/lit/ - Literature

>>11611317
>>when you know so little about Hinduism that you are trying to claim atomism is orthodox just to prove Guenon was wrong
This seems a bit cyclical, you accept Guenon's explanation of what Hindu orthodoxy is then use that explanation to support Guenon understanding Hindu orthodoxy.

>in the separate chapter on Vaisheshika he is careful to make the distinction between the figure of Kannada and the darshana of Vaisheshika
>Guenon agrees that Vaisheshika with the exception of atomism is orthodox
The foundational text of the entire school is Kanada's Vaishisheka Sutra. Atomism isn't separable from Vaishisheka. Ironically, you're trying to atomise the teacher and the school so they don't overlap. Scholars have even called it "the atomist school" [Flood, G. (1996) An Introduction to Hinduism, p 232]

>The Brahma Sutra is indeed smriti but out of all the smriti its the closest to the Upanishads, being a direct distillation of them
It's one school's distillation. The Vedantans argued from their advaitin interpretation of the Upanishads, their Brahma Sutra explains it, but it isn't the sole authority on what the Upanishads mean. If it's not shruti it isn't authority and is up for debate (hence the different schools). The Vaisheshika Sutra is older than the Brahma Sutra in any case, c. 5th century BC vs c. 1st century AD [Johnson, W. J. (2009) Oxford Dictionary of Hinduism, "Kanada" and Vaisesika], so any talk of being "closer" to the Upanishads is meaningless.

>The Upanishads state that Brahman is infinite, atomism presupposes a real void that atoms fill, this is heterodox
The Upanishads famously appear contradictory, that's why there are different ways to reconcile them, the Brahma Sutra is one famous reconciliation. This is my issue with your promotion of Guenon as the way to start with Hinduism: he accepted most of advaita Vedanta thought, and thus equated orthodoxy with Vedanta, and conveniently thought parts of other orthodox schools which disagreed could be excised. I have no problem with Guenon, he was a cool dude, but he had a very particular philosophy and didn't just "explain Hinduism as Hindus understand it with PRIMARY TEXTS, did I mention he uses primary texts by the way?" He was not some unbiased distiller of the entire essence of Hinduism.

The Vaisheshikas obviously had their own interpretation of what Brahman being infinite meant.