/lit/ - Literature

>>16942760
Frithjof Schuon - Treasures of Buddhism
Frithjof Schuon - The Fullness of God

>>14544187

The conceptions of Ramanuja are contained in those of Shankara and are transcended by them. When Shankara sees in the localization and duration of sensory objects a direct and tangible manifestation of their unreality, he does not say, as Ramanuja seems to have believed, that they do not exist as objects, but he says that as existing objects they are unreal. Ramanuja affirms against Shankaracharya truths which the latter never denied on their own level. Ramanuja shows a tendency to put everything in a concrete form as a function of the created world, and this indeed corresponds both with the Vishnuite point of view and with the Western outlook which shares the same perspective. The antagonism between Shankara and Nagarjuna is of the same order as that which opposes Ramanuja to Shankara, with this difference, however, that, if Shankara rejects the doctrine of Nagarjuna, it is because the form of the latter corresponds – independently of its real content and of the spiritual virtuality it represents – to a more restricted perspective than that of the Vedanta. When, on the other hand, Ramanuja rejects the doctrine of Shankara it is for the opposite reason. The perspective of Shankara goes beyond that of Ramanuja, not merely in respect of its form, but in respect of its very basis.

In order really to understand Nagarjuna, or the Mahayana in general, one must before everything else take account of two facts, first that Buddhism presents itself essentially as a spiritual method and so subordinates everything to the point of view of method and, secondly, that this method is essentially one of negation. From this it follows, on the one hand, that metaphysical reality is considered with reference to method, that is as "state" and not as "principle," and, on the other hand, that it is conceived in negative terms: Nirvāna, Extinction, or Shūnya, the Void. In Buddhist wisdom, affirmation has the same meaning and function as subjectivism, and hence ignorance, in Hindu wisdom. To describe Nirvāna or Shūnya in positive terms would amount, in Vedantine language, to wishing to know the pure Subject, the Divine Consciousness, Ātmā, on the plane of objectification itself, hence on the plane of ignorance.

>>14351546
agreed

The conceptions of Ramanuja are contained in those of Shankara and are transcended by them. When Shankara sees in the localization and duration of sensory objects a direct and tangible manifestation of their unreality, he does not say, as Ramanuja seems to have believed, that they do not exist as objects, but he says that as existing objects they are unreal. Ramanuja affirms against Shankaracharya truths which the latter never denied on their own level. Ramanuja shows a tendency to put everything in a concrete form as a function of the created world, and this indeed corresponds both with the Vishnuite point of view and with the Western outlook which shares the same perspective. The antagonism between Shankara and Nagarjuna is of the same order as that which opposes Ramanuja to Shankara, with this difference, however, that, if Shankara rejects the doctrine of Nagarjuna, it is because the form of the latter corresponds – independently of its real content and of the spiritual virtuality it represents – to a more restricted perspective than that of the Vedanta. When, on the other hand, Ramanuja rejects the doctrine of Shankara it is for the opposite reason. The perspective of Shankara goes beyond that of Ramanuja, not merely in respect of its form, but in respect of its very basis.

In order really to understand Nagarjuna, or the Mahayana in general, one must before everything else take account of two facts, first that Buddhism presents itself essentially as a spiritual method and so subordinates everything to the point of view of method and, secondly, that this method is essentially one of negation. From this it follows, on the one hand, that metaphysical reality is considered with reference to method, that is as "state" and not as "principle," and, on the other hand, that it is conceived in negative terms: Nirvāna, Extinction, or Shūnya, the Void. In Buddhist wisdom, affirmation has the same meaning and function as subjectivism, and hence ignorance, in Hindu wisdom. To describe Nirvāna or Shūnya in positive terms would amount, in Vedantine language, to wishing to know the pure Subject, the Divine Consciousness, Ātmā, on the plane of objectification itself, hence on the plane of ignorance.

>Traditionalism is bad because in the past we w-wouldn't have medicine and electronics and vehic-


On the other hand it must not be forgotten that "welfare" is by definition something relative; once an exclusively material point of view is adopted the normal balance between spirit and body is destroyed and appetites are unleashed which carry with them no limiting factor. It is this aspect of human nature which humanitarians, in the usual sense of the term, either deny or deliberately ignore; they believe in man as good in himself, thus apart from God, and they arbitrarily ascribe his defects to unfavorable material conditions, as if experience did not prove not only that human malice does not depend on any outward factor, but also that it often develops in the midst of well-being, and sheltered from all elementary cares; the deviations of "bourgeois culture" exemplify this to repletion. For the religions the "economic norm" is expressly the state of poverty, in which the Founders have always set the example — a poverty that stays close to nature, not of a denudation rendered unintelligible and ugly by the servitudes of an artificial and irreligious world; as for riches, they are tolerated because they are a natural right and exclude neither detachment nor sobriety — but they are never regarded as an ideal as is practically speaking the case in the modern world.

In this respect Hinduism is particularly strict: according to the Shāstra luxury properly so called — which envisages only physical well-being and keeps adding to it fresh needs — is a "theft from nature"; its opposite, simplicity, clearly means, not a privation of what is necessary, but a refusal of whatever is superfluous from the point of view of physical comfort, not a rejection of property as such; it is true that this stage of simplicity has been transcended in India itself, as elsewhere, and has been so for many centuries. Be that as it may, people today far too readily include under the common denomination of "misery" both an ancestral simplicity of life and mere lack of food, a confusion that is far from unbiased; the catchword "underdeveloped countries" is from this point of view highly significant in its candid perfidy. A scientific machine-age "standard of living" has been invented and the aim is to impose this on all peoples, (105) above all on those who are classed as "backward" whether they be Hindus or Hottentots.

>>14122539
Yes, yes he was.

Man, like the Universe, is a fabric of determination and indetermination; the latter stemming from the Infinite and the former from the Absolute.

It may be objected that our preceding considerations on the human phenomenon are not an exposition of anthropology properly so called, since we offer no information on the "natural history" of man nor a fortiori on his biological origin, and so on. Now such is not our intention; we do not wish to deal with factors that escape our experience, and we are very far from accepting the "stopgap" theory of transformist evolutionism. Original man was not a simian being barely capable of speaking and standing upright; he was a quasi-immaterial being enclosed in an aura still celestial, but deposited on earth; an aura similar to the "chariot of fire" of Elijah or the "cloud" that enveloped Christ's ascension. That is to say, our conception of the origin of mankind is based on the doctrine of the projection of the archetypes ab intra; thus our position is that of classical emanationism - in the Neoplatonic or gnostic sense of the term - which avoids the pitfall of anthropomorphism while agreeing with the theological conception of creatio ex nihilo. Evolutionism is the very negation of the archetypes and consequently of the divine Intellect; it is therefore the negation of an entire dimension of the real, namely that of form, of the static, of the immutable; concretely speaking, it is as if one wished to make a fabric of the wefts only, omitting the warps.

Quite obviously, an anthropology is not complete if it does not take into account the spiritual dimension of man and therefore factors such as the eschatological hierarchy which we have just spoken, or of the analogous social functions. To say homo sapiens, is to say Homo religiosus; there is no man without God. [To have a center, Survey of Integral Anthropology, p. 50-51].

What are some books that prove the largely unscientific and metaphysically unsound theory of evolution? Everything I've read that's put forward by evolutionists is closer to an ideology than actual science.

>For if a natural development were to lead up to a reflexive intelligence, to a sudden act of awareness that perceived the development for what it was, that outcome would be a reality falling entirely outside the realm of the evolutionary process; there would thus be no common measure between the act of awareness and the quite contingent movement that preceded it, and this movement, therefore, under no circumstances, could be the cause of the awareness in question.

>This argument is the very negation of the theory of transformist evolution, and therefore of all such notions as those of man as a "link" or man as a product of chance; by the same token it also excludes any mystique of a generative matter, of a biosphere or noosphere or of a "point omega."' Man is what he is, or he is nothing; the capacity for objectivity and absoluteness inherent in thought proves the quasi-absolute or fixed and irreplaceable character of the thinking creature; this is what is meant by the Scriptural words "made in God's image."

They think the world is blooming, while the heart
Renouncing it for God is poor and dark;
In this abyss, they say, thou wilt not find
The golden Paradise thou hast in mind;
They see not that the mystery of night
Means Layla dancing in a globe of light.

Thy deepest heart contains the holy shrine,
The naked goddess and the cup of wine.