How do Perennial Philosophers include Buddhism as part of the perennial philosophy

[Anonymous No.17000284]

when it includes the concept of anatta (not-self)?

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/perennial-issues-2/

This article seems to elucidate the issues quite well.
How would a perennialist respond while keeping true to the concept of anatta?

[Anonymous No.17000291]

>>17000284
are we doing this again today

[Anonymous No.17000316]

this obnoxious retard makes the same thread daily

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fana_(Sufism)

[Anonymous No.17000344]

You have to look at it philosopher to philosopher, there is no "Perennial doctrine" or "Traditionalist doctrine".

Evola said that it was clearly true and part of the Tradition. The one true religion, which Evola postulates as Solar Imperial Neopaganism, would obviously include anatman in some capacity. Anatman does not preclude or negate the ideas of soul or spirit (the soul or spirit is just composite and changing as well), so it doesn't actually interfere with much. We see this work out in Shinto, where there's all sorts of ghosts and spirits, they're just impermanent. Most traditions fully accept the idea of souls being created and destroyed, or changed (even Christianity and Islam), so Evola's ideas here aren't completely bonkers. He himself has disagreements with Buddhism, however, that interfere with Buddhist thought. Anatman implies that no one is ever beyond fucked, completely stuck in Samsara, as it is in no one's intrinsic nature (as there are no intrinsic natures) to be "in samsara". You can be in samsara for a really really REALLY long time (there's some term, iccchigita, or whatever, for these people; they'll be in each hell for a million years for every grain of sand on the banks of the Ganges), but you WILL get out. Evola rejects this, it's simply Tradition that there is a perpetually fucked spiritually vacant underclass that exists solely to be stepped on by Priests and Warriors, the Buddha dropped the ball. But then, no tradition compares to the Tradition. This, obviously, clashes with anatmna, but Evola doesn't really reconcile this (and, frankly, doesn't have to, given what he's doing).

Guenon makes the "Emptiness is a noun" mistake and ends up rejecting anatman outright as it has no place in his weird Gnostic-Sufi-Vedantin formulation of the Tradition. He accepts the idea of illusion (which anatman leads to) but the acceptance of change found in Buddhism is just outright rejected in favor of a static world.

[Anonymous No.17000457]

>>17000344
Thanks anon, could you please elaborate of the "Emptiness is a noun" mistake?

[Anonymous No.17000536]

I look at it how I look at everything as a whole. There is a general blurry description in them all that is similar. I believe that they could be more fully and clearly expressed. Perennialism itself is not just some kind of static thing. There is a dynamic part of reality that might be ignored. There is still further Revelation to be had. For instance take away authoritarianism polluted doctrines in the religions and certain things must by that very logic of freedom change. Mankind's perception of themselves as a worm must go away, in my eyes Jesus Christ revealed to me the nature of humanity. Fully God and fully human. That implies personality and Humanity matter up to the level of the Divine.

My understanding of the common religious folk is that they're quite ignorant, even their experts often seem like fools. All of their mad doctrines such as billions of years of hellish torment need to be removed like chaff from the wheat. Such kinds of things are no different than the Fundamentalist jerkwads that can't tell shit from Shinola. Trying to reduce samsara to nothing but suffering is idiotic. Humans have a hard time fully receiving the truth of reality.

What Buddha meant by emptiness and no-self is the same thing that Jesus ment when he said you have to lose your soul in order to gain it. Buddhism's advantage is that it can even somewhat be an agnostic religion. You really can't be an agnostic once you're enlightened.

[Anonymous No.17000585]

When referring to annihilationism in the Pali Canon, is the Buddha refering to Physicalists who think the death of the body is the final death, or those who would say that Parinibbana is the final death. Because if it only refers to the former then walking the middle path between eternalism and annihilationism just means there is a final nihilistic nothingness, but with a bunch of extra steps.

[Anonymous No.17000600]

>>17000284
I got bored of reading that because it's just the typical religious person defending their own religion. People who have a natural understanding and not a supernatural understanding are disqualified. anyone who has had some kind of spiritual experience realizes how those things that seem like they are incompatible are often different facets of the same truth. The truth is not in just religions, it's everywhere. Those who do not see this have no authority because all they have is their natural animal processes attempting to describe something that is transcended to that.

[Anonymous No.17000621]

>>17000600
There is a living wisdom deep within reality, which is none other than the divine. Anyone who does not have this is still a child and they should quit pretending that they know what they're talking about.

[Anonymous No.17000826]

>>17000284
Perennial Philosophers are utter retards.

And you cant make buddhism compatible with the mental ramblings of the Perennial Philosophers

[Anonymous No.17000833]

>>17000585
>is the Buddha refering to Physicalists who think the death of the body is the final death
This one. to be clear the refutation is about the claim '' I exist after death''

[Anonymous No.17000870]

>>17000833
Damn I guess paranibbana could really just be a nihilistic nothingness then. That sucks.

[Anonymous No.17000883]

Does Buddhism really believe that there is no creator deity and that Brahma is merely deluded into thinking he is?

[Anonymous No.17000931]

>>17000284
I made a thread about this in good faith yesterday but this dude is not me. Check the archives if you're not trolling.

[Anonymous No.17000955]

>>17000284
Why couldn't the Perennialist perform salat?
>He had his Schuon.

[Anonymous No.17000961]

>>17000955
If i ever meet you IRL i will kill you

[Anonymous No.17000987]

>>17000344
If the soul is changing and composite, how does Nirvana affect it? Does it make it eternal?

[Anonymous No.17000996]

>>17000826
>Perennial Philosophers are utter retards.
why

[Anonymous No.17000999]

>>17000987
From what i know, the soul is like a fire, and Nirvana is akin to extinguishing a fire.
What i dont get, though, is how this isnt annihilationism.

[Anonymous No.17001033]

>>17000999
>And the Venerable Ananda spoke to the Venerable Anuruddha, saying: "Venerable Anuruddha, the Blessed One has passed away."

>"No, friend Ananda, the Blessed One has not passed away. He has entered the state of the cessation of perception and feeling."[59]

>11. Then the Blessed One, rising from the cessation of perception and feeling, entered the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, he entered the sphere of nothingness. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of nothingness, he entered the sphere of infinite consciousness. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of infinite consciousness, he entered the sphere of infinite space. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of infinite space, he entered the fourth jhana. Rising from the fourth jhana, he entered the third jhana. Rising from the third jhana, he entered the second jhana. Rising from the second jhana, he entered the first jhana.

>Rising from the first jhana, he entered the second jhana. Rising from the second jhana, he entered the third jhana. Rising from the third jhana, he entered the fourth jhana. And, rising from the fourth jhana, the Blessed One immediately passed away.

If the two usages of 'passed away' are employed in the same way, then it does seem that Parinirvana is the final death, annihilation.

[Anonymous No.17001070]

>>17000457
he literally made it up, I've called him out for lying about that before and he never provides a source for such statements

[Anonymous No.17001108]

>>17000999
I'm also confused about how it isn't annihilationism, but according to this sutta, it suggests that Parinibbana is beyond existence and non-existence, something only explained by direct experience.

[Anonymous No.17001114]

>>17000999
>>17001108

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.072.than.html

[Anonymous No.17001140]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_characteristics_of_the_Buddha
This guy wasnt fucking human brehs

[Anonymous No.17001173]

>>17001140
>Saliva that improves the taste of all food
>tfw you'll never taste curry flavored with Gautama's spit

[Anonymous No.17001178]

Im interested in dharmic religions, but one thing i never understood is what the main difference from Hinduism and Buddhism is, beyond the worship of gods. Is it really 'just' that Buddhism sees the wheel of samsara as something negative, while the Hindu's derive hope therefrom?

[Anonymous No.17001193]

>>17001178
It’s better to think of dukkha as descriptive rather than a value judgement.

[Anonymous No.17001196]

>>17001193
See i dont really buy that, since the buddha and his followers make it quite clear that dukkha should be avoided

[Anonymous No.17001215]

>>17001140
Some of these make sense for a 'holy' figure, but some are just bizarre. And why blue eyes?

[Anonymous No.17001224]

>>17001196
I think there is definitely *some* amount of implicit judgement
>>17001215
The Buddha was an Aryan. Large swathes of Northern India had White ruling castes

[Anonymous No.17001386]

>>17001178
>that Buddhism sees the wheel of samsara as something negative, while the Hindu's derive hope therefrom?
If the Earth is like paradise to those in hell and the Earth is like hell to those in heaven then this supremely transcendent state of being would render everything else as inferior. It seems that its very nature would also uplift the lower realities, though. they say the greater Buddha is the one who comes to help others find what he did. It would seem that everything would be utterly lost in this infinite reality and that there is no other place to be than it. But here we are, amazingly.

[Anonymous No.17001399]

>>17001386
>supremely transcendent state of being
Is this how they characterise Nibbana and Parinibbana?

[Anonymous No.17001656]

>>17001399
Yes, so they can't be an extinction of everything. Or rather that exctinction has to be followed with something else for it to be a transcendent state, because nonexistence is not transcendent

[Anonymous No.17001659]

>>17001399
What else could it even be? It's the same reality that all the other religions speak of. https://alchemical-weddings.com/alchemical-weddings/tag/meonic

>Freedom is not determined by God; it is part of the nothing out of which God created the world….The void – the mystical space from which God withdrew himself through his act of tsimtsum – is the place of origin of freedom, ie, the place of origin of an ‘existence’ which is absolute potentiality, not in any way determined. And all of the beings of the ten created hierarchies are the children of God and freedom born of divine plenitude and the void. They carry within themselves a ‘drop’ of the void and a ‘spark’ of God. Their existence, their freedom, is the void within them. Their essence, their spark of love, is the divine ‘blood’ within them. They are immortal, because the void is indestructible. Further, these two indestructible elements – the meonic element (ov – void) and the pleromic element (plenitude) – are indissolubly bound to one another.

[Anonymous No.17001679]

When a being achieves Nirvana, then dies, can he choose to be reborn at any point as a Bodhisattva but stay in Nirvana?
If so why aren't there more Bodhisattvas, since enlightened beings are infinitely compassionate wouldn't they want to be reborn until they can help free every other being?

[Anonymous No.17001760]

>>17001656
Would you mind referring me to some suttas which describe parinirvana as such or similar? It would be much appreciated, fren

[Anonymous No.17001899]

>>17000284
I think the mistake made in the article is that it essentially states perennial philosophers claim to have this mono-truth that would in some way negate other religious truths.

Rather, I think perennialism is a lot like that Taoist concept of "many paths, one mountaintop," the idea that everyone is in some way navigating life through their own path and meaning, and yet regardless of where they choose to go, or what they take, everyone basically ends up at the same place -- if not spiritually, which is completely debatable, than at least materially with the final event of death.

It's less about making yet another truth claim and instead pointing to the idea that world religions and other philosophies are all pointing at a different part of the truth. None of them catch it in universally, because if they did, that would arguably be the one path everyone would take. But through their own particular workings one can come to an understanding of truth that, once a bridge is crossed, can in turn lend itself to a concept of the universal. It's almost quite literally the old phrase, "Knowing is half the battle." If you get so caught up in knowing what you know, you miss lessons that come after.

[Anonymous No.17001913]

>>17001899
Good post

[Anonymous No.17001931]

I think that the process that Buddha spoke of and that Jacob Boheme spoke of is the same process, it's just that they have their own expression of their experience of it.

http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1930_349.html

>The whole of Boehme is saturated with the magic of will, which at its primal-basis is still dark and irrational. Boehme to the very end is seriously concerned with the problem of evil and he approaches it neither as the pedagogue nor as the moralist, nor from the point of view of tending to infants. Being for him is a fiery current. And this fire in the darkness -- is both cold and scorching: "ein jedes Leben ein Feuer ist" {"every life is a fire"}.15 The will is fire. The primal-basis of being is a ravenous and hungry will. In response to it issues forth light and love. The potentiality of darkness lies in the very depths of being, in the Divinity itself. It is bound up with meonic freedom.
>The mysterious teaching of Boehme about the Ungrund, about the abyss, without foundation, dark and irrational, prior to being, is an attempt to provide and answer to the basic question of all questions, the question concerning the origin of the world and of the arising of evil. The whole teaching of Boehme about the Ungrund is so interwoven with the teaching concerning freedom, that it is impossible to separate them, for this is all part and parcel of the same teaching.

[Anonymous No.17002057]

>>17001679
>If so why aren't there more Bodhisattvas, since enlightened beings are infinitely compassionate wouldn't they want to be reborn until they can help free every other being?
He comes as everyone that is enlightened. There are billions of chances for this, there should always be a few. It's like the Jewish idea of a righteous man which prevents the world from being destroyed. Or the Christian idea of the coming of Christ in us. God is near us all, the need for an external Buddha is only because people have forgotten where they are and who they are. someone like the Buddha as a body would definitely have an impact on some people by his mere presence and wisdom and it would certainly be a boost for some. Others would simply remain as they are. Both externally and internally there is always someone and something to help.

[Anonymous No.17002070]

>>17000457
The Buddha talks about Dependent Origination, Anatman (AKA anatta). This is related to Sunyata, AKA Emptiness. Really, they're the same thing, just from two different angles. Dependent Origination means that something gets its "realness" from something else. It lacks any intrinsic nature, it only has extrinsic nature. A chariot exists because the parts were assembled, the wheel exists because it was made from wood, the wood grew, etc etc etc. Buddhism posits an infinite historical past, so you never run into a "first cause" (Aristotle does not posit this, Aquinas does, and Aquinas's reasoning is that the Bible says Genesis happened, so that's just a fact). Emptiness, then, is the description of this. "Emptiness" is not a noun, it's not a material, it's just a descriptor of HOW things exist: Empty. Things that exist are Empty. If a thing isn't Empty, it doesn't exist (The Buddha, and later Nagarjuna, go over how a non-Empty thing would ultimately be incoherent). An Empty thing is Dependently Originated.

Nagarjuna, in the Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, discusses this, and points out that a radically nihilistic mistake would be to say that things are MADE out of Emptiness. They aren't. This naturally leads one to reject the existence of things that are made of Emptiness as being illusory, as not having any real existence. One would thus seek to find things that aren't made of Emptiness, and if you can't find anything, well, looks like nothing exists! This is preposterous because things do exist (trees are made of wood, not void or whatever).

So, Guenon isn't wrong in saying that such a view would be simply wrong, but rather he's wrong in misunderstanding how Emptiness works. He speaks of this as the Buddhist "fana of al-fana", using terms used by certain Sufi orders. "Fana" means the annihilation of the illusory. In these Sufi sects, Allah constantly sings the world into being, but Allah is the only thing that is real. You and I don't exist, we're made of nothing, and point of Islam is to achieve perfect union with Allah (what THAT means varies thinker to thinker, however). Guenon falsely believed this to be what the Buddha was saying but without the "but Allah ISN'T made out of Emptiness". That is NOT the case at all.

[Anonymous No.17002079]

>>17002070
>Aquinas's reasoning is that the Bible says Genesis happened, so that's just a fact)

[Anonymous No.17002085]

>>17000999
In Ancient Indian thought, fire was not extinguished, but unbound. Fire was bound to the fuel by ignition, but once the fuel was gone, it went back to its parallel dimension of absolute potential. It doesn't "stop", it just returns to its true state. "Nirvana" means "unbinding". Although this has the same colloquial meaning of "snuffing out" in that you're putting out a fire, what THAT means differs in the two cases.

There's a book, The Mind Like Fire Unbound, that goes over this. The tl;dr is do you get annihilated when you sleep? No? Then why would you be annihilated when you enter a transcendental mystical state beyond language of infinite freedom and potential beyond all limit (even that of conceptuality)?

[Anonymous No.17002098]

>>17002085
>do you get annihilated when you sleep?
Are you comparing Parinirvana to sleep? If so that doesn't make it very appealing

[Anonymous No.17002104]

>>17002079
The Five Ways aren't proofs, they're rhetorical techniques for the laity to combat Jews and Muslims who accuse Christians of being atheists and/or polytheists. Namely, they require a finite historical past. If you want an argument against that, go crack open the Metaphysics. Aristotle's argument for the Prime Movers (all fifty or so of them) requires an infinite historical past.

[Anonymous No.17002157]

>>17002098
No, I'm saying that Nirvana is similar to sleep in the sense that it is an example of existence in which "Egoing" is not occurring. Materialists and physicalists in these threads often get hung up on the whole "afterlife" thing, so I'm just demonstrating that every night you enter a state whereby there is no Egoing and yet there is still existence.

Parinirvana is what happens when an enlightened being ceases biological function. It's not a state, it's an event.

[Anonymous No.17002185]

>>17002157
Surely though there is something about Nirvana that makes it a state, otherwise the enlightened person would not be able to interact with others. Sleep is a state where there is no ego, but also where ego is not replaced by anything. It's also not really the "death of the ego" since otherwise people who take high doses of ketamine or psilocybin would report just falling asleep.
Those states are difficult to characterize.

[Anonymous No.17002188]

>>17000344
Where does Evola just specifically talk about his occult perspective?

[Anonymous No.17002215]

>>17001140
> Well-retracted male organ
Wut?

[Anonymous No.17002232]

>>17002185
>Those states are difficult to characterize.
This is why the Buddha doesn't talk about the precise nature of Nirvana: the very act of conceptuality puts a limit on it, which can't be done. You can't box in the infinite.

I will say, though, that ego death and sleep not being the same is precisely why people who take large doses of psychedelics, or enter meditative states, are capable of still "doing things" and don't just fall asleep. To assume otherwise would be to over-inflate the actions of the ego, and say that it is responsible for other than what it does.

The point being, that just because the Egoing stops, it does not make it annihilation, because the person is much more than the Ego.

[Anonymous No.17002245]

>>17002215
mega-grower, not a shower. ancient pajeets thought being able to suck your penis inside your body was a sign of great spiritual power. flex your kegel (try to stop peeing) when soft, you see how it sort of moves inward.

>>17002188
evola wrote a book about buddhism, if thats what you are talking about, because that appears to be what he is referencing.

[Anonymous No.17002264]

>>17002215
he's a grower like a royal elephant. small when flaccid, but big when erect

[Anonymous No.17002400]

>>17002085
>>17002157
This is a very interesting exposition on this part of buddhism, but how is it not different from Atma, true Self?

[Anonymous No.17002475]

>>17002400
It's different from the view of Atman held by most Hindus, and the idea of a "Soul" (big S to separate it from chakras or energies or whatever that may be important but are accepted as just composite) in that there is no discrete uniform thing inside of you that makes you "you". Mental activity is just a lump of processes, one of which (for some reason, the "why" is irrelevant) results in a "feeling of the self". This feeling, this Ego, can come and go. It goes away with sleep, meditative states, trances, drugs, etc. If it can go away, then it isn't really an Atman, is it?

Now, having said that, certain Buddhist schools of thought, particularly in Tibet, attempt a scholastic understanding of the nature of reality that the Buddha didn't engage in. Dzogchen does this, for example. While these schools do talk about a "true self" and sometimes (confusingly) even do use "Atman", this should be differentiated from the Hindu idea of Atman. Rather, they're getting closer to the monism of the Pre-Socratic Greeks than to, say, Advaita Vedanta. That is to say, rocks and trees and dirt and chariots are (loosely) "made" of this true self, and the various parts that make up you are also "made" up of this "true self". This is in opposition to, as far as I'm aware, all Hindu thought, where even if a chariot has an atman, that atman is discrete from, say, the atman of a nearby rock, and nothing is "made out of" the atman, it just is. So, it's still Anatman (in the usage that the Buddha means it), but it's trying to answer "okay but then what is stuff made out of REALLY then", which the Buddha waves away as being largely irrelevant (and it is, but that isn't an actual answer).

[Anonymous No.17002552]

Doesn't Mahayana say there is a soul while Theravada denies it, being closer to the original teachings?
Not sure about Vajrayana, seems like weird fringe stuff

[Anonymous No.17002842]

>>17002232
Yes but what if the consciousness or sentience stops, what happens then?

[Anonymous No.17002855]

>>17001931
Here is another quote that Buddhist and Hindus can compare with what some mystics in Christianity said.

>But Boehme thinks it is so because the conjectured Ungrund, the groundless will lies within the depths of the Divinity, and prior to the Divinity. The Ungrund is also the Divinity of apophatic theology and is together with this an abyss, a free Nothing deeper than God and outside God. In God there is a nature, a principle distinct from It. The Primal-Divinity, the Divine Nothing -- is on the other side of good and evil, of light and darkness. The Divine Ungrund -- is somehow prior to the arising within eternity of the Divine Trinity. God arises, realises Himself from out of the Divine Nothing. This is a path of thought about God akin to that, whereupon Meister Eckhardt makes a distinction between the Godhead (Gottheit) and God (Gott). God, as the Creator of the world and of man, corresponds with the creation, He arises from the depths of the Godhead, the unfathomable Nothing. This is an idea that lies deep down within German mysticism. Such a path of thinking about God inevitably involves an apophatic theology. Everything, that Boehme says concerning the Divine Ungrund, relates to the apophatic, the negative theology, and not to the kataphatic positive theology. The Nothing is deeper and more primieval than anything that is, the darkness is deeper and more primordial than light, freedom is more primordial and deeper than any nature. The God of kataphatic theology is already something and He as such signifies a thinking about a second-level aspect

[Anonymous No.17002889]

>>17002475
>>17002552
Yeah, how does this 'true self' fit in to the teachings of anatta? Are they suggesting that the true self is the "thing" which "experiences" parinibbana, the not-self?

[Anonymous No.17003090]

True self is the process of the trinity. Not self is God before God who could be no one else but God. It is God incomprehensible... which causes the process of Separation, Duality, revelation, Maya, Lila, samsara, salvation, children of God, becoming, Multiplicity, Unity, ect. But we Christians believe the Trinity wishes for the process in himself to be, otherwise it would not be. both the world and God arise out of the absolute. A division of God and not God is the yin-yang. Samsara arises out of the void in God. This nothing wishes to be something, it wishes to be what it is. It is God. But it is God negating himself, who cannot be negated and who infinitely fills and completes himself.

[Anonymous No.17003462]

>>17003090
I don't get it

[Anonymous No.17004610]

>>17000955
I'm still proud of my joke.
>>17000961
You've never been outside?