Non-dualism literature and philosophy

[Anonymous No.15292631]

Is there anything more cringe than being a white person who follows this Shankara guy's personal opinions?

[Anonymous No.15292650]

There are western traditions of nondualism. Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Swedeborgianism, Hesychasm, American Transcendentalism.

[Anonymous No.15292678]

>>15292631
Yes, following whatever that guy said >>15292650

[Anonymous No.15292684]

>>15292650
This dilutes the phrase "nondualism" to the point that it means nothing. Emanationists, pantheists, panentheists, and others can all be monists without being nondualists, unless all you mean by nondualism is that the world is fundamentally united in one "thing" (nature, cosmos, universe, God, whatever).

Nondualism is more commonly associated with the nihilistic illusionism of Shankara, which is a late medieval reading of Vedic pantheism, based on Buddhist epistemology.

Hermeticism, neoplatonism, Swedenborg, Orthodox mysticism, and the Transcendentalists all believed in the reality and irreducibility of created/emanated things. This is not nihilistic nondualism like Shankara's.

[Anonymous No.15292690]

>>15292631
>non-dualism
You are like a little baby. watch this:
>dialetheist double monism alternating at 2 cycles per moment which collapses into reality when you measure it but remains a superstate otherwise

[Anonymous No.15292693]

>>15292631

Non-dualism is based! OP you are the cringe one here

[Anonymous No.15292745]

>>15292693
>Non-dualism is based! OP you are the cringe one here

[Anonymous No.15292753]

>>15292684
Nihilism means there is no meaning, Shankara's Advaita is not nihilism because conciousness and Brahman are real, and there is not 'no meaning' because liberation/union with Brahman is the highest meaning. The Upanishads themselves talk at many points about illusion, ignorance, etc it's a fundamental teaching of theirs and is not a late reading.

Sufi, Sikh and Taoist literature all contain formulations of how all phenomena are unreal in relation to, or are a transient appearance of the Absolute, these various statements are often equivalent to the Advaita position. Also, the Neoplatonist Porphyry regarded the world/multiplicity as illusory.

[Anonymous No.15292761]

>>15292745
kek

[Anonymous No.15292767]

>>15292753
>liberation/union with Brahman
As opposed to non-liberation/non-union? It's still nihilism when only Brahman is real and only this cringe Brahman has meaning.

[Anonymous No.15292770]

>>15292753
>Nihilism means there is no meaning, Shankara's Advaita is not nihilism because conciousness and Brahman are real, and there is not 'no meaning' because liberation/union with Brahman is the highest meaning.
Right, and everything else other than drowning in this placid ocean of uncreatedness is meaningless/nothingness by extension.

Shankara is nihilistic with regard to everything that isn't brahman itself, which creates a pointless Parmenides universe that only exists to confuse itself about itself for no reason, and then kill itself to become itself again. Shankara badly misunderstood Buddhism and applied it to meaningless, empty monism.

[Anonymous No.15292797]

>>15292753
>Shankara's Advaita is not nihilism
Omg this! That is precisely why the nihilist west is adopting it with such ease! It's because it stands against nihilism with all its heart!

[Anonymous No.15292813]

>>15292767

Nihilism = there is no meaning to anything

Advaita = there is an ultimate meaning which is the divine reality of God, and we actualize this meaning by attaining the union with Him that is consequent on liberation

As you can see Advaita and nihilism are completely opposed to one another, and the nihilist would deny the Advaitist claim that God is the ultimate meaning

[Anonymous No.15292820]

>>15292797
Since when? Hinduism and Buddhism are taboo for westerners because muh cultural appropriation from brown bodies.

[Anonymous No.15292824]

>>15292690
>>>/x/

[Anonymous No.15292855]

>>15292650
>Hermeticism
egyptian

>Neoplatonism
egyptian (pythagoras, orpheus and plato himself derived everything from them)

>Swedeborgianism
syncretic nonsense

>Hesychasm
christianity is near eastern

>American Transcendentalism
another pseudo-philosophical syncretic nonsense

[Anonymous No.15292915]

nondualism is schizo apophaticism. notice you never see a sane, mentally healthy, nondualist

[Anonymous No.15292926]

>>15292797
It is Buddhism which actually spread much more in the west, precisely because Buddhism has so many currents to it which are nihilistic and in alignment with post-modernism, materialism, etc

>>15292770
>Right, and everything else other than drowning in this placid ocean of uncreatedness is meaningless/nothingness by extension.
Drowning is the wrong word as it implies an annihilation of conciouness (such as the Buddhist Nirvana) but in Advaita conciousness continues in its naturally spotless unconditioned equipose as pure Bliss. Advaita does not say that everything else aside from this is meaningless but that it is just transient, contains suffering and is a relatively hellish existence when compared to the supreme state of Bliss that God abides in forever, for people who still live and continue here though Advaita considers it important for them to follow their dharma, live virtuously and in accordance with the universal harmony etc

> is nihilistic with regard to everything that isn't brahman itself
Wrong for the reasons I explained above, but even if this were true it wouldn't make Advaita fit the definition of nihilism.

>which creates a pointless Parmenides universe that only exists to confuse itself about itself for no reason, and then kill itself to become itself again
Completely wrong, as the Upanishads explain repeatedly Brahman is completely unaffected by maya, only the illusory Jiva is confused, but not the Absolute/God/Brahman Itself. There is no confusion in Brahman, the reality and conciousness of God is unaffected by the power of maya which is subservient to Him.

>Shankara badly misunderstood Buddhism and applied it to meaningless, empty monism.
Actually he explains in his works how Buddhism is illogical, how their metaphysics doesn't make sense, how they have no ideas what causes anything, how it's a bunch of unsupported speculation, how their denial of the Self is contradicted by logic and our actual experience of consciousness, the list goes on.

[Anonymous No.15292957]

>>15292926
>Buddhism
Just another form of Advaita.
>Advaita
Just another form of Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.15292986]

>>15292855
I'm not sure what your point is. They still have a long history with western people, so it's not like nondualism was totally alien until the theosophists showed up.

[Anonymous No.15293110]

>>15292824
My good memer I have described a perfectly existing metaphysical belief which was and is held by leading philosophers. I may have slightly abstracted it with memery but it truly is quite excellent and solves the mindbody meme.

[Anonymous No.15293216]

>>15292926
The fact that illusion persists despite being valueless and meaningless next to "true" consciousness doesn't mean anything if you've just said exactly that, it's meaningless and valueless. It being inevitable doesn't change the fact that you're saying its value is nil, next to the value of brahman.

It also makes no sense because, again, you are defining brahman as a unified consciousness that becomes confused about itself. Why? Why not just have the bliss? The fact that the "confusion" persists for many is even worse, you are just making brahman into an occasionally sleepy retard that hurts itself.

>Completely wrong, as the Upanishads explain repeatedly
This is not in the Upanishads, this is all from Shankara's Buddhist reinterpretation of them. Pic related. The vast majority of Hindus disagree that you are giving a faithful interpretation of the Upanishads here, so let's stick with Shankara.

>Actually he explains in his works how Buddhism is illogical
Most scholars and most Hindus throughout history have agreed that Shankara is basically a Buddhist reinterpreting the Upanishads. Like I said it's best if we confine our discussion to Shankara's conception of Brahman itself rather than these issues.

[Anonymous No.15293252]

>>15292986
of course they have a long history in the west, but specially with both platonism and christianity. my point is that the fountain of knowledge is in the east, as the two ones just mentioned.

[Anonymous No.15293360]

>>15293252
>my point is that the fountain of knowledge is in the east
This... Brother... The East truly is the spiritual center wherein all metaphysics originates from as a steady warm stream of esoteric knowledge....

[Anonymous No.15293380]

Aum..........
Ganesh....
Grant me non-dual enligthenment...
This is not a prayer... It's meditiation...

[Anonymous No.15293385]

>>15293360
yeah, now any argument?

[Anonymous No.15293438]

>>15293216
>The fact that illusion persists despite being valueless and meaningless next to "true" consciousness doesn't mean anything if you've just said exactly that,
I never said it was valueless and meaningless but I said the exact opposite, that it has value/meaning but that this value pales in comparison to the value and meaning of God just as 1 is an existent number but still pales in relation to infinity

>you are defining brahman as a unified consciousness that becomes confused about itself.
No I'm not and I didn't, are you ESL or are you just playing dumb? I already specified that Brahman itself is never confused and is never subject to Maya's influences.

>This is not in the Upanishads,
Wrong, they affirm in many places that Brahman is unaffected

As the sun, which helps all eyes to see, is not affected by the blemishes of the eyes or of the external things revealed by it, so also the one Atman, dwelling in all beings, is never contaminated by the misery of the world, being outside it.
- Katha Upanishad 2.2.11.

"This Self is That which has been described as ‘Not this, not this.’ It is imperceptible, for It is never perceived; undecaying, for It never decays; unattached, for It never attaches Itself; unfettered, for It never feels pain and never suffers injury.
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.5.15.

[Anonymous No.15293544]

>>15293438
You are contradicting yourself. Either the "illusion" generated by brahman has independent value, in which case it is a meaningful creation, and you no longer have pure nondualism because created/creator are now distinct; or the illusion generated by brahman is nothing but a shadow compared to brahman (which is in fact how you speak of it), in which case you have a meaningless perfect unity that occasionally forgets it's a unity.. for no reason.

>Brahman itself is never confused
Ah, so it's something else that is confused when the "illusion" of multiplicity is generated. You have even more ontological states than the dualists then. Nice. Advaitafags can't even remain consistent.

>Wrong,
Who are you quoting? Oh, you're just saying that I'm wrong? Because I just told you, most Hindus now and throughout Indian history, and most contemporary scholars, consider Advaita to be a late medieval Buddhist-influenced reinterpretation of the Upanishads and not a faithful reading of them.

So it's just you saying "wrong?" Against all these practicing Hindus and academics who think this? They even have a term for it, they call Advaita "crypto-buddhism."

Not sure why you're quoting random, English translations of late, Buddhist-influenced Upanishads. I already agreed with you that Buddhism significantly influenced Vedanta.

[Anonymous No.15293576]

>>15293544
>pre-buddhist upanishads were influenced by buddhism

[Anonymous No.15293581]

>>15293576
The only pre-Buddhist Upanishad is Chandogya, and even that is uncertain, and continued to be edited for centuries so there are undoubted post-Buddhist accretions in it.

[Anonymous No.15293609]

>>15293581
chandogya and brhdaranyaka, not uncertain they are shruti, oral tradition going far back to their written composition. there are rg veda influences obviously too

[Anonymous No.15293708]

>>15293216
Your picture only makes Shankara more based. Hindu obsession with the Vedas has hindered them at some points, and Shankara adopting the two truths was a 200IQ move.

[Anonymous No.15293717]

>>15293609
All of them undoubtedly have much older strata, for example all the parts of the earliest and most authentic Upanishads that have straight-up theistic cosmogonies (this includes Brihadaranyaka).

Of course, different vedantic schools explain these away depending on their persuasion. The ones that agree with them are literal, the ones that disagree with them are symbolic. And as more and more sramana influences creep into the Upanishads, it becomes easier and easier to argue that they are monistic/emanationist, since this was the tendency of the sramana groups.

Here is a good quote by Patrick Olivelle on the subject, right from the beginning of his book on the Upanishads:
>I have avoided speaking of "the philosophy of the Upanisads," a common feature of most introductions to their translations. These documents were composed over several centuries and in various regions, and it is futile to try to discover a single doctrine or philosophy in them. Different theologians, philosophers, and pious readers down the centuries both in India and abroad have discovered different "truths" and "philosophies" in them.

And Olivelle on the Chandogya and Brihadaranyaka:
>In spite of claims made by some, in reality, any dating of these documents that attempts a precision closer than a few centuries is as stable as a house of cards. The scholarly consensus, well founded I think, is that the Brhadaranyaka and the Chandogya are the two earliest Upanisads. We have seen, however, that they are edited texts, some of whose sources are much older than others. The two texts as we have them are, in all likelihood, pre-Buddhist; placing them in the seventh to sixth centuries BCE may be reasonable, give or take a century or so.

But he is using old chronologies. He was writing in the '70s and using scholarly consensus from mid-century, and even earlier. Since then, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic studies have changed the landscape of Indology considerably. Many scholars now date only the Chandogya to earlier than "the Buddha." Although the chronology for Buddhism has been pushed down too. What really matter isn't so much the date of the guy named Gautama, about whom we know next to nothing direct, but the influence of the non-Vedic sramanic culture on the brahmanical sources further to the north and west.

[Anonymous No.15293734]

>>15292797

the little trends that you see on this board are not reflective of the world

[Anonymous No.15293754]

>>15293581

this argument is completely retarded and doesn't stand up to any kind of critical thinking whatsoever. they were not WRITTEN DOWN, pre-buddhism you moron

[Anonymous No.15293890]

>>15293544
>Either the "illusion" generated by brahman has independent value, in which case it is a meaningful creation
It is a meaningful creation, it's not meaningless, there is a harmony within and telos to it which leads people to the ultimate meaning of God
>and you no longer have pure nondualism because created/creator are now distinct
Creator/created are distinct in Advaita. Advaita maintains pure non-dualism on the level of absolute reality where there is Nirguna Brahman alone, but outside of this absolute reality and under the influence of maya dualities and distinctions have a contingent existence. Advaita says there there is non-duality of Atman and Brahman, and that this Supreme Atman-Brahman in its true transcendental state within absolute reality is non-dual and without a second; These are the ways that Advaita is non-dualism. what you are doing is making up random standards of what non-dualism constitutes and then using that to find alleged contradictions in Advaita which are not really there. Just because Advaita says that there is a meaningful existence and that distinctions exist conditionally within maya does not mean it's no longer non-dualism. There is a school called Shuddadvaita Vedanta (pure non-dualism) which is not what Advaita claims to be.

>or the illusion generated by brahman is nothing but a shadow compared to brahman (which is in fact how you speak of it), in which case you have a meaningless perfect unity that occasionally forgets it's a unity.. for no reason.
Brahman is a perfect unity and never forgets its unity, all multiplicity, division and ignorance leads back to an immutable undivided unity which is the basis on which everything else arises "as it were"

>Ah, so it's something else that is confused when the "illusion" of multiplicity is generated
Yes, Brahman is not confused, the Jivas which stem from maya are subject to confusion

[Anonymous No.15293930]

>>15293890
>Jivas which stem from maya are subject to confusion
how does the non-confused brahman beget confusion?

[Anonymous No.15293951]

>>15293890
Then Advaita is just an emanationism or pantheism, and not a true "nondualism," in which case the Buddhist epistemology Shankara has appropriated and claimed to have found in the Upanishads is kind of being misused. That Buddhist epistemology is supposed to be truly nihilistic, because it is renouncing everything which has so far been made manifest, but it is only nihilistic with regard to those things. It is not saying that nothing whatsover is real, only that we do not have access to what is real, because nothing holds up under its scrutiny.

>These are the ways that Advaita is non-dualism.
You are describing an emanated monism. That is not non-dual. Vishishtadvaita does the same thing, with better results and with more respects for the actual content of the Vedas. Shankara takes a purely negative Buddhist epistemological framework, which wasn't meant to work with absolute monism (in fact such monism is one of the first things it was built to reject), and uses it to argue for a monism, which is featureless and nihilistic by consequence.

The fact that you then back away from this and go "no no no, there are FEATURES, they're just 'less cool' features than brahman itself, which is the coolest" doesn't help. If you want to be an emanationist like this, then be one. If you want to be a Buddhist, then be one. This in-between position is why everyone calls Shankara retarded. The only people who have ever been satisfied by Advaita are westernized deists who want God to be a perfectly smooth meaningless ball.

[Anonymous No.15294038]

>>15293930
With His power of maya, which can create the appearance or contingent existence of multiplicity, time, space, souls and the conditions causing the ignorance which inheres in them.

>>15293951
>Then Advaita is just an emanationism or pantheism,
Wrong, it's not emantionism because nothing ever emanates but only has the appearance of doing so, there is no separate emanated world in reality, but the contingent and conditionally-real maya-universe of appearances still has a meaning and telos to it which leads the Jivas in it to God. It's not pantheism because Brahman is transcendent to the Universe
>and not a true "non-dualism
What is the standard that constitutes "real-nondualism" in your view? It seems like you are pulling this out of your ass and are making up your own definitions of things
>which is featureless and nihilistic by consequence
It was already explained why this is completely wrong

[Anonymous No.15294047]

There's nothing as cringe as eastern religion posters on this board

It's literally just 4-5 and they post the same text, same images, same (pbuh)

Literal schizos

[Anonymous No.15294057]

>>15294038
>With His power of maya
why would he want to create this confusion?

[Anonymous No.15294073]

>>15294038
>nothing ever emanates but only has the appearance of doing so

But you just said here >>15293890
>It is a meaningful creation, it is not meaningless

It either has distinct existence, as a created and thus differentiated part, or it doesn't. It's either a created "something" or just the illusion of something. You can't have both, and going back and forth between emanationism and this strange buddhistic nihilistic version of monism doesn't magically allow you to have both.

This is what has been happening for a thousand years, advaitins being asked this simple question by the vast majority of Hindus, who find them to be nihilistic, and then they just dodge the question.

[Anonymous No.15294126]

>>15294073
Not him but,
I think that a three states explanation of Brahman works best.
The deep sleep brahman - totally unconscious
The dreaming brahman - immersed in the illusion of Maya and indentifying himself with the everchanging Jiva
And the awakened brahman - once it has dropped the illusory idenitifcation with Maya
These states exist at the same time, the same way Sat-Chit-Ananda coexist.

[Anonymous No.15294142]

>>15294057
Brahman does not have wants or thoughts, Brahman is pure consciousness. It is Brahman's very nature to do so as it is the very nature of the sun to emit light, there is no want or motivation involved. It follows from Brahman's existence as an eternal entity, the emergence of the contingent universe from Brahman and its return to him being comparable to the rhythm of breath in and out of the body.

>>15294073
Just because something is an appearance does not mean it is meaningless, appearances can have meaning, there is no contradiction there. The whole premise of your post hinges on this misunderstanding of yours.

[Anonymous No.15294170]

I even thought meanings where just a species of appearance that stand in certain relation symbol appearances, namely, the language relation ;^)

[Anonymous No.15294176]

>>15294142
Unfortunately, your post and your whole philosophy are hinging on semantic games. This is probably why Advaita was only popular with theosophists and European style deists. You're a westerner yourself, right?

The problem is you trying to reconcile Shankara's crypto-buddhism with the Vedas. It can't be done, except in the way you did it above, by backing away from the Buddhist part until it just becomes Vishishtadvaita anyway.

>>15294126
This sounds good to me, but that's just because it's emanationism. Those things are distinct from one another. But why not embrace the distinctions like the more popular Hindu philosophies do?

[Anonymous No.15294228]

>>15294176
>emanationism
In a way, yes, but only if you imagine Maya distinct from Brahman, which i don't consider a necessity, since you normally don't separate a Jiva's consciousness from it's dreams, and neither does the Jiva's mind create them, since it only rearranges information it already has.
Brahman is often described as encompassing multiplicity in his oneness, and as such, I would not see the dream/maya state of Brahman as an emanation, but rather as a misidentification of his own counciousness in his evolution from deep sleep to full consciousness.
And if you think this contradicts the unchanging brahman doctrine, i think it's because the term unchanging is not fully adequate for this case. Brahman doesn't indeed change his nature from one to another, but it's nature itself is a continuous flow through these 3 states.

[Anonymous No.15294331]

>>15294176
>your post and your whole philosophy are hinging on semantic games
No semantics involved, you made the error in assuming that appearances are inherently meaningless, I pointed out this error and showed that once you understand it there is no longer any ostensible contradiction in Advaita as you had thought

[Anonymous No.15294363]

>>15294228
That sounds interesting and plausible to me. At the end of the day the terms are just heuristics anyway, and we're supposed to be looking for the concrete, experienced content of the states they try to designate. But the nihilistic, half-buddhist half-monist language of the average advaitin has led a lot of people to think mysticism is pointless because it just leads to nihilism anyway.

Of course, the better advaitins are emanationists for practical purposes anyway.

>>15294331
It's impossible to understand the two mutually contradictory terms you alternately take to be the same thing, depending on which one's convenient.

This is why Shankara never should have "fixed" brahmanism by basing it on Mahayana Buddhism. It leads to semantic confusions like yours.

[Anonymous No.15294382]

>>15294363
>It's impossible to understand the two mutually contradictory terms you alternately take to be the same thing
Which are?

[Anonymous No.15294419]

>>15292957
the ultimate non-dualism pill

[Anonymous No.15294441]

>>15294363
>half-monist
Anon inventing koans without noticing, enlightening /lit/ users just by random postings. His opinions are surely correct and we must all follow his lead.

[Anonymous No.15294454]

Do isolated civilizations arrive to the non-duality knowledge by intuition?

[Anonymous No.15294477]

>>15294441
Inshallah..

>>15294454
Eliade thought they arrived at esoteric knowledge, but for him it wasn't nondualist so much as a metaphysical realm structured by primordial symbols, at least at the levels we sometimes have access to. There are references in his 1940s journals to "primitive platonists."

The Parmenidean school probably had a genuine esoteric teaching that may have been truly nondualist, but we can't say for sure what its content was. All we have left are its logical doctrines, which are a kind of negative way.

[Anonymous No.15294484]

I think the cringe comes when you start dressing up like these Asian religious groups, trying to pretend like their culture is yours. If these religions and philosophies have value, and I think they have a ton of value, then I think the correct way to practice is to maintain your own culture while integrating their philosophical ideas into your own lifestyle. I find a lot of value in zen figures like Shohaku Okumura, Taoist philosophies like that of Zhuangzi, and just random thinkers like UG Krishnamurti. But if you're a white/black/etc. westerner and you're an expert on those subjects, I'll probably trust you a lot more if you're in a suit or a t-shirt and jeans, than if you're dressed up in Asian robes.

[Anonymous No.15294487]

>>15294454
That or by revelation

[Anonymous No.15294528]

>>15294484
For me, they just don’t have good aesthetics. I don’t care how good the beliefs are, I don’t want to see pictures of blue four headed elephants all the time. All systems of thought require visually pleasing aesthetics, otherwise why bother?

[Anonymous No.15294529]

>>15294484
I think cringe at robes is worse than wearing of robes.

[Anonymous No.15294544]

>>15294529
t. wearing a dress right now

[Anonymous No.15294553]

>>15294487
Shankara's epistemology does not take revelation as self-sufficient. He regards sruti as "wise," but not revealed. Another reason most Hindus find him distasteful, as for them the vedas are simply sruti.

[Anonymous No.15294620]

>>15294170
If he actually adhered in his arguments to the post-modern relativist philosophical views that he followed then he would accept that but instead he was trying to create a false contradiction in his opponents view by defining the terms they use in an arbitrary and unsupported way not agreed to by them and then using that as proof of said contradiction.

[Anonymous No.15294631]

>>15294620
Why would people using terms in contradictory ways agree that they're being contradictory? That would ruin their whole ruse of using word games to confuse rather than confront the contradiction.

I'm sorry your internet LARP religion is founded on dumb semantics like this. You can always pick another one. You might even get to wear a different colored robe! We both know that's really why you're in this.

[Anonymous No.15294802]

>>15294553
This is wrong, Shankara fully considered the Sruti to be revealed texts and in his Brahma Sutra commentary he condemns the ultimate validity of conclusions reached by independent reasoning on the basis that there willl always be a smarter man to upend someone else's theory reached through reasoning and he says that revealed scriptures and the direct experience of their teachings are the only valid means to reliably know supersensuous or transcendent realities.
This the position taken by almost every Vedanta school except Dvaita, where instead Madhva calls it the realist school and assumes dualism to be true on the basis of perception and then reads the Upanishads in that light.

In the introduction to his Aitareya Upanishad commentary Shankara has his opponent ask why are people still not bound by the Vedic instructions to carry out rites after they have achieved moksha, to which Shankara replies that as Brahman the scriptures emanate from oneself and that a king is never seen being forced to obey the servants underneath his control and that as such someone who has so become Brahman is not bound by the Vedic scriptures which emanated from Himself, especially in light of the Upanishads which speak of ending rites.

[Anonymous No.15294868]

>>15294802
That's a lot of words to say "I don't have to do what the scriptures say to do."

This is why the vast majority of Hindus see it as crypto-buddhism. Don't know why this is hard for you to understand.

[Anonymous No.15294916]

bogpill me on why being crypto-Buddhism is a bad thing

[Anonymous No.15294931]

>>15294868
The Brihadaranyaka and other Upanishads praise and recommend monasticism which is incompatible with Vedic rites which require expensive means, Shankara was just using supplementary reasoning there to back up what the Upanishads already say

[Anonymous No.15294951]

>no pictures past half way down the thread
Okay, BYE! BYE! BYEEEEE!

[Anonymous No.15294998]

>>15294916
Inconsistency leads to bad philosophy, especially when it's done just to manipulate religious discourse and maintain the status quo. Buddhism is Buddhism, Vedism is Vedism. Vedism is based on purportedly revealed texts that talk about all kinds of theogonies and cosmogonies, personal gods and goddesses, souls, and so on. Advaita is an extremely late sect, following Gaudapada (almost certainly a Buddhist) and a slightly later disciple, Shankara (almost certainly flirted with yoga and buddhism for much of his life), who more or less buy the whole enterprise and philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism but don't want to go completely over to the Buddhist fold. Probably because there were caste/cultural/ethnic differences associated with doing so.

So they wrap the whole thing in the Vedas by doing back and claiming they were all Buddhist to begin with. Not even Badarayana was "advaita." No scholar, not one, can support this interpretation. Shankara even set up Buddhist-style monasteries. This way, they get to keep all the aspects of Buddhism they like without taking on whatever they didn't like, like for example associating with groups they didn't want to associate with, or more probably, dissolving the already weakened brahmin priesthood.

Pic related, brahmins always come in edit older texts to seem like they support brahmins. They don't even care if it's done well, as long as it's done.

>>15294931
This is casuistry. Shankara is notorious for downgrading the pure, revelatory status of sruti to something that can "advise" and "be confirmed" by the direct experience of the independent sage, just like he says that rites are not necessary for the enlightened sage. He's a Buddhist who didn't want to admit it for whatever reason, probably because he wanted to maintain his caste status or some shit. At the end of the day, all he's saying is that there's no revelation.

>The Brihadaranyaka and other Upanishads praise and recommend monasticism
There is actual no historical or archaeological evidence for sramana monasticism in India until centuries after the primary Upanishads, outside of the Pali Canon which can't be trusted. Either way, the form of monasticism which Shankara sets up in much later India (1000AD) is late Buddhist style institutional monasticism, not anything from the Vedas.

[Anonymous No.15295004]

>>15294998
Refreshed and forgot pic.

[Anonymous No.15295255]

>>15294998
>There is actual no historical or archaeological evidence for sramana monasticism in India until centuries after the primary Upanishads, outside of the Pali Canon which can't be trusted. Either way, the form of monasticism which Shankara sets up in much later India (1000AD) is late Buddhist style institutional monasticism, not anything from the Vedas.

This is incorrect. There is in fact direct existence for a pre-existing Brahminical monastic tradition predating Buddhism in the Buddhist Pali canon itself which attests to the existence of such a group. The Buddhist scholar Hajime Nakamura discusses the evidence in this article

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2718412

In Suttanipata 976-978 there is:

a Brahmin conversant with the mantras (Veda), who always wandered about the countryside as an itinerant priest, living on gleanings and the fruits of trees and who wished for nothingness

and in Samyuktagama chapter 9, 255, cf. TT II.63c.

itinerant Brahmin who observes a fast and who recited the three scriptures (i.e. the Vedas as the Arthava-Veda wasn't considered a Veda in Buddha's time)

and other examples of this are found as well, Nakamura concludes that there was a predexisting Brahminical monastic tradition predating even the earliest Upanishads. It is the views of these groups of early Brahmin monastics which Shankara accurately reconstructs in his works

[Anonymous No.15295423]

>>15294528
Still better than Christian aesthetics though. Nothing but poorfags in rags from Judea and then a bunch of half starved teary eyed monk saints.

[Anonymous No.15295442]

>>15295255
I just said, the Pali Canon is notoriously unreliable and cannot be used as an historical source. Even if you could admit it as an historical source, you would have to admit all kinds of things that I guarantee you you won't like. But the fact of the matter is that nobody uses internal analysis of the Pali Canon for historical reasons. We can't even attest the most basic details of the Buddha's life and the practices of early Buddhism from it, the most central things for any scholar of Buddhism and any practicing Buddhist.

In any event, these are descriptions of early Buddhism style itinerants, identified by scholars like Bronkhorst with the non-Vedic sramana tradition I mentioned above in this thread. They are also from relatively late parts of the Canon, even by Pali standards. What is happening here is that Buddhists with nearly a thousand years of established itinerant renunciate traditions, and monasteries more recently, are projecting their way of life onto stories that were told and re-told orally for hundreds of years before being written down and then transmitted for hundreds more years.

>there was a predexisting Brahminical monastic tradition
We don't even know what the words "Aranyaka" or "Upanishad" mean, aside from folk etymologies like "forest ascetic," and they are the names of entire major sections of the Vedas. We don't even know if Magadha was a gigantic imperial city or not built yet in 500BC. We don't know anything about contemporary society except from texts that come from a thousand years later or more, continually edited down through the centuries to reflect the needs of whoever was editing them. But you want to discover an entire well-developed ascetic tradition from two lines in a RIVAL textual corpus that is even worse preserved.

>Shankara accurately reconstructs in his works
Shankara didn't have to "reconstruct" anything, or even construct it. The monasteries he is associated with, if he even founded them (we can't say for sure because we know nothing about his actual life), are institutional Mahayana Buddhist in style.

[Anonymous No.15295514]

>>15295442
not the guy you're discussing with but jesus christ dude stop being so dishonest look at this shit
>We don't even know what the words "Aranyaka" or "Upanishad" mean
are you not ashamed of it lol it is obvious that there was pre-buddhist tradition of asceiticism, hermitism, etc

[Anonymous No.15295590]

>>15295514
I was excited when you said I'm being dishonest that you'd actually confront me about something substantive, but all you said was "lol haha lol dude like lol."

No one is saying there wasn't. In fact, that tradition was mostly associated with the eastern Ganges which was explicitly not Vedic, and which later influenced the brahmanic complex and broke down brahmanical rite-based authority, the result of which was the Upanishads.

Since you greentexted that line, I'll respond to it even though you didn't say anything in response to it. No, we don't know what those words mean. Read any book at all on early Sanskrit literature or Indian philosophy and you will inevitably get to the section where they speculate about possible meanings of the term Upanishad, often nodding to Muller's famous formulation and a couple of others, before saying simply that we don't know. Aranyaka is even more complicated. We have no idea what "the aranyakas" were, if that was even a group or type. All the etymologies are folk etymologies and speculative reconstructions, freely admitted by anyone writing on this topic since Muller, Deussen, and so on.

This is why internet advaitafags are annoying, they read western synthetic sources like Guenon and a few overviews, but don't want to do any real work.

[Anonymous No.15296149]

>>15292926
>Buddhism has so many currents to it which are nihilistic and in alignment with post-modernism, materialism, etc
Buddha pretty much argued against nihilism and materialism.

Where are Hindu drones getting these misconceptions from??

[Anonymous No.15296175]

happy buddha's b'day bros

[Anonymous No.15296284]

>>15294802
>Shankara fully considered the Sruti to be revealed text
But isn't Sruti text wrapped around Maya? Ramanuja accuses Shankara of devaluing the absoluteness of the Vedas by relegating it into conditional knowledge.

[Anonymous No.15296398]

holy based bros.... join this server for non-dual discussion G4ts7Vy

tat tvam asi

[Anonymous No.15297653]

>>15295004
What's the source of your pic? It has some interesting points and I would like to read further.

[Anonymous No.15297670]

>>15297653
not that anon but i'm guessing max muller

[Anonymous No.15297677]

>>15292690
You will receive another blow to the head soon enough.

Your lucky numbers are 19, 45, 52, 312, and 3

[Anonymous No.15297686]

>>15292957
Yes, but why do the Advaita guys got to be such dicks about it. Like we get it.

[Anonymous No.15297926]

>>15297686
Advaitin here. Most advaitis can't accept that Shankara used a Buddhist exegesis on the Upanshads. A thing that was already happening in the background before him, because a closer inspection of both the upanishadic tradition and the buddhist one show that they developed together and influenced eachother, with the upanishads gradually evolving towards an absolute monism who's realisation transcends rituals and dogmas, and buddhism slowly incorporating more "self-like" doctrines. What Shankara did was basically do the final push, extract all the monism he could find in the upanishads, brahma sutras and bhagavad gita (which is, by itself, a summary of the upanishadic philosophy) and put it together into a stand-alone school of tought.

[Anonymous No.15298047]

>>15297926
Yeah, I get that. But it just seems like such dick waving when Advaita proponents try so hard to paint Buddhism as some sad wayward sect of Vedic thought. I don't ever see Buddhists running about trying to pretend that Buddhist thought came from no where and was invented whole cloth by one guy. It's just for how Buddhism developed and what it is now, that origin doesn't at all weaken the core thrust of what the entire school represents culturally and spiritually. It seems so often like you guys are just trying to say "See you guys are just a little tiny part of our old school Hinduism" or other bad faith arguments of that kind. And for us it just seems like a very spiritually rich and complex society spawned at nearly the same time two very different religions that should not be considered parts or sects or divisions of each other. So they have a great deal to say to each other. Yes. But this pedantic emphasis on the "True origins of Buddhism" are just unhelpful to both sides.

[Anonymous No.15298090]

>>15298047
The advaitins you talk about are advaitis only as an identity, and not as a practice of mindfulness. Otherwise they would know that the origin of either advaita or buddhism, or whether one is a sect or another (which is not the case) is absolutely irrelevant. All that matters is the validity and usefulness of the school of thougth. And in this case both advaita and buddhism are amazing philosophies with a rich history and a lot of freedom for spiritual advancement, that unfortunately get a bad reputation due to sectarian retards.

[Anonymous No.15298378]

>>15297926
>Advaitin here
cringe

[Anonymous No.15298390]

>>15298378
>cringe
cringe

[Anonymous No.15298393]

do we really need an autistic buddhism shitfight every day guys

can't we give it a rest for a little while?

[Anonymous No.15298637]

>>15295590
Indeed Upanishads is a term with a wide range of meanings but I merely tried to convey that Aranyaka, etymologically and literarily refers to ascetic wandering monks, and this is part of the Vedas.

>western synthetic sources like Guenon
>cites Muller and Deussen

you are really dumb aren't you?

[Anonymous No.15298651]

>>15298393
It's not about Buddhism, it's about schizo guenonfag getting mad that people disagree with his autism. It used to be about whitehead (because guenon retroactively BTFOd parmenides, whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean), and eventually he'll give up when the Buddhismfags don't fuck off and he'll schizobabble about something else.

[Anonymous No.15298855]

based anti-shankara bro, what do you think of ramanuja?

[Anonymous No.15298912]

>>15292824
>"Wahhh wahhhh dialetheism can't be true wahhh wahhh"
You are not intelligent

[Anonymous No.15299116]

>>15298651
buddhistfags have been here long before guenonfag/advaitafag (who's essentially an election tourist from /pol/) and will likely outlast the latter for a long time.

[Anonymous No.15299141]

>>15298855
>anti-shankara bro
Why the anti-shankara sentiment in all of you tourists here?

[Anonymous No.15300076]

>>15299141
overrated thinker + forced meme

[Anonymous No.15300092]

>>15298651
>It's not about Buddhism, it's about schizo guenonfag
the person who posted this thread was attacking Shankara and non-dualism, stop projecting your own behavior onto Guenonfag