/lit/ - Literature

>>22729410
who is the official? i should like to meet him on the road

>>22614641
>completely stripped down of religious tenets
only the amerishart localizations are

>>22483996
>no attachtment makes our influence on the world weak.
Try the word "fetters" or "chains" or "bondage." Are you more or less potent when encumbered? If an endlessly swelling number of things can hold you hostage, how free are you really to "change" or "influence" others, the world, etc.? This position of yours, that slavery is the real mastery, seen for what it is, is completely inverted, delusional reasoning.

>>21476880
>This is not unique to Buddhism
Nairatmya is the definitive feature of Buddhism. Will Aquinas deny that the biblical God is self-existent or not?

>>20496350
Buddhism is a religion and I'm tired of pretending it's not

"Nihilism" comes from a few different readings. One is the Nietzschean, which interprets a general notion of Buddhism in alignment with Schopenhauer as a pessimistic doctrine of rejecting the world and thus considers it nihilism. But Nietzsche doesn't really care what Buddhism is per se and is using it as an example of world denial without ressentiment, to be contrasted with the Christian world denial, which is based on ressentiment. Nietzsche doesn't have access to substantial Mahayana literature that would expound on the non-duality of samsara and nirvana either, since this is decades away from getting translated and disseminated by indologists studying the prajnaparamita literature or by Japanese advocates of Zen. Understanding this, one would see it is not world denial, and there goes one form of nihilism.
Another nihilism charge is that of the theist opponent of the Buddhist. This should be extremely familiar, as in the West, extant Christians assume atheists are nihilists because they deny the ultimate reality of god. In Indian discourse this is Brahma(n) or Ishvara. The specifics don't matter much, it's enough that Buddhists deny a creator of the universe to be labeled as nihilists. This is a very foul smelling argument because it would suggest the theist only believes in god to avoid being called a nihilist. So if you want, you can pick up Nietzsche here even though he doesn't agree with Buddhism and use him as cudgel, since they were both arguing with some of the same priestly people who had ceded their power to evaluate to "God."
Finally there are negating or apophatic doctrines like anatman or sunyata. Anatman is in every form of Buddhism and denies a permanent ego-substance or own self-nature. As you may recognize if you are familiar with Platonism, immortal souls and immortal God go hand in hand, so Buddhists are totally consistent here in saying no to both rather than picking and choosing. Madhyamaka is the school that makes sunyata its core and influences the rest of Mahayana Buddhism. This "emptiness" doctrine is really just an elaboration on anatman in its most basic sense, nothing has a self in the sense of that permanent enduring substratum. Nagarjuna is taken to be the founding thinker here, and for him and his tetralemma methodology, we cannot say of anything that it is x, not x, both x and not x, or neither x nor not-x, and this has been a nightmare of doxography ever since, with a long list of Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and also Korean Buddhists attempting to say "yes, but how do I explain non-dualism using language?" The consistent denial of any objects of discourse to be ultimately real is what gets this Buddhism called nihilism. But all Buddhists disagree that this is nihilism and provide many arguments to the contrary, generally to the effect that appearances are affirmed as appearances and that any theory beyond that is unsatisfactory, leading to errors.

>>20030954
>>20031097
Schope was relying on translations which among other things rendered dukkha as dolor, "pain," and his entire appreciation of Buddhism is based on assuming it is in agreement with his pessimism and quieting of the will in order to overcome pain. It is less a matter of pain and suffering and more that the elements (dharma) of experience as grasped are in a state of commotion or unrest... one suffers in the sense that this can be experienced as pain if his mind is weak or clouded and sees lasting substance in any of this momentariness to cling to. Nietzsche rejects Schope's Buddhism insofar as it is nihilism to him, but a passive nihilism free of ressentiment. A better understanding of Buddhism, especially through the prajñaparamita literature of Mahayana for which emptiness is the central concept, is not going to come around until well after Nietzsche, e.g. Stcherbatsky, Obermiller, Conze, or through popularizers of Zen like DT Suzuki. (Bataille and Heidegger are thus able to read Zen and Nietzsche and move in that direction somewhat). Certainly any formulation of samsara as not other than nirvana—as is common property of the Mahayana schools—would meet Nietzsche's definition of life affirming. The bodhisattva does will his own eternal return, for the benefit of the world, no matter how long it takes for others to mature.

>>19935410
It's a matter of (largely Tibetan) scholastic debate whether there was a person Maitreya-natha who instructed Asanga or if the texts are attributed to Maitreya as revelation/pseudo-authorship.
Very broadly speaking, Madhyamaka emphasizes the realization of emptiness through its dialectic and Yogacara emphasizes yoga in the sense of the transformation of consciousness and perception. Their main bodies of literature are somewhat different and are received differently by different schools in Tibet. You really could write entire books on this question. There is some good discussion in secondary literature from Stcherbatsky, Murti, and DT Suzuki (who himself translated and commented on the Lankavatara Sutra, an important Yogacara work). For the Tibetan perspective Brunnholzl has translated and given long introduction and endnotes on a number of Indian Yogacara works and their Tibetan commentaries, and discussed the issues of doxography with relation to the dominant "prasangika madhyamika" view in Tibetan Buddhism's Gelug sect, which upholds Chandrakirti's reading of Nagarjuna. The Padmakara Translation Group has an edition of Shantarakshita's Madhyamakalankara which combines Yogacara and Madhyamaka views and presents them as compatible, along with translation of a major commentary by the Tibetan scholar monk Mipham. It is worth noting that this combined view was the final development of historical Indian Buddhism, and that the philosophical differences between the two schools are often overstated—Yogacara does not particularly dispense with the notion of sunyata but presents the path to it differently than Madhyamaka. Same translation group also has Chandrakirti's Madhyamakavatara with commentary from Mipham

What are the best books on Buddhist meditation that provide a practical approach?
I've read the Satipatthana sutta but I need something more structured that goes into more detail about common pitfalls and mistakes, what to expect and so on.

>>19705625
>What does Buddhism have to say about "the void"?
The absolute or real is void of all predicates, descriptions etc., and to call that "the void" is to call the finger which points at the moon "the moon." See the Lankavatara Sutra
>Is this related to how the Buddhist path to enlightenment focuses on "self as an illusion"
Yes, because in the Buddhist view there are no permanent entities such as self, substance, god, who would be able to experience change or produce effects from actions, as their permanence would preclude them from doing so. See the works of Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Chandrakirti, etc.
>as opposed to the Advaita Vedanta path, which focuses in discovering the "true self" as consciousness?
AV does not consider consciousness to be the true self. It equates atman with brahman, an absolutist concept of deity, not with consciousness. TRV Murti compares and contrasts Buddhism and Vedanta in his work The Central Philosophy of Buddhism.

>>19634448
Cause the gun fits in the Bible.

>>19630942
Dogmatically speaking the Buddha the omniscient, so he "remembers past lives" in that sense, not only his but anyone else's, as stemming from the causal factors which are "karma," the volitional chain of causes and effects that goes from birth to death to birth to death (samsara). Rebirth is a pre-Buddhist belief that is being fit into this framework, as as consequence of action. A common metaphor is of a flame going from fuel source to fuel source—the flame is momentary and depends on the particular fuel to keep appearing, but there is no unfueled flame. In a way there is an 'essence' shared across lives because if you act to reify your desires you'll continue to transmigrate and keep dying and forgetting. Different schools of Buddhism will explain this differently so it's hard to give a more specific answer, and some can be rather divergent. But from a soteriological perspective, one has to abandon the petty self that keeps craving for more impermanence, and this is consistent for everything from Theravada to Shingon.

She's a mother goddess. They're everywhere. Childbirth sucks.

>>19093206
The 400 stanzas are Aryadeva's. The root text those comment on is Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika. The Madhyamakavatara is Chandrakirti's commentary on Madhyamaka, Nagarjuna's school of thought. Nagarjuna himself is just systematizing the Prajñaparamita sutra(s). The Heart Sutra also does this but sutra form rather than philosophical verse. Sextus Empiricus has some similarity with Nagarjuna but there's no soteriology to skepticism as in Buddhism. Some similarities also in Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Whitehead, etc., but none of them are equivalent, just more classical than medieval in their western-ness, which brings them closer to India.

Every day you post this and every day no less than a dozen different posters btfo you.

>>18649299
>I'm starting with an analysis of Kukai
Really? You're going to start with Japanese esoteric Buddhism? Context is literally Kukai studying the Buddhist scriptures available and saying "that's not good enough," then going to China to get access to more Indian stuff, and finally he writes his own books. And you presume you are going to start there. Good luck

>>18507048
Mahayana

>>18435387
>theology is just verbalized fear of reality
Every time

>>18327564
What is the "contradiction" here? That Buddhist soteriology promises an end to suffering due to acts and consequences even though Buddhists do not believe in permanence? Ask me how I know you've skimmed some write-up of Buddhism that doesn't cite any actual Buddhist literature. Nirvana is not "permanent" because if it were some unchanged state then one could not enter into it. For something to become permanent that was not permanent does violence to permanence. And if permanence does not exist then impermanence becomes nonsensical as an attribute, being a negation of something unreal. In any case, language is descriptive of conditioned realities, and empirically these are not seen to be permanent. Nirvana is taught to be accessible through following a path of askesis, virtue, meditative states, etc., which releases one from the interplay of these conditioned realities. That doesn't mean you become permanent or those impermanent things stop being impermanent or some other configuration of this and that.

I've always found the "isn't this just an atman" discussion to be superficial. The context is different, the intention, path, soteriology, relation to other points of doctrine, etc. The point of everything having buddha-nature is that all beings have potential for liberation, which means you are justified in the vow of coooompassion for them. No efforts made are futile if they are made to liberate others because all have this potential (which makes sense given the corpus of teachings on non-duality, relativity, emptiness, etc.). In other words there is no class of scorned beings who are beyond help. The atman of Hinduism is rather different, especially the capital Atman, since it is a question of a personal self versus a great Self that is permanent and not other than God. Buddhism always denies the personal self has absolutely real existence, because it cannot be found separated from the aggregates/clusters, what causes it to arise; it's like any other composite such as a chair or a pot. Some of the Vajrayana or esoteric Mahayana schools do literally affirm a great self, but they also equate this with other terms like dharmadatu or dharmakaya or tathagatagarbha or sunyata which to the earlier point, is a very different context than how Hindus situate and teach Atman. The argument for teaching this way is that it is expedient means for atman-minded beings.

>>17491940
>Madhyamakavatara
Technically that's Chandrakirti's commentary on Nagarjuna, whose main work is the Mulamadhyamaka-karika. Though any time you see Madhyamaka/Madhyamika in a title it is going to be related to the subject.

>>16978550
Based and apophasis pilled

>>16270694
Based Mahāyāna Platonist poster

>>15915508
Mahayanasamgraha
Cheng Weishi Lun
my diary desu