions on Vedic rituals is noteworthy. Some believe that this contributed to the decline of Buddhism in India,[5] because his lifetime coincides with the period in which Buddhism began to decline.[1] Indeed, his dialectical success against Buddhists is confirmed by Buddhist historian Taranatha, who reports that Kumārila defeated disciples of Buddhapalkita, Bhavya, Dharmadasa, Dignaga and others.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kum%C4%81rila_Bha%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADa

In addition to Bhatta, Shankara was known to have traveled around debating Buddhists as well. Most historians generally accept that a Hindu intellectual revival contributed to the decline of Buddhism and that it wasn't just from Muslims, it's only Buddhist non-historians who deny this because it pains them to admit it.

[Anonymous No.13463917]

>>13463826
>atleast buddhism can manage to come with a comeback
"dude just meditate" isn't a comeback. I think a neo-Platonist or Stoics would be able to do more than that.

[Anonymous No.13463922]

>>13463833
>yeah bro this avatar of a certain deity came down and btfo'd all buddhists

[Anonymous No.13463975]

>>13463917
>dude just meditate
if you're being serious, the guy who said that earlier was baiting

[Anonymous No.13464090]

>>13459456
Dude
"the subject precedes its own negation, if Atma is an illusion with no reality sustaining and underlying it, then it wouldn't be consciously experienced as awareness, there are no examples of illusions such as mirages being self-aware like we are, you cannot have a dream without a dreamer

What the student is saying merely enforces the idea that we need the idea that we need to see objects as units and attribute self awareness to ourselves in order to attribute experiences to ourselves.
If this wasn't the case, we wouldn't have anything to place anything in the outside world in juxtaposition to.
Everything would simply 'be', and not 'be, compared to, us'.
The student hasn't proved the atman to be existent, eternal, or in fact, anything to exist outside of our perception.