Monism

[Anonymous No.16389230]

How do non-dualist ontologies like that of advaita cope with the fact that Maya or another supplementary term still persists as a derivative phenomenon?

It's hard to believe in the unreality of my being's separation from the being of a tree when it's been immediately present from the beginning and clearly tangible as a frame of reference. In the same vein you could ask why the supreme principle or Brahman would deceive itself with Maya to begin with. If an illusion isn't experienced as an illusion, by what criterion is it known to be illusion?

[Anonymous No.16389321]

bump

[Anonymous No.16389345]

>>16389230
I've never heard an answer that wasn't semantic confusion, afaik. They just say : "it's not *really* what is", but admit that "in some sense, as illusory, it is". I'm sure there must be something out there, considering how much good Indian philosophy there is.

[Anonymous No.16389377]

>>16389230
I feel I left out a bit of context in my original question, so I wanna elaborate: I've read a fair bit of shankara's commentaries on the bhagavad gita. It's said that Maya is neither essentially real nor unreal, and that this is just its nature. That just feels like cope to me. It's analogical to how buddhists seem to wrongfully deny consciousness; "If there is no perceiving and eternal unchanging subject, to whom and against what does the world and mind appear unreal and changing?" (paraphrasing Shankara), there's a sense that you wanna do away with an intrinsic aspect but can't entirely rid your doctrine of it, so it gets relegated to a secondary position or ignored altoghether.

The gnostics and early christians also pull something of this sort when they assert that Evil or the material world is mere privation of Good or the divine. Especially is this apparent in gnostic cosmology (see apocryphon of john) where the unknowable, infinite and transcendant Godhead contains everything but still births the material universe within himself through the fault of one of His spirits (Sophia). Gnosticism is interesting because it's simultaneously dualist and nondualist, and it seems they somehow make it make sense, but not really - idk man I'm very confused about all this.

[Anonymous No.16389395]

>>16389345
Yeah for sure, that's exactly I wanna know too, hence the thread

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.16389620]

This is why the harsher Nondualists like the kashmir shivaites (particularly abhinavagupta) shit upon Vedanta as “not really nondual” and why the Aghori worship Maya. Ramakrishna’s Nondual ontology is a pretty comfy intro to maya affirming nondualism.

[Anonymous No.16389689]

>>16389620
Book or article you'd advise focusing on that? For ex. from Ramakrishna? You don't quite spell out how exactly they solve the contradiction of either saying more than Brahman exists, or that there is no such thing as Maya, if they don't defend that there are "levels of truth", a level at which X is the case, but "not ultimately"?

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.16389878]

>>16389689

They affirm that everything without exception is Paramsiva/Brahman including your delusion. The only problem is a matter of perception, but even the incorrect perception is divine.

http://www.estudantedavedanta.net/Sayings%20of%20Sri%20Ramakrishna.pdf

[Anonymous No.16389888]

>>16389620
Interesting. I wanna echo other anon, do you have any books you'd recommend on this?

[Anonymous No.16389893]

>>16389888
Nevermind, refreshed thread >>16389878 thanks

[Anonymous No.16390024]

>>16389878
I'll read the .pdf but I think I understand what you mean.
It seems to me a modern western assumption that if you, say, mistake the rope for a snake, the mecanism of the mistakenness is confusion between the snake-perception, and the rope-object ; you think that the snake exists as a perception and as an object, but it only exists as a perception and what truly exists is the rope. Still there is no sense in which the rope was the true identity of the snake ; it's the opposite, attributing to the snake attributes of the rope is the mistake. If you interpret Maya the world-creating action of brahman as on the other hand identical to Brahman, it seems to me that you are indeed led to denying Maya is unworthy of worship like the aghori, since mistakenness is not in Maya but in lacking the knowledge that Maya is part of Brahman. But then, do they not all end up admitting that?

[Anonymous No.16390486]

Both systems, however, the emanational and that of Christia-
nity, leave unanswered the question which they regard as
beyond the power of human mind to solve, although they
make some attempt to do so: namely, how did the degradation
of Being take place? The way this question is formulated varies
according to the conception of the Absolute: in the first case
it is ‘Why did the One give rise to the manifold?’, in the second
‘Why did God create the world?’ The One in Plotinus’s thinking,
like the Creator in Augustine’s, is characterized by absolute self-
sufficiency, and it would be blasphemous to suppose that they
needed other beings or lacked anything that could be supplied
by the created world. Nor can the question ‘Why?’ be asked
in the sense of discovering an external cause that could influence
the will of God or the emanational activity of the Absolute. A
being which is completely self-sufficient, lacking and needing
nothing, unable to be more perfect than it is, cannot display
to the human mind any ‘reason’ prompting the act of creation.
The very notion of an Absolute Creator contains within itself
a kind of contradiction: if absolute, why does he or it create
human kind? If created reality includes evil—even though we
regard this evil as mere negation, defect, or insufficiency—how
can we explain its presence in a world brought into being by an
Absolute which is itself supreme Power and supreme Goodness?

Plotinus and Augustine give essentially the same answer to
this question, by which they are both equally baffled. According
to Plotinus, everything depends on the Good and aspires to it,
as all things need it while it needs nothing {Em. i. 8. 2). Since
there exists not only the Good but that which radiates from it,
the limit of that radiation must of necessity be Evil, that is to
say pure deficiency, which is matter. (‘As necessarily as there
is something after the First, so necessarily there is a Last; this
Last is Matter, the thing which has no residue of good in it 5 :
Em . 1. 8. 7). The road leading downwards from the One to lower
and lower hypostases has a kind of inevitability about it, entailing
successive degrees of deficiency or evil. But as to why the
Supreme Good had to go outside itself in order to produce a
reality that it does not need and, in so doing, to introduce the
disturbance of evil into the closed autarky of the Absolute—of
this Plotinus has nothing to say except for a laconic remark about
‘superfluity’ or‘superabundance’ {hyperpleres) . (‘Seeking nothing,
possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in
our metaphor, has overflowed, and its superfluity has produced
the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been
filled and has become its contemplator and so an intellectual
principle [nous]’: Em. v. 2. 1).

[Anonymous No.16390493]

>>16390486
This enigmatic notion of a ‘superfluity’ of existence or of good-
ness has continued to serve Christian philosophy as a solution to
the awkward problem, although its inadequacy is obvious
enough—we may ask, for instance, ‘superfluity’ in relation to
what? Augustine himself does not seem to be bothered by the
problem or to see that there is anything to answer, and he
expresses astonishment at what he calls Origen’s errors on the
subject. God, he declares, does not experience any lack; the
creation is the effect of his goodness; he did not create the world
from necessity or from any need of his own, but because he is
good and because it is fitting for the Supreme Good to create
good things. ( Conf xiii. 2. 2; Civitas Dei , xi. 21-3).

This motif recurs, almost without change, throughout the
course of Christian philosophy in so far as it is free from suspicion
of unorthodoxy. As St. Thomas Aquinas puts it,‘.. .excessusautem
divinae bonitatis supra creaturam per hoc maxime exprimitur
quod creaturae non semper fuerunt’ ( Summa contra Gentiles , 11.
35). This indeed is all that can be said, given the premiss of
God’s perfect self-sufficiency, but the flimsiness of the explanation
could not go altogether unperceived. What exactly can be the
excessus bonitatis which creates a universe that nobody needs?
Kindness, or bounty, is a relative quality, at any rate to the
human mind; it is impossible for us to comprehend the goodness
of a self-sufficient God without any creature to which it can be
extended, and we are thus led to conclude that the goodness
of God without the universe is a virtual and not an actual
goodness—but this conflicts with the principle that there is no
potentiality in God. We might suppose that the act of creation
was necessary to God in order that his goodness might manifest
itself, so that in creation God attains to a higher perfection than
before; but this in turn conflicts with the principle that God’s
perfection is absolute and cannot be increased.

[Anonymous No.16390519]

>>16390493
Theology, of
course, has answers to these objections, pointing out that it is
meaningless to speak of God ‘before’ the act of creation, because
time itself is part of the created universe and God is not subject
to temporality; as Augustine says, he does not precede his creation.
In any case, the theologians continue, our minds are not capable
of fathoming the depths of God’s nature, but can only understand
him in relation to the work of his hands—as Creator, as almighty,
kind, and merciful; while, on the other hand, it is certain that
no relative attributes can pertain to God, that he exists in and
by himself and that the universe cannot modify his Being. These
answers, however, amount merely to an admission that no answer
can be given. For if we are only able to know the divine nature
in relation to ourselves, and if we know that this relativity is
not a reality in God himself, then it follows that the question
we are seeking to answer concerning the essence of God in himself
and its relation to his essence ‘after’ the creation is not a question
that can properly be asked, and that we must fall back on the
sacred formulas without attempting to probe their meaning.

[Anonymous No.16390543]

>>16389230
>How do non-dualist ontologies like that of advaita cope with the fact that Maya or another supplementary term still persists as a derivative phenomenon?
What exactly is the contradiction here? Non-dualism in Advaita has to do with the non-duality between the Atman and Brahman. Maya always persists because it like light emanating from the sun of Brahman. When the body of a liberated man dies their Atman enters into its true nature as the supreme Brahman which is always liberated, without anymore seeming association with bodies. Maya persists only for people who have not yet returned to the center, as it is supposed to.

>It's hard to believe in the unreality of my being's separation from the being of a tree when it's been immediately present from the beginning and clearly tangible as a frame of reference
Which was really immediately present in the beginning, your physical body, or one's innermost apprehending-awareness which observes and controls that body? Which one of these is really embodied as a limited being in the world, the body and its mind, or the awareness which apprehends that bodies and its mind, thoughts, sensory perceptions etc as Its own objects? If you perceive that the body lives as an object in the world, senses pain and pleasure in body parts, and has an intellect which produces thoughts but you don't perceive those things about the awareness which apprehends that body, sensations of pain and pleasure, thoughts etc in Its consciousness, then can you really truthfully say that consciousness is embodied? If your awareness was capable of affected by pain, hunger, etc you would say "my sentience is in pain" or "my consciousness is hungry", instead you say "my foot hurts", "my stomach is hungry" and so on. Consciousness is the crystal that appears to take on the color of the red cloth placed behind it.

[Anonymous No.16390559]

>>16390543
An immortal soul isn't really immortal unless it is also beginningless and eternal. If the world is beginningless and eternal, or if there is a beginningless and eternal cycle of the creation and destruction of unlimited universes, and if you accept that this creation etc of the universe by God or Brahman can take place, than by taking place through the same power which overflowed or radiated outwards into the worlds, the imbuing of the soul with a seeming false experience of beginningless embodiments can take place through the same process. The soul is beginningless and eternal precisely because the soul or jiva light like a ray of light emanating from the sun is an appearance of God who as the presence dwelling within the heart of those soul-images is also without beginning, the appearance being as old as its source.

>In the same vein you could ask why the supreme principle or Brahman would deceive itself with Maya to begin with.
Brahman is not affected by maya, only the false reflections of the original consciousness are. Shankara affirms in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya that the creation of the worlds through Brahman's power of maya may be compared to disport as in the successful king who has all his desires fulfilled peacefully strolling through his gardens, although Shankara specifies that in the case of Brahman this is not as something that is done to fulfill a desire for amusement or satisfaction as a king still might, but that Brahman qua eternally free infinite Bliss is freed from limited pleasures, and that the 'disport' is that from out of the plenitude of this effulgent fullness the maya-light is effortlessly allowed to emerge. The Sun's light is of no consequence to itself, a truly free being would utilize its inherent power or shine its inherent light, were it free to do so without any encumbrances.

[OP No.16390616]

Based, thanks for the replies everyone, I'll get around to reading them soon. Bumping in the meantime to keep thread alive.

[Anonymous No.16390643]

>>16390543
>because it like light emanating from the sun of Brahman
This is not admissible as an explanation in a metaphysical discussion. It's a myth or metaphor, which can be analogically propaedeutic for an understanding of the metaphysical actuality of the thing in question, but it relies for its own actuality on a non-metaphysical domain (physical or everyday phenomena), which are themselves presumably reliant on ultimate metaphysical reality, which is the thing to be explained. You can use a myth to indicate or demonstrate, but not to prove.

>When the body of a liberated man dies their Atman enters into its true nature
You've just ontologically committed yourself to "true" and "false" realities, or actual and manifest realities, or apparent and real, illusory and non-illusory, phenomenal and metaphysical, whatever terms you want to use, because the terms aren't the issue. The issue is that there are two of them and both are considered ultimately real. Notice how if you say "one is real, the other is unreal and dependent on the real," you have just repeated the problem. The problem is that there is a real and unreal at all. Why would the real cause or involve the unreal at all? That's what the OP is asking.

Everything else you've written relies on a dualist cosmology that you just claim is nondualist. It's a system derived from the initial premise that the non-illusory, real reality of Brahman somehow involves or causes a second actuality, Maya. Calling it "unreal" doesn't negate that it is actual.

>>16389620
That's very interesting, can you say more about these criticisms?

[OP No.16390920]

>>16390486
I expected this to be from Jung since I recall him talking about the nature of evil in a similar way in Aion, but it's apparently from Kolakowski's work on Marxism, lol. Threw me for a bit of a loop, I should read Kolakowski.

[Anonymous No.16390939]

>>16389230
You can always try out Eckhart Tolle's book. His perspective on it made sense to me.

[Anonymous No.16390995]

>>16389395
chinese buddhism (zen) and its precursor (daoism) has an actual understanding of material reality, and no good mysticism. (please fuck off if you actually read the mystical daoists, theres no use in that)

On the other hand, India’s understanding of material reality is poo-brained but they have their whole metaphysics and God system which is clearly very intriciate. (I still think it is shitbrain nonsense)


Anyway, they say the Chinese were too concerned with the material world and the Indians were more concerned with the divine. You can see now how that affected them long term. China is efficient yet has no spirituality so they have become a massive factory of a country. India has no fucking grasp on material reality so they continue to roll around in their shit.

[OP No.16391005]

>>16390939
>Eckhart Tolle
I instinctively shy away from nu age philosophers that self proclaim enlightenment because they tend to be shills, but I might give him a shot. Could you give me a rundown of his arguments?

[OP No.16391040]

>>16390995
The CCP were historical revisionists, and IIRC Mao wanted to purge the records of chinese history for the arrival of the 'new man'. I would be hesitant to conclude that the chinese state with its roots in marxist doctrine, a historically staunchly materialist and western conception of the world, has any affinity with Taoism. I skimmed Zhuangzhi's inner chapters and a commentary on the matter, and insofar as he could be considered a Taoist I don't see any clear line connecting the industrial complex of China with Taoism.

[Anonymous No.16392123]

>>16390643
>The issue is that there are two of them and both are considered ultimately real.
wrong

[Anonymous No.16393132]

how can dualism be true if everything that has any ontological status has to participate in the same being? ie if two things both "are", than the "being" of each of them has to be the same being.

[Anonymous No.16393556]

>>16390643
>This is not admissible as an explanation in a metaphysical discussion
>You can use a myth to indicate or demonstrate, but not to prove.
I'm not trying to prove anything and nor do I need to, I was simply answering OP's question. The concept being valid doesn't hinge on the sun being a 1:1 perfect analogy, I never implied that the perfect analogy occurring in the natural world would prove the truth of the metaphysical concept. Light emanating from the sun is a good analogy because it last as long as the sun does, i.e. it's relatively unceasing, Brahman always wields its power of maya in a similarly unceasing manner. The sun emanates light without undergoing any deviation from its nature and without engaging in some unusual action that it doesn't do at other times, in the same way these things are also true of Brahman and maya.
>The issue is that there are two of them and both are considered ultimately real.
That's incorrect, only one is ultimately real.
>Notice how if you say "one is real, the other is unreal and dependent on the real," you have just repeated the problem. The problem is that there is a real and unreal at all.
That's not a bug, that a feature, as the Upanishads make clear. You still have not explained what is wrong at all with there being something unreal. When you have the false experience of dreams at night, and then you wake up and realize that those experiences weren't real, does that make you question the nature of reality and say "good heavens, how can there be real and unreal experiences"?
>Why would the real cause or involve the unreal at all? That's what the OP is asking.
Because maya is the power of Brahman, and entities have powers to use them. Brahman is omnipresent, so there is nothing else aside from It which It could need, and Brahman is without desires so there is nothing that could compel It to take action. There are no 'whys' for such an entity, Brahman just is, and this is-ness shines outwardly like a lamp or the sun.
>Everything else you've written relies on a dualist cosmology that you just claim is nondualist.
False, because all duality including maya is eventually sublated, the liberated Supreme Self transcends maya and does not experience it.
>It's a system derived from the initial premise that the non-illusory, real reality of Brahman somehow involves or causes a second actuality, Maya. Calling it "unreal" doesn't negate that it is actual.
Advaita uses real in the absolute sense, i.e. something is real if it is beginningless, immutable, eternal, indestructible, and something is unreal if it is changing, non-eternal, composite, subject to decay. In this manner the observable universe is unreal in relation to the unchanging principle and metaphysical truth by virtue of which the observable universe exists. Since Brahman is the omniscient and omnipotent Supreme Being there is no fault in saying His powers can appear as the worlds, but that these can also be sublated.

[Anonymous No.16393572]

>>16393556
>I'm not trying to prove anything and nor do I need to, I was simply answering OP's question.
That would entail proving the point OP is asking for proof of, which is that monism is coherent.

>Light emanating from the sun is a good analogy
Agreed, was just making sure you know it's an analogy and not an explanation.

>That's incorrect, only one is ultimately real.
You've committed the exact sophistry OP wanted clarified in the first place. The rest of your post follows from it by trying to systematize it (which I already said isn't a solution to the problem), and apparently other Hindus take issue with it as well, according to >>16389620.

I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. You have not answered why perfectly self-sufficient Brahman would emanate imperfect, delusional Maya. I know you don't like it call it emanation but that's what it is, as the OP asked you to clarify.

[Anonymous No.16393683]

>>16393572
>the point OP is asking for proof of, which is that monism is coherent.
Advaita is not monism, and secondly it remains an unproven proposition that Advaita is not coherent. I have no obligation to disprove what has itself not been proven. It is on OP to show how it is incoherent if he wants to have that discussion, in my answers I explained how it actually is coherent and clarified what seemed to be some of their misunderstandings such as that Brahman is fooled by maya.
> You've committed the exact sophistry OP wanted clarified in the first place.
which is?
> You have not answered why perfectly self-sufficient Brahman would emanate imperfect, delusional Maya.
I already explained that Brahman doesn’t need a reason for maya. Brahman is the completely free Supreme Being, and out of its freedom and unlimited power it allows Its power of maya to always be manifested. Whether maya is manifested or not makes no difference to Brahman, as Brahman is infinite Bliss which is unaffected by maya, why would Brahman need a reason do something which made no difference to Brahman? If it makes no difference for or to Brahman, what reason could for there possibly be for Brahman to do it? The Upanishads describe Brahman giving rise to the universe through maya without saying the reason for maya. You are free to hold as a subjective opinion that it’s not a good thing that the Upanishads and Advaita don’t give a reason for why Brahman wields His power or sakti of maya, but this is not the same as finding an actual contradiction in the doctrine or logic of Advaita, far from it.
>why the perfect would emanate the imperfect
Would it not be more illogical to say that the imperfect God or reality was the prior source and cause of a perfect one?

[Anonymous No.16393700]

>>16393683
>Advaita is not monism,
The way you have described it, it is an emanationist monism.

>unproven proposition that Advaita is not coherent.
To you. To the people who asked you for an explanation, it remains incoherent. Apparently also to many Hindus.

>Whether maya is manifested or not makes no difference to Brahman
So Maya's manifestation is autonomous from Brahman's reality? That means it's dualism. That's even worse. You were better off when you were defining it as emanationism.

>Would it not be more illogical
Illogical is illogical. There are no participation trophies in metaphysics. You keep describing Brahman as an self-sufficient Absolute of pure knowledge, that also emanates illusory Maya. That's incoherent.

[OP No.16395137]

>>16393683
I wasn't intending to be asking for proof of anything, just an elucidation, if there was one to be had. If it's just taken for granted and there's no two ways about maya persisting as a supplementary 'unreal reality' then I won't press for an account, I'm not doing apologetics here. I'm just asking out of a purely intellectual curiousity, and as such I appreciate the thought put into your replies.

[Anonymous No.16395176]

>>16390995
>please fuck off if you actually read the mystical daoists, theres no use in that
There's no use in that if you just read it. You have to have secondary litterature on the side to get the symbolic network at play. With it in mind, you can see a rich metaphysic. It's never argued rigorously like Indian metaphysics though, that much is true. But it's there, and the meme of the Chinese as natural materialists is retarded.

[Anonymous No.16395205]

>It's hard to believe in the unreality of my being's separation from the being of a tree when it's been immediately present from the beginning

No it hasn't

>and clearly tangible as a frame of reference.

the "tangibility" is an aspect of maya

>why the supreme principle or Brahman would deceive itself with Maya to begin with

It is absurd to imply that he decieves himself with his own maya. That's like saying I would fool myself with my own riddle. I obviously know the answer to the riddle from the very start, since I was the one who created it.

[Anonymous No.16395208]

>>16389377
>I've read a fair bit of shankara's commentaries on the bhagavad gita. It's said that Maya is neither essentially real nor unreal, and that this is just its nature. That just feels like cope to me.

Okay. No one cares what you "feel" is a "cope"

>I'm very confused about all this.

Yes, you are.

[OP No.16395222]

>>16395205
From the perspective of avidya it would be as if the Brahman deceived itself. How the state of maya persists would seem to attest to a self-deception, that's my point.

>>16395208
Bless me with your supreme knowledge O great guru

[Anonymous No.16395238]

>>16395222
Well what the hell can you expect to gain from a perspective of avidya. No the Brahman didn't "deceive itself". The state of maya persists because the Lord of the universe is maintaining it. Take a perspective of knowledge, instead of a perspective of lack of knowledge, as your starting-point.

[Anonymous No.16395240]

>>16389230
I have been thinking about this issue for quite some time. And I think that the universe is comprised of two distinct things: truth and reality. Truth, in my opinion, is a non-derivative phenomenon because it cannot be reduced to anything else. Reality, on the other hand, does not exist outside of the human mind; rather there are many realities which depend upon individuals' perceptions and experiences.
Consider the following: reality is a series of images which are projected onto one's mind through sensory data. For example, when I view an apple, my mind creates a picture in my head; and this image is distinct from the actual object. Thus, there are numerous realities (such as blue vs. green apples), based on people's sensory experiences.
Another example is the notion of a non-dualist reality, as opposed to dualist or pluralistic realities.
This is a very good example of the multiverse theory. In other words, there are many realities in existence; and they cannot be reduced to each other.
For instance, if I were to say that an apple is true and real, you might argue that it is not really true because the reality of a blue apple does not exist.
I would respond by saying that blue and green apples exist in reality, even though they are not true or real.

[Anonymous No.16395243]

>>16395240
We could generally say that what modern people refer to as "reality" is one and the same as "maya", that is true, good on your for noticing this.

[Anonymous No.16395283]

>>16395205
>>16395208
What I experience exists in some sense. If it exists, is it Brahman or not Brahman? If it is not Brahman, Brahman isn't all there is. If it is, and Brahman is ultimate reality, how is it not ultimately real itself?

[Anonymous No.16395297]

>>16395283
Things that you experience through sense-perception are not real, they are ephemeral, they are maya (or dunya as the muslims say)..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(religion)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunya

[Anonymous No.16395302]

>>16395297
This is pure, unadultered confusion masquerading as revelation. The western tradition can claim perception is illusory, in the sense that what you percieve doesn't really exist outside of you. But it still exists. To be an illusion, the illusion has to be. So I repeat my question to you.

[Anonymous No.16395311]

>>16395302
>So I repeat my question to you.
Okay

>What I experience exists in some sense.
Wrong

> If it exists, is it Brahman or not Brahman?
Everything is Brahman

> If it is not Brahman, Brahman isn't all there is.
Just nonsense.

>If it is, and Brahman is ultimate reality, how is it not ultimately real itself?
Basically this all comes down to the meaning of the words "real" and "exist", in the process of trying to explain the revelation of the Vedanta into the english language, which I don't feel like attempting. Go study the real words in sanskrit.

[Anonymous No.16395329]

>>16395311
>What I experience exists in some sense.
>Wrong
I fucking knew that's what you retards would deny. This is literally brainwashing. So, redness in my field of vision, that I experience right now (as impermanently as you want), is actually not being experienced? What is the illusion then? The illusion just doesn't exist, there is no illusion? Pretty nice, no need to study your shit.
>Basically this all comes down to the meaning of the words "real" and "exist", in the process of trying to explain the revelation of the Vedanta into the english language, which I don't feel like attempting. Go study the real words in sanskrit.
So you fail at defending your beliefs. You need not only to explain the especially enlightened ontology behind your doctrine that makes it coherent to say illusions just aren't eventhough they have the property of being illusory. You also need to explain why this ontology is better than any others. That's the whole discussion, if you're not willing to attempt it go home.

[OP No.16395334]

>>16395238
Food for thought. Might fuck around and ascend just to see what it's about

[Anonymous No.16395352]

>>16395329
People who can only get caught up in arguments over metaphysical word games, claiming experience has some sort of magical essence to it, never make any real contributions to science or society. Literally early stage schozophrenia.

[Anonymous No.16395390]

>>16395352
Are you adressing me or >>16395311?
Either way I agree, but the best way not to get caught up in metaphysical word games is muh definitions and pushing discussions to their end. Leaving things half-baked allows you to believe in things you don't have a full cognitive grasp of.

[Anonymous No.16395414]

You're making two mistakes here.

Firstly, not all monists are like Advaita Vedantins, postulating that the "primestuff" is actually a conscious entity. The Ancient Greek monists had all sorts of primestuffs that weren't conscious. Asking why "water" deceives itself is obviously foolish, water doesn't have any kind of thoughts at all.

Secondly, you're misunderstanding how "illusion" works. You're operating off of a soft dualist view. You think there's some pure reality, and your eyes (for example) are capable of perceiving this. If you see something that doesn't match up with your mental map of reality, such as an oar bent in the water, you think it's because your eyes are broken and aren't showing you the "real-reality". This is not how non-Westerners conceive of illusion, however. Rather, your eyes are fine, the flaw is in your mind. It's not about WHAT reality is but HOW reality is. You are, indeed, seeing the oar bent. That's a real experience. The flaw is in thinking that there's some objectively real oar that can be separated from everything else and you can check whether or not that is bent. Truthfully, there is no illusion at all, there's just ignorance on your part.

We can abstract this a bit and say "okay, but why does everything-made-of-water experience illusion then?", and the answer is that the experiencing of illusion is also made up of water, so it's just "another thing".

[OP No.16395439]

>>16395414
Interesting rundown. Some affinity to Heraclitus in terms of the water analogy? (everything precedes from and returns to fire)

[Anonymous No.16395636]

>>16389230
Take the gnostic pill.

[Anonymous No.16395644]

>>16390486
>The very notion of an Absolute Creator contains within itself
>a kind of contradiction

its an extension of his fullness

[Anonymous No.16395656]

>>16390543
Why is that awareness trapped in maya

[Anonymous No.16395665]

>>16390559
>false
Why does false reflections exist? That means brahman is at fault. Use critical thinking please.

[Anonymous No.16395668]

>>16395439
I was actually initially going to use Teotl, the Aztec primestuff, and while that works a little better in the example is more obscure than the Pre-Socratic monists. You could just as well replace it with fire, air, some kind of Daoist cosmology where everything goes back to Dao, etc. But, yes, Heraclitus, and that entire monistic Pre-Socratic period sort of fall into this.

[Anonymous No.16395721]

>>16395414
>Asking why "water" deceives itself is obviously foolish, water doesn't have any kind of thoughts at all.

water is an extension of a Being that fools itself, a demiurge

[Anonymous No.16396519]

>>16393700
>The way you have described it, it is an emanationist monism.
That’s incorrect. Monism is the position that the entire universe and all existence is comprised of a single substance. Advaita is not monism because there are a plurality of principles admitted which mean that there is a fundamental difference between for example sentient consciousness and the insentient objects which appear in that consciousness. So because of this it is not a doctrine where there is a single substance comprising everything, that is closer to a doctrine like Vishishtadvaita or Kashmir Shaivism. However, none of these principles contract non-duality, because eventually in liberation all dualities and principles are sublated for that jiva and they awake to the nature of being the Supreme Lord who is eternally liberated and unaffected by maya, whose non-dual bliss-consciousness is untouched by the maya-light radiating from Itself.

Advaita is also not emanationist. The emanationist Indian doctrines generally follows the Parinamavada causation model where the cause transforms itself into its effects. Advaita teaches the Vivartavada model where there is no modification of the cause itself, and that the effect never actually arises from nothingness and it never emerges as a transformation of its cause, but it only exists virtually as an appearance of its cause. This is also the point of the ‘ajativada’ or non-origination doctrine written about by Gaudapada and Shankara. Advaita is not emanationist because Brahman doesn’t transform into or eject a part of itself for the purpose of forming that part of Brahman into the inferior world. Instead at the level of absolute reality, there is the non-dual beginningless Brahman alone, and the universe is just Its unlimited power which Brahman permits to appear as Its beginningless image.
>So Maya's manifestation is autonomous from Brahman's reality?
That’s incorrect, just because it makes no difference to Brahman whether He does so or not doesn’t entail that it’s autonomous from Brahman, you won’t get far in your arguments with these zany jumps of logic. Maya is not autonomous because it is the power or energy of Brahman and is dependent on its existence as a power of Brahman for its contingent being. Maya does not become an exterior independent autonomous reality, but it is Brahmans power appearing within the underlying basis of unchanging pure consciousness which is the ultimate background of all the changing phenomena which appear in consciousness.
>That means it's dualism.
False, for it to consist of dualism there would still have to be an enduring duality of principles at the level of absolute or supreme reality, but at this level there are no dualities remaining as maya is sublated.
>illogical is illogical
>self-sufficient Absolute of pure knowledge, that also emanates illusory Maya. That's incoherent.
You haven’t given a reason why this should be considered incoherent at all.

[Anonymous No.16396545]

>>16389230
You are on the cusp of enlightenment.

When Shakyamuni Buddha was at Mount Grdhrakuta, he held out a flower to his listeners. Everyone was silent. Only Mahakashyapa broke into a broad smile. The Buddha said, "I have the True Dharma Eye, the Marvelous Mind of Nirvana, the True Form of the Formless, and the Subtle Dharma Gate, independent of words and transmitted beyond doctrine. This I have entrusted to Mahakashyapa."

[Anonymous No.16396594]

>>16396519
Not him.
>Maya is not autonomous because it is the power or energy of Brahman and is dependent on its existence as a power of Brahman for its contingent being.
What makes it so that there is Maya? If it is Brahman, Brahman is causing Maya, voluntarily or not - it is the author of the imperfect illusions ; if it's not, then there is something outside Brahman at least as a partial cause of Maya. But if it is causing Maya unvoluntarily and Maya is illusion, then it's not all powerful, and if it's causing Maya voluntarily and Maya is illusion, it's doing bad. No? How does this not devolve into a theodicy, where you have to provide a reason why God would allow illusions and mistakeness?

[Anonymous No.16396752]

>>16396594
He just keeps repeating "because Maya isn't REAL bro, it's ILLUSION." He doesn't understand the question I guess.

[Anonymous No.16397686]

>>16396594
>What makes it so that there is Maya? If it is Brahman, Brahman is causing Maya, voluntarily or not - it is the author of the imperfect illusions
Yes, this much is correct
>But if it is causing Maya unvoluntarily and Maya is illusion, then it's not all powerful
Why would that be so? You don’t substantiate this reasoning but just stated it as a truism. From His own powers, Brahman gives rise to the entire universe, and sustains its existence, all the worlds and beings are strung on Brahman like beads on a string, hence Brahman is all-powerful since the “all” as we conceive it is just Brahman’s power.
>and if it's causing Maya voluntarily and Maya is illusion, it's doing bad.
Why is illusion bad? Again you don’t substantiate how one conclusion leads to another. The Brahma Sutras explain that there is no problem of evil for Brahman since the conditions that determine the nature of the jivas incarnation is determined by that jivas karma and past lives, which are beginningless. Whether each Jiva experiences heavenly or hellish states is determined by their past actions. Brahman is the impartial cause like rain and whether each rained upon seed is destined for evil is determined by the character of that seed. And aside from this there is the point that in Advaita there is no moral value attached to maya or Brahman like good or evil, moral categories are subjective and don’t exist in the absolute reality of Brahman alone. They are as unreal as time, multiplicity, etc, their perception as a false category is caused by maya. So by stating what you believe to be the moral implications of Brahman and maya, and by acting like this moral implication is a problem for Advaita doctrine, you are just mistakenly elevating or reifying your own subjective judgements as a supposed parameter which the ultimate truth of existence must necessarily conform to, which is a questionable assertion. If good and evil are unreal categories which only exist subjectively, then whether the beings which arise in maya perceive their source as evil or not is completely irrelevant to whether the doctrinal metaphysical explanation of that source is coherent or not.

[Anonymous No.16398029]

>>16395283

>What I experience exists in some sense. If it exists, is it Brahman or not Brahman?
The experiencing consciousness truly exists, the external objects delimited by form which appear in that consciousness only exist on the level of contingent, empirical reality, but they don’t exist on the level of absolute reality where there is the unchanging non-dual Brahman consciousness alone. Those objects are an appearance of Brahman engendered by Brahman’s power, in other words, they are not Brahman Itself.
>If it is not Brahman, Brahman isn't all there is.
Advaita only says that Brahman is all there is on the level of absolute reality, and so, that there is this enduring experience of the world is not a contradiction of the Advaita doctrine that on the absolute level there is Brahman alone, since Advaita admits that so long as one has not reached liberation one still experiences the ‘other’ of maya, however, again this does not contradict the doctrine that Brahman alone truly is, unless you forget the distinction between absolute and conventional reality, and forget that the conventional eventually vanishes like a dream, leaving the absolute reality alone. Advaita has never said “there are no distinctions or dualities at any level of reality, truth, or convention whatsoever”, this is a strawman and the refuting of this strawman by saying “but we still experience an other through maya” is just that, a refutation of a strawman and not Advaita.
>If it is, and Brahman is ultimate reality, how is it not ultimately real itself?
This is answered above

[Anonymous No.16398060]

>>16396752
Im not gonna read all those long posts, they are redundant. I am an enlightened man, and I can guide you, what is your conundrum?

[Anonymous No.16398510]

>>16395352
>claiming experience has some sort of magical essence to it, never make any real contributions to science or society.

[Anonymous No.16398518]

>>16398510

[Roshi No.16398561]

>>16398510
>>16398518
https://youtu.be/8T-Z1WoFXkk?t=354

From 5:50 to the end, (2 min) you will understand if you watch this.

[Anonymous No.16398607]

>>16389230
>the fact that Maya or another supplementary term still persists as a derivative phenomenon?
Explain to me why the same could not be said for anything else (just replace Maya with Reality). Why is Reality real bro?
>In the same vein you could ask why the supreme principle or Brahman would deceive itself with Maya to begin with.
Why would God create Reality to begin with?
>If an illusion isn't experienced as an illusion, by what criterion is it known to be illusion?
"Maya" means a "magic show", as in with a magician with a tophat, not illusion. You are reading translations and making assumptions. Imagine if a Hindu were to say the West says that God is a massive floating name in Heaven because "in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God".

Maya is a magic show - they use the expression magic show because cinema didn't exist at the time. The World is not an "illusion" from your perspective, it's a movie. This is literaly true in a metaphysical sense (read World as Will and Representation). Brahman is not "impersonal" either, idk if you are a literal nigger or just watched too many Jay Dyer videos without ever having read a book but in the Bhagavad Gita Brahman says time and time again that he is personal, just not in the way we are persons - this btw is the same as saying that God created man in his image and likeness, Brahman is not a cosmic force, he is God.
And humans are not brahman, atman is ultimately Brahman, because atman is undiferentiated (i.e it is a non-individuated all-person) which means it is contained within God.

[Anonymous No.16399176]

>>16398561
>open video and start watching
>man starts talking about following the tradition of Dogen
>......

Dogen stole the Zen teachings without receiving mind seal from a Chan patriarch. he made up his Satori event and there is zero verification of it by Rinzai masters in china. Totally made up from a made up lineage. all Japanese Zen is illegitimate and fake. It has nothing to do with chan. Dogen is a fucking christfag Shintoist who dressed up Zen for Shoguns and the Emperor. It has nothing to do with Chan. Do not get into the meditation cultist Soto zen and do not use Rinzai shit from japan. They literally write down pre-made answers to Koans and have a system of attainment set up which is 100% in contradiction to what the Tang masters (who all legitimacy in all zen lineages, comes from)

Dogen is famous for faking his mind seal session and making up an entire lineage of poorly attested masters in Southern china who themselves did not have legitimate ancestry going back to Lin-Chi, the great founder of the Rinzai sect. You should never read Dogen unless you are interested in shinto-buddha jesus syncretism with christianity, because that’s what the Shobogenzo reads like. All of those other people are religious figures and have nothing to do with Chan. Alan Watts was a naive, sensitive man who was one of the first people to come into contact with the Tang masters who wasn’t a Nip faggot. The Nips took Chan and first turned it into a meditation-Buddhajesus cult with Dogen as the Pope basically and then the Shoguns took it and transformed it into a Bushido-Military psychopath cult with pre-written answers to the Koans and a strict military-religious hierarchy. The masters of China did not do this and had nothing to do with this kind of thinking or behavior.

[Anonymous No.16399238]

>>16389230
This thread has exposed me to my ignorance of the sources, and revealed how little I know. I'm glad that I now have the opportunity to comprehend my lack of knowledge, and that my hubris has been temporarily subdued. Thank you anons. P.S. I have nothing to contribute to this discussion.

[Roshi No.16399242]

>>16399176
You wear the most expensive silks from China. A shame not much is underneath them.

[Anonymous No.16399635]

>>16395656
The awareness of the Supreme Self or Brahman is itself not trapped in maya. The thing that is trapped in maya is the Jiva or Jivatma, which refer to illusory association of the sentient Atman with the insentient intellect, body, etc. This Jiva is beginningless and has existed forever just like Brahman has. The sense of being individualized beings and all other ignorance inheres in the Jiva and its subtle body or intellect, and not in the Self which is the unaffected witness of that intellect and its actions. Only the Self has sentience, the subtle body and its intellect are as insentient as a rock. It is by the luminous presence of the Self that the insentient intellect takes action and appears to be an autonomous thinking entity, just as the wind rustles the leaves or as a candle imparts its luminosity to the exterior parts of the cloth lamp covering it. By the light of the Self's awareness, the intellect and its thoughts appear to the Self as Its objects.

Jivahood is a beginningless complex of ignorance which identifies the insentient intellect as the source of conscious experience, and in believing oneself to be that individual contracted locus of experience, without realizing that the source of experience is That which also observes the intellect. The sentience of the Self is like a ray of sunlight, which when entering through and illuminating a stained glass window (the intellect/mind) appears to become another ray of light when it emerges from the other side of the window with a red or green color (sentience that has attributes and is a doer and thinker) but really the light on both ends is the same ray of sunlight. Being liberated from Jivahood involves realizing that all of one's prior eternal and beginningless experience as a Jiva had taken place within the background of and been witnessed by eternal and unchanging non-dual Consciousness, and that there had been this invisible and attributeless light of non-dual Consciousness illuminating your every experience but which you had never been able to detect until then.

>>16395665
>false reflections exist? That means brahman is at fault.
These reflections as well as their source are without any real ethical or moral connotations, hence there is no 'fault' produced by their creation. Good and bad are subjective categories and the absolute reality of Brahman underlying everything is beyond them, not grasped or delimited at all by them. These reflections are false by design, not by error.

[Anonymous No.16399685]

>>16398561
pure cringe

[Roshi No.16399718]

>>16399685
As the one is always within the other.

By labelling my post cringe, you are imbuing its basedness.