/lit/ - Literature

>>22760998
>I think once you deny the reality of the world, you've made a mistake somewhere.
"The point of importance is that the Vedantic position is in perfect agreement with the Platonic, which is that things are 'false'(anrta) in the sense that an imitation, though it exists, is not 'the real thing' of which it is an imitation; and with the Christian doctrine as formulated by St. Augustine in Conf.7.11.4: 'I beheld these others beneath Thee, and saw that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not. An existance (esse) they have, because they are from Thee; and yet no existence, because they are not what Thou art. For only that really is, that remains unchangeably: Heaven and Earth are beautiful and good, and are (sunt), since God made them', but when 'compared to Thee, they are neither beautiful, nor good, nor are at all' (nec sunt). The Vedantic doctrine that the world is 'of the stuff of art' (māyā-maya) is not a doctrine of 'illusion' but merely distinguishes the relative reality of the artefact from the greater reality of the Artificer (māyin, nirmānakāra) in whom the paradigm subsists. The world is an epiphany; and it is no one's fault but our own if we mistake 'the things that were made' for the reality after which they were made, the phenomenon itself for that of which phenomena are appearances! Moreover, 'illusion' cannot properly be predicated in an object, it can only arise in the percipient; the shadow is a shadow, whatever we make of it."

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy - Time and Eternity

>>20565850
>Evola, Gueunon, Schmidt, Heidawatshisname
>"Traditionalist"
>Nigga get on my level pic related.

>Ananda COOMaraswamy
>Had three wives
>Two English, one Jewish

Everybody talks about Guénon, Schuon, Evola, but what about other folks like COOMaraswamy here. What did he write about?

Any of his works worth a read? Other than his selected letters

>>20106539
Some more modern texts:

>Clive Bell: Art
This is the most sophisticated articulation of the Platonic view of both beauty and, arguably, art that we have been granted in the modern day. While formalists following Bell have often been characterized as dull and soulless, you can clearly se Bell's passion for the transcendent abilities of beauty conveyed by significant form.

>Ananda Coomaraswamy: Is Art a Superstition, or a Way of Life:
One of the most searing criticisms that I have every read of the modern world and sensibility. Coomaraswamy, proving his superiority over provincially minded postcolonialists, boldly argues for the objective spiritual superiority of early artmaking.

Coom.

"The point of importance is that the Vedantic position is in perfect agreement with the Platonic, which is that things are 'false'(anrta) in the sense that an imitation, though it exists, is not 'the real thing' of which it is an imitation; and with the Christian doctrine as formulated by St. Augustine in Conf.7.11.4: 'I beheld these others beneath Thee, and saw that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not. An existance (esse) they have, because they are from Thee; and yet no existence, because they are not what Thou art. For only that really is, that remains unchangeably: Heaven and Earth are beautiful and good, and are (sunt), since God made them', but when 'compared to Thee, they are neither beautiful, nor good, nor are at all' (nec sunt). The Vedantic doctrine that the world is 'of the stuff of art' (māyā-maya) is not a doctrine of 'illusion' but merely distinguishes the relative reality of the artefact from the greater reality of the Artificer (māyin, nirmānakāra) in whom the paradigm subsists. The world is an epiphany; and it is no one's fault but our own if we mistake 'the things that were made' for the reality after which they were made, the phenomenon itself for that of which phenomena are appearances! Moreover, 'illusion' cannot properly be predicated in an object, it can only arise in the percipient; the shadow is a shadow, whatever we make of it."

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy - Time and Eternity

How will the anti-vedantic hylics ever recover from this?

I feel like I would really like him but I haven't read any of his work yet.

*travels to Egypt to prove to Guenon that Advaita is just Buddhism and that's a good thing*

This honestly shocked me. It shocked Guenon too and he conceded some points but apparently backtracked on that concession.

What went wrong?

What do you think of Coomaraswamy? It seems that everyone is talking about Guenon and Evola, sometimes Schuon, but almost no one talks about Coomaraswamy. What about him?

coomer is swarmy

Anyone read him?

>>15769001

>"A European can hardly be said to be adequately prepared for the study of the Vedanta unless he has acquired some knowledge and understanding of at least Plato, Philo, Hermes, Plotinus, the Gospels (especially John), Dionysius, and finally Eckhart who, with the possible exception of Dante, can be regarded from an Indian point of view as the greatest of all Europeans. The Vedanta is not a “philosophy” in the current sense of the word, but only as the word is used in the phrase Philosophia Perennis, and only if we have in mind the Hermetic “philosophy” or that “Wisdom” by whom Boethius was consoled. Modern philosophies are closed systems, employing the method of dialectics, and taking for granted that opposites are mutually exclusive.

>In modern philosophy things are either so or not so; in eternal philosophy this depends upon our point of view. Metaphysics is not a system, but a consistent doctrine; it is not merely concerned with conditioned and quantitative experience, but with universal possibility. It therefore considers possibilities that may be neither possibilities of manifestation nor in any sense formal, as well as ensembles of possibility that can be realized in a given world. The ultimate reality of metaphysics is a Supreme Identity in which the opposition of all contraries, even of being and not-being, is resolved"

http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=The_Vedanta_and_Western_Tradition_by_Ananda_Coomaraswamy.pdf

>>14914310
Coomaraswamy wrote an essay on this exact topic

Sankaracarya’s dictum, ‘Verily, there is no other transmigrant but the Lord’ (satyam, nesvarad anyah samsari, BrSBh, 1.1.5) startling as it may appear to be at first sight, for it denies the reincarnation of individual essences, is amply supported by the older, and even the oldest texts, and is by no means an exclusively Indian doctrine. For it is not an individual soul that Plato means when he says: ‘The soul of man is immortal, and at one time comes to an end, which is called dying away, and at another is born again, but never perishes .. . and having been born many times has acquired the knowledge of all and everything’; or that Plotinus means when he says: There is really nothing strange in that reduction (of all selves) to One; though it may be asked, How can there be only One, the same in many, entering into all, but never itself divided up; or by Hermes who says that ‘He who does all these things is One, and speaks of Him as ‘bodiless and having many bodies, or rather present in all bodies’. The ‘Lord’ of whom Sarikaracarya speaks is, of course, the Supreme and Solar Self, Atman, Brahma, Indra, of all beings Overlord, of all beings King’, whose omniformity is timeless and whose omnipresence enables us to understand that He must be omniscient (sarvanubhuh, BUt II.5. 19, cf. IV.4.22 and SA, XIII); Death, the Person in the Sun, Indra and Breath of Life, ‘One as he is Person there, and many as he is in his children here’, and at whose departure ‘we’ die (SB, X.5.2.13, 16); the Solar Self of all that is in motion or at rest (RV, 1.115.1); our Immortal Self and Inner Controller ‘other than whom there is no seer, hearer, thinker or knower' (BU, III.7.23, III.8.11); the solar Indra of whom it is said that whoever speaks, hears, thinks, etc., does so by his ray (JUB, 1.28. 29); Brahma, of whom it is said that our powers ‘are merely the names of his acts’ (BU, 1.4.7, cf. 1.5.21); the Self, from whom all action stems (BU, 1.6.3; BG, 111.15); the Self that knows everything (MU, VL7). Whether as Surya, Savitr, Atman, Brahma, Agni, Prajapati, Indra, Vayu or madhyama Prana-yadrgeva dadrse tadrg ucyate (RV, V.44.6)6—this Lord, from within the heart here, is our mover, driver and actuator and whole source of the evanescent consciousness u that begins with our birth and ends with our death (MU, II.6d, III. 3).12 We do nothing of ourselves and are merely his vehicles, and instruments (as for Philo, passim). This ‘higher’ (para) Brahma is that ‘One, the Great Self, who takes up his stand in womb after womb .. .as the omniform Lord of the Breaths'.

http://turiya.vidya.hu/konyvtar/pdf/On%20the%20One%20and%20Only%20Transmigrant.pdf

Thoughts on Coomaraswamy?

>"A European can hardly be said to be adequately prepared for the study of the Vedanta unless he has acquired some knowledge and understanding of at least Plato, Philo, Hermes, Plotinus, the Gospels (especially John), Dionysius, and finally Eckhart who, with the possible exception of Dante, can be regarded from an Indian point of view as the greatest of all Europeans. The Vedanta is not a “philosophy” in the current sense of the word, but only as the word is used in the phrase Philosophia Perennis, and only if we have in mind the Hermetic “philosophy” or that “Wisdom” by whom Boethius was consoled. Modern philosophies are closed systems, employing the method of dialectics, and taking for granted that opposites are mutually exclusive. In modern philosophy things are either so or not so; in eternal philosophy this depends upon our point of view. Metaphysics is not a system, but a consistent doctrine; it is not merely concerned with conditioned and quantitative experience, but with universal possibility. It therefore considers possibilities that may be neither possibilities of manifestation nor in any sense formal, as well as ensembles of possibility that can be realized in a given world. The ultimate reality of metaphysics is a Supreme Identity in which the opposition of all contraries, even of being and not-being, is resolved"


http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx?article-title=The_Vedanta_and_Western_Tradition_by_Ananda_Coomaraswamy.pdf

>>13925758
Based. For me it's Coomaraswamy though.

this guys books are really good

>The Christian mystic, Neoplatonic and Vedantic traditions don't alig-

Evola was not a traditionalist. Pic related, Ananda Coomaraswamy is a far better introduction into world religions from the traditionalist school. Mircea Eliade said that Evola and Guenon look like dilettantes in comparison to him.

>“The contentment of innumerable people can be destroyed in a generation by the withering touch of our civilisation; the local market is flooded by a production in quantity with which the responsible maker of art cannot complete; the vocational structure of society, with all its guild organisation and standards of workmanship, is undermined; the artist is robbed of his art and forced to find himself a "job"; until finally the ancient society is industrialised and reduced to the level of such societies as ours in which business takes precedence of life. Can one wonder that Western nations are feared and hated by other people, not alone for obvious political or economic reasons, but even more profoundly and instinctively for spiritual reasons?”