/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17589774]

Books about reality literally being an illusion, a play, or something similar?
I don't mean pop sci simulation theory shit.
It's often assumed (for good reason, obviously) that this existence is meaningful and that your actions in this life significantly influence what happens in the next, instead of existence as we perceive it being unreal and inconsequential while still believing in some form of afterlife.
I lean towards the latter and I'd like to know if this has been addressed by any thinkers.

[Anonymous No.17589845]

Society of the Spectacle

[Anonymous No.17589868]

Foam
Pheṇa Sutta (SN 22:95)
NavigationSuttas/SN/22:95

On one occasion the Blessed One was staying among the Ayujjhans on the banks of the Ganges River. There he addressed the monks: “Monks, suppose that a large glob of foam were floating down this Ganges River, and a man with good eyesight were to see it, observe it, & appropriately examine it. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in a glob of foam? In the same way, a monk sees, observes, & appropriately examines any form that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in form?

“Now suppose that in the autumn—when it’s raining in fat, heavy drops—a water bubble were to appear & disappear on the water, and a man with good eyesight were to see it, observe it, & appropriately examine it. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in a water bubble? In the same way, a monk sees, observes, & appropriately examines any feeling that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in feeling?

“Now suppose that in the last month of the hot season a mirage were shimmering, and a man with good eyesight were to see it, observe it, & appropriately examine it. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in a mirage? In the same way, a monk sees, observes, & appropriately examines any perception that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in perception?

[Anonymous No.17589873]

>>17589868
“Now suppose that a man desiring heartwood, in quest of heartwood, seeking heartwood, were to go into a forest carrying a sharp ax. There he would see a large banana tree: straight, young, of enormous height. He would cut it at the root and, having cut it at the root, would chop off the top. Having chopped off the top, he would peel away the outer skin. Peeling away the outer skin, he wouldn’t even find sapwood, to say nothing of heartwood. Then a man with good eyesight would see it, observe it, & appropriately examine it. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in a banana tree? In the same way, a monk sees, observes, & appropriately examines any fabrications that are past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near. To him—seeing them, observing them, & appropriately examining them—they would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in fabrications?

“Now suppose that a magician or magician’s apprentice were to display a magic trick at a major intersection, and a man with good eyesight were to see it, observe it, & appropriately examine it. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in a magic trick? In the same way, a monk sees, observes, & appropriately examines any consciousness that is past, future, or present; internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near. To him—seeing it, observing it, & appropriately examining it—it would appear empty, void, without substance: for what substance would there be in consciousness?

“Seeing thus, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with form, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with fabrications, disenchanted with consciousness. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is released. With release, there is the knowledge, ‘Released.’ He discerns that ‘Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.’”

[Anonymous No.17589883]

>>17589873
That is what the Blessed One said. Having said that, the One Well-Gone, the Teacher, said further:

“Form is like a glob of foam;

feeling, a bubble;

perception, a mirage;

fabrications, a banana tree;

consciousness, a magic trick—

this has been taught

by the Kinsman of the Sun.1

However you observe them,

appropriately examine them,

they’re empty, void

to whoever sees them

appropriately.

Beginning with the body

as taught by the One

with profound discernment:

When abandoned by three things

—life, warmth, & consciousness—

form is rejected, cast aside.

When bereft of these

it lies thrown away,

senseless,

a meal for others.

That’s the way it goes:

It’s a magic trick,

an idiot’s babbling.

It’s said to be

a murderer.2

No substance here

is found.

Thus a monk, persistence aroused,

should view the aggregates

by day & by night,

mindful,

alert;

should discard all fetters;

should make himself

his own refuge;

should live as if

his head were on fire—

in hopes of the state

with no falling away.”

[Anonymous No.17589917]

>>17589845
I think Debord only tackles the idea of illusion from a societal and cultural standpoint, not an ontological one.
>>17589868
This doesn't negate the reality of existence at all, it's just an argument for Buddhism

[Anonymous No.17590008]

>>17589774
Something from McLuhan

[Anonymous No.17590143]

>>17590008
What did he write about this subject?

[Anonymous No.17590348]

>>17589774
bump

[Anonymous No.17590470]

>>17589774
Difference and Repetition.
It among other things argues that things are virtual, that is have potentials that are already fully real and affecting reality, and those potentials always rubbing up against each other, instead of objects having a graspable essence or awaiting change. It sees reality as a series of veils, with no true ground, wherein appearances and their contrast precede any of our identifications (words like rock or stone), which are only created to order the inherent mess that is reality. So stones and rocks are not solid objects, but names that we give to habits of being. In turn all of philosophy is just a holy game, of hide and seek with reality, where we get provoked by ideas into thinking and acting. We are always in fact repeating a stageplay, and we as subjects are only one of several themes of that stageplay. Yet every performance of the play is wholly unique; it is through the eternal return, that newness is born. And no matter what happens; newness and challenge resurface like a pair of jolly dancers, that provokes us to dance along and find the solution to the problem that just presented itself. And once we solve it another problem appears, which we filled with heroic joy than procede to tackle just like the first one. Never going anywhere, but also never seeing the same thing twice.

[Anonymous No.17590484]

>>17589774
Any fiction recs that have this as a theme?

[Anonymous No.17590493]

>>17589774
gnostic shit i guess

[Anonymous No.17590519]

>>17590470
Sounds quite different from what I'm looking for but interesting nonetheless, thanks I'll check it out. Never read Deleuze before.
>>17590493
Pretty sure gnostics don't literally believe reality to be illusory, they just think it's evil and fallen.

[Anonymous No.17590603]

>>17590484
Not a book but the movie "Waking life" by Linklater is pretty good

[Anonymous No.17590604]

>>17589774

[Anonymous No.17590611]

>>17590604
Is this on dream yoga? Is the point of dream yoga to realize this world is just as unreal as the dream world or did I misunderstand?

[Anonymous No.17590713]

bump

[Anonymous No.17590936]

>>17590611
Anyone?

[Anonymous No.17590950]

>>17589774
Denial of Death is literally just that

[Anonymous No.17590952]

>>17589774
My diary, quite literally, desu

[Anonymous No.17590962]

>>17590952
Tell me more about your diary anon

[Anonymous No.17590967]

>>17589774
Since I imagine most people will give you East Asian books, I'll give you West Asian ones. Sicilian Questions by Ibn Sab'in and The Tawasin of Mansur al-Hallaj.

[Anonymous No.17591018]

>>17590950
How? I don't get that at all.

[Anonymous No.17591087]

>>17590967
Thanks

[Anonymous No.17591211]

>>17590967
Is this a common view in sufism?

[Anonymous No.17591241]

>>17591211
No not at all, al-Hallaj was hung for his beliefs. Ibn Arabi's ontology and the more Orthodox Sunni ontology of people like Rumi or Abu Hamid al-Ghazali is far more common among Sunni Sufis. Shia Sufis have their own thing going on, I think the academic term is "wacky shit".

[Anonymous No.17591292]

[Anonymous No.17591308]

>>17591292
Buddhism has nothing to do with reality being literally illusory unless you completely misunderstand emptiness.
It's also not compatible with the ideas expressed in the OP
>existence as we perceive it being unreal and inconsequential while still believing in some form of afterlife

[Anonymous No.17591339]

>>17591241
Well to clarify, the view that creation is all an illusion and there's only God is not common in Sufism. The view that reality has illusory qualities and is more dreamlike than we may think is common throughout Islam in general, though some interpret that as meaning the joys of this life are pointless before the victory f entering heaven, and other interpret tin it a more esoteric manner.

[Anonymous No.17591348]

>>17591339
>The view that reality has illusory qualities and is more dreamlike than we may think is common throughout Islam in general
Is it expressed in the Quran? I never looked into Islam at all

[Anonymous No.17591354]

>>17590470
Based deleuze poster
>>17590519
Start with his monographs on Spinoza and Bergson. Or start with those authors. Or start with Nietzsche. Or Kant. Or Plato. I wouldn't recommend dropping straight into Deleuze. The more homework you do the more you will get out of him.
>>17590967
Sicily is African not West Asian
>>17590143
He is media theorist. If you watch the movie Annie Hall he has a cameo where he tells someone they didn't understand his work at all in response to them name dropping him. It's a very /lit/ film, almost like A Confederacy of Dunces.
>>17589845
Debord is pretty much superseded by Baudrillard. You can still read him for context but the analysis is at this point historical. We are still living in Baudrillard's world.

[Anonymous No.17591361]

>>17589774
picrel and the Illuminatus! Trilogy.
Just be careful, anon. Other people are real.

[Anonymous No.17591373]

>>17591308
Appearances are constantly said to be like illusions, dreams, reflections, in Madhyamaka literature. OP it would seem is drinking pomo nihilism and wants to bridge to some religious system instead. Buddhism is not a far jump.

[Anonymous No.17591375]

>>17591361
I didn't read all of Prometheus Rising, just exerpts, but isn't it mostly about how your perception of the world can easily change if you make an effort to change it? It tackles the idea of our personal biases towards reality being illusory more so than reality itself in the ontological sense, or did I misunderstand?

[Anonymous No.17591402]

>>17591373
>Appearances are constantly said to be like
Yeah that's what I'm saying, it makes the comparison but it's not meant to be taken literally. Nagarjuna denies accusations of ontological nihilism that stem from his assertion of things being empty, and clearly says reality isn't actually unreal.
Postmodernism doesn't have much to do with the subject, it's about the deconstruction of concepts, not claiming existence is itself illusory.
This isn't a Buddhist thread though so let's not argue about it more than necessary

[Anonymous No.17591410]

>>17591354
>Sicily is African not West Asian
Yeah I mean he also lived in Spain but when I say West Asian I mean that they are Middle Easterners.
>>17591348
The Quran general contrasts this life and the hereafter by associating this life with finite things and diversions, contrasted with the straight path (a common motif in the Quran), which is enduring and infinite. This is why Sufis emphasize returning to Allah, and some of them say we shall be reunited with Allah. What that means exactly depends on which Sufi you ask.

[Anonymous No.17591448]

>>17591402
The deconstruction method is already present in Buddhism, skepticism, and so forth. Pomos just burn out on it because they hit up against marxist dogmas that must be true, like historical materialism or commodity fetishes or the realness of the working class, because if not then they can't play french intellectual anymore and would have to go to a monastery.

[Anonymous No.17591452]

>>17591448
>they hit up against marxist dogmas that must be true, like historical materialism or commodity fetishes or the realness of the working class, because if not then they can't play french intellectual anymore and would have to go to a monastery.
And this is related to this thread how?

[Anonymous No.17591484]

>>17591452
You tell me; a lot of them posited some sort of false consciousness which kept people from grasping the true reality. But they were also heavily secular/irreligious/atheist so for them the notion of an afterlife would be explained in terms of oppression by priests. OP is asking for religious philosophers, sure. But there aren't too many of those around in recent times.

[Anonymous No.17591518]

>>17591484
>You tell me
You're the one who brought postmodernism up

[Anonymous No.17591529]

>>17589774
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race briefly tackles this topic.

[Anonymous No.17591614]

>>17591518
I don't see how pomo wouldn't be relevant to "reality being an illusion" since pomos have pushed semiotics to its limit

[Anonymous No.17591622]

>>17591614
Because they don't give a fuck about ontology

[Anonymous No.17591636]

>>17591622
>ontology

[Anonymous No.17591643]

>>17591636
Well that's the subject of the thread my guy

[Anonymous No.17591652]

>>17591643
Ok so we can all go home then.

[Anonymous No.17591659]

>>17591652
Are you being retarded on purpose?

[Anonymous No.17591686]

>>17591659
Alright tell me more about your ontological reality without recourse to discursive thought based on sign systems.

[Anonymous No.17591720]

>>17591686
That's not the point dumbass, the OP is about recommendations on a specific subject and the only thing you've been doing is making unrelated recommendations and being an obnoxious twat bringing up shit nobody gives a fuck about

[Anonymous No.17591783]

>>17591720
Oh just be thankful this hasn't turned into an advaita vedanta thread

[Anonymous No.17591787]

>>17591622
Deleuze(if we assume he counts as pomo) has an ontology
That's his ontology: >>17590470

[Anonymous No.17591795]

>>17591783
Well I'm not the one who brought up buddhism despite it being unrelated.

[Anonymous No.17591823]

>>17591795
3rd post was someone walltexting a sutra. Not me by the way. But if you are asking for philosophy that includes teachings on illusions and life after death, obviously that includes Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.17591833]

>>17591686
Ontological reality is the event that forces me into sign systems and concept creation.
Suck on this Derridean: >>17590470

[Anonymous No.17591843]

>>17591823
>that includes Buddhism
Not unless you misunderstand either the OP or Buddhism itself
Whatever

[Anonymous No.17591899]

>>17591833
>Deleuze using Spinoza and Bergson to kill Platonism
I mean that's cool and all but calling that an ontology is a bit like calling deus sive natura theology.
>>17591843
So there's no afterlife in Buddhism and phenomena are not taught to be like illusions? Is that from one of those Live Laugh Love tier secondary books?

[Anonymous No.17591903]

>>17591899
>>17591402

[Anonymous No.17592066]

>>17591899
>there's no afterlife in Buddhism
well no

[Anonymous No.17592152]

>>17592066
You are wrong in all but the most autistic of senses.

[Anonymous No.17592176]

>>17592152
nah "rebirth" is just complete obliteration

[Anonymous No.17592181]

Hassidic idealism is the view that the world and everything in it (even you and I) exist only in the mind of God. To be is to be part of God’s dream, or the story that God is telling. This chapter argues that Hassidic idealism, coupled with an understanding of the philosophy and semantics of fiction, allows us to generate a distinctive solution to ‘the problem with sefirot.’ The sefirot are the attributes of God, as the Kabbalistic tradition understands them. The problem with the sefirot is that, as they are classically understood, belief in them seems to collapse into polytheism. The problem is analogous to certain problems facing the Christian belief in the Trinity. This chapter proposes an original Hassidic solution to this problem that relies upon various insights about fictions within fictions, and fictions that include their authors as a character.

[Anonymous No.17592182]

Most of Horror's Call gets into meta stuff like this.

[Anonymous No.17592202]

>>17592182
Is this just a meme or are those books actually decent?

[Anonymous No.17592548]

>>17592202
They're shit don't bother

[Anonymous No.17592959]

>>17590603
Great film
>>17590611
Bump for this

[Anonymous No.17593799]

I'm starting to dislike dharmic posters. Do you really have to preach buddhism/hinduism in every thread?