Schopenhauer, asceticism?

[Brainlet No.19465163]

Schopenhauer advocated for asceticism as the way to eliminate suffering. But there are two things I dont understand.

1.) "If I wished to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I should have to concede to Buddhism pre-eminence over the others."

-The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 2, Ch. 17

From my understanding, Schopenhauer held Buddhism above Hinduism. But isnt his teaching of asceticism as the way to end suffering, inherently contradictory to the Buddhas teaching of the middle way? Isnt this more in line with the Hindu doctrine? If so, then why would he say this?

2.) He clearly didnt live by his own philosophy. He had many affairs, up until the end of his life. If he himself wasnt living by his own teaching, doesnt that make him a hypocrite?

And finally, I know that these questions have probably already been asked, and the answers already given. I'm not making this post as some sort of gotcha moment. I'm just interested in his ideas and these are two burning questions on my mind that I am looking for answers to.

[Brainlet No.19465171]

>>19465163
pic unrelated. Also before anyone recommends them to me, I've already read the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and In the Buddhas Words.

[Anonymous No.19465178]

>>19465163
I have meaning in life, that stops me from falling to suffering. Or it makes it good.

>Schopenhauer is so far from being a real pessimist that at the most he represents 'the interesting': in a certain sense he makes asceticism interesting--the most dangerous thing possible for a pleasure-seeking age which will be harmed more than ever by distilling pleasure even out of asceticism… is by studying asceticism in a completely impersonal way, by assigning it a place in the system.

[Anonymous No.19465665]

>>19465163
Question 1 is answered by your own answer question 2.
Schopy was an insightful, passionate and intelligent man, but he was also an hypocrite, and like everyone of us, had his own demons.
I hate psychologisms, but sometimes "he had issues" explains some questions about a philosopher's thought.

[Anonymous No.19465767]

>>19465163
The Buddha wasn’t anti asceticism, he reformed it.

[Anonymous No.19465778]

It is unfortunate that none of the great 18-19th century European philosophers actually took the final step and started their own spiritual/religious traditions.

[Anonymous No.19465831]

>>19465163
>But isnt his teaching of asceticism as the way to end suffering, inherently contradictory to the Buddhas
The Buddha was only against extreme asceticism. Buddhist monks are still ascetics.
>doesnt that make him a hypocrite?
It does but that has no bearing on the truth or falsity of his claims. If an alcoholic says alcoholism is bad it's still true.
Extra
>Schopenhauer held Buddhism above Hinduism
In Schope's time they didn't possess the amount of scriptures and scholarship on these religions that we have. IIRC he read some Upanishads translated from a Persian collection, not from the Sanskrit. He still held that the Upanishads were the solace of his life. I don't think he had access to the Buddhist Pali Canon either. So he didn't have the whole picture. Keep that in mind.

[Anonymous No.19465846]

Btw anyone knows exactly which Scriptures Schopenhauer read?

[Anonymous No.19465896]

>>19465831
But he still held Buddhism above Hinduism, despite having read barely any of their texts? Then he must have had a good reason to do so right?

[Anonymous No.19466284]

>>19465163
>pic
>has never debated a single buddhist
OH NO NO NO NO NO NO

>In all the eastern and southern regions the tÏrthikas (non-Buddhists) prospered and the Buddhists were going down . . . there lived two brothers who were the acaryas of the tÏrthikas. One of them was called Dattatrai (Dattetreya). He was specially in favour of samadhi. The second was Śaṅkarācārya, who propitiated Mahadeva. He chanted spells on a jar placed behind a curtain. From within the jar emerged Mahadeva up to his neck and taught him the art of debate. In Bhamgala he entered into debates. The elders among the bhikshus said, ‘It is difficult to defeat him. So acarya Dharmapala or CandragomÏ or CandrakÏrti should be invited to contest in debate.’ The younger panditas did not listen to this and said, ‘The prestige of the local panditas will go down if a debater is brought from somewhere else. We are more skilled than they are.’ Inflated with vanity, they entered into debate with Śaṅkarācārya. In this the Buddhists were defeated and, as a result, everything belonging to the twenty-five centres of the Doctrine was lost to the tÏrthikas and the centres were deserted. About five hundred upasakas (buddhist monks) had to enter the path of the tÏrthikas.
- Taranatha, “dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i chos bskor gyi byung khungs nyer mkho” (History of Buddhism in India)

[Anonymous No.19466615]

>>19466284
Yeah I'm not reading that, it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with my thread topic. But since you have nothing regarding Schopenhauer to actually contribute to the thread, what race are you? What ethnicity? I'm genuinely curious.

[Anonymous No.19466685]

>>19466615
>it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with my thread topic
It does have to do with the picture you posted
>what race are you? What ethnicity? I'm genuinely curious.
mixed Celto-Germanic-Anglo descent

[Anonymous No.19466767]

>>19466685
So this is the absolute state of the US.
Why would you, if you are actually white, bow to pajeets and worship their Gods? This is something I can never understand. You even go so far as to try and larp as them. >>19466284

[Anonymous No.19466771]

>>19466685
I do not talk to *nglos

[Anonymous No.19466796]

>>19466767
>be on /lit/
>literally try to undermine an entire subcontinent's philosophy just by looking at the race of one of its enthusiasts

[Anonymous No.19466801]

>>19466767
>>19466771
Why do you people have to interact and act here with your biases, prejudices etc? Do you think your in-group or any has a monopoly on truth and wisdom? Such a sad state of affairs today.

[Anonymous No.19466814]

>>19465163
He didn't really understand either and conflates the two. iirc the Upanishad translations they had at the time were via Persian and whatever Buddhist literature had to have come through British or Dutch missionaries/mutilators. You don't get more solid indology for a while. So his reading of them and commentary sort of comes with a caveat that it reflects the translations at the time. Schopenhauer's idea of Buddhism or Vedanta is exactly that, his idea.

[Anonymous No.19466823]

>>19465778
Theosophy but it's junk

[Anonymous No.19466883]

>>19466685
OK, you're white. You're allowed to speak.
>>19466767
Christard I assume? Why do you bow to the god of the Jews?

[Anonymous No.19466936]

>>19466767
>Why would you, if you are actually white, bow to pajeets and worship their Gods?
Because that Vedantic metaphysics is straight fire, fr fr no cap

[Anonymous No.19467007]

>>19465896
>he must have had a good reason to do so right?
What little he was able to cobble together from Britbongs badly misunderstanding it could easily be construed as whatever he believed. That's basically it.

As >>19466814 said, 99% of people in the West have, and had, absolutely no idea what Buddhism entailed, outside of the whackos in the Pali Text Society. For reference, Schopenhauer died in 1860. The first English translation of the Heart Sutra was in 1983, and as best as I can tell the German translations are all just translations of the English one. The first Pali Canon translation was finished in 1895, and it's not finished. In fact, there are no complete translations of the Pali Canon. This shouldn't be surprising as it's a literary canon (pic related). The earliest attempt at doing something like this was in 1995, and is an English to German translation.

[Anonymous No.19467039]

>>19467007
Whenever anyone here, or indeed in many places says "read the Pali Canon" they mean the "discourses," i.e. the four (or five) nikayas, and if any of this was accessible in the 1830s-1850s it had to be fragmentary. In Schopenhauer's Fourfold Root (which he considers a prerequisite to WWR) he quotes and paraphrases at some length a Christian missionary's impression of Buddhism in Sri Lanka as evidence of how much more based and redpilled it is than western theism, which he also considers to be derivative Judaism. It's not a direct commentary or analysis at all of the texts. These come later from European indologists like Obermiller and Stcherbatsky who have texts and encounter actual people who had them.

[Anonymous No.19468154]

>>19466883
Wrong, atheist. I dont worship pajeets, nor do I worship Jews

[Anonymous No.19468161]

>>19466936
No damn cap that so sussy that sissy poggers

[Anonymous No.19468179]

>>19467039
Fourfold Root was written much earlier than the rest of his philosophy, and he continued to stay abreast of indological developments and read basically every new translation that came out. By the time of the later editions of World as Will, he was pretty well conversant in mid-century indology and buddhology.

Check this out, it's an article on Schopenhauer's original edition of Anquetil Duperron's famously sketcy translation of the Oupnekhat (Upanishads) which is actually a translation of Dara Shukoh's Mingling of the Two Great Oceans, I believe. But look at what Schopenhauer did, he KNEW this, and he went back year after year as new materials became available to write more annotations and stuff. He also knew where the non-Upanishad commentary layers began and ended just by reading.

[Anonymous No.19468184]

>>19468179
Forgot link
https://download.uni-mainz.de/fb05-philosophie-schopenhauer/files/2020/03/2012_App.pdf

[Anonymous No.19468203]

>>19466284
buddhism deacy in india wa sbecaus ethey lost they patornage since the more war friendly hindu religions were prefered since india was enetring a period of war,that end with the muslim conquest of the country
"debates" had nothing to do with it

[Brainlet No.19468213]

>>19467007
>>19467039
But it seems that around that time, at the very least he had a translation of the Upanishads.

"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death."
-The World as Will and Idea

But if he barely had any access to any Buddhist texts, but he had access to the Hindu canon, then why would he still claim it to be above Hinduism? Especially considering how much he liked the Hindu texts. So what was so grave in the difference between the two philosophies, that he would choose Buddhism over Hinduism?

[Anonymous No.19468260]

>>19468184
>app.pdf
You're probably right, but what the hell is that lol

[Anonymous No.19468278]

>>19468213
Well crudely speaking, his reading of Buddhism is that it is an atheist idealism while the Vedas are theist idealism, and both of these for him are superior to western theism with its badgering, suspicious, and jealous god.

[Anonymous No.19468425]

>>19468213
Again, I don't think Schopenhauer really got Hinduism or Buddhism. Him reading a translation of the Upanishads like a Protestant would the Bible is a big indicator of that. As >>19468278 points out, I think he just did a
>Hinduism is Indian Poperism
>Buddhism is Indian Atheism
bit with what little he had. In the case of Buddhism, what got brought to the West first were huge arrays of monastic lineages, legal codes, lineages, records of disputes over incredibly arcane points of doctrine, etc. The actual practices of Buddhism came much later, really only starting in the 1980s. You see this a lot with Westerners saying that Buddhism is "atheism", which means that they can't find anything in Buddhism talking about something that can be made akin to Yahweh, which is just obviously absurd because the Buddha is best bros with Krishna and Hercules. But that doesn't count because religion Progresses from fetichisme to totemisqueax to animsiemquareaiux to polytheism to polytheism of 3 (that's Christianity) to monotheism (this is Judaism) to atheism to Qabbalah (which is the highest form of religion), so obviously the religion full of autistic legalism and monastic lineages can't also involve people burning incense to Rudra.

[Anonymous No.19468464]

>>19468425
>Westerners saying that Buddhism is "atheism", which means that they can't find anything in Buddhism talking about something that can be made akin to Yahweh, which is just obviously absurd because the Buddha is best bros with Krishna and Hercules.
It's true though. The mosaic creator God is absent from Buddhism. And the Indian creator of Brahma/Ishvara is demoted to a delusional but long lived heavenly deity. It is atheism by the standards of traditional western theology (Judeo-Christianity), and had the church fathers encountered Buddhists they would say the same thing /lit/'s resident christlarpers do about Buddhism: "muh demons"

[Anonymous No.19468476]

>>19468464
I don't disagree with your assessment at all, you're entirely correct, that is what was thought and why. That definition of religion, however, is wrong. It's too restrictive and doesn't agree with how the majority of religions work. It doesn't even agree with how the majority of Abrahamics thought religion worked until relatively recently. I don't blame Schopenhauer for not getting that, there's people today who don't. What was he supposed to do, study the inner workings of religions that he didn't know existed by learning languages that he didn't even know existed so he could immerse himself in religious traditions completely and utterly alien to the one that he'd been raised in? He didn't have the luxury to do anything like that.

[Anonymous No.19468486]

>>19468476
I don't think they'd even found Heracles-Vajrapani yet. We only know that syncretism because of archaeology.

[Anonymous No.19469732]

>>19465163
Ananda asked the Buddha
>Is friendship half of the holy life?
The Buddha replied,
>How can you say such a thing? Friendship is the ENTIRE holy life!
Frens, I welcome you to the /sangha/

[Anonymous No.19469821]

>>19468425
Amen. To remove the mystic promises of Buddhism and relegate that to the disgusting trenches of atheism is an egregious dissonance although it is coupled with some of our major disillusionments that induce ceasing of clinging.

[Anonymous No.19469824]

>>19468464
funny how atheist becomes an insult like pagan or nigger.

[Anonymous No.19469835]

>>19466936
das it mane

[Anonymous No.19469842]

>>19466767
I kneel to no man...no man BUT DURGASOFT!