/lit/ - Literature

>solves philosophy in your path

>>19550836
> Any thoughts my chan friends?

good morning sirs

read Sri Shankaracharya

>>19240296
Metzinger: You do not see the Ego, you see things through the Ego. This Ego consists of memories, thoughts, perceptions, acts of will thoughts, we have no center of being but we mistakenly create an arbitrary sense of selfhood or identity based on this aggregate of mental phenomena I call the Ego

Adi Shankara: If you do not see the ego but instead see through it, how are you able to discern and identify in sequence its components? Nobody would take seriously a man who denies that he can see a bird while describing its visual features in detail

Metzinger: Uhh…. these thoughts and emotions and acts of will have their own awareness that they bring forward with them, these combine to produce to a feeling of being a singular and persisting presence, even though this is illusory

Adi Shankara: That doesn’t make much sense either my confused materialist friend, disparate and momentary flashes of awareness that belong to individual thoughts, sense-perceptions etc cannot combine to produce a united experience—the various senses are different from each other in nature and so one’s sense of smell cannot know one’s sense of sight or sound, much less thoughts and emotions; when they cannot know each other they cannot possibly combine to form a united experience unless they are all known at once by a separate witness who stands apart from them, and this is precisely what we find in our experience —that thoughts and sense-perceptions are known by the same awareness, for example when speaking to someone, at the exact moment we are considering what to say in response to them, we can still visually perceive them in the exact moment in which that thought is occurring. In that moment, that singular knowing awareness neither belongs to the sense of sight, not does it belong to that thought, which is concerned with the conversation and not engaged in any discursive thought regarding the color of the grass, sky, the person’s hair color, and so on. Hence, the awareness which knows both belongs not to any identifiable action of the mind, but is always-present witnessing awareness of the Self, the Atman

Metzinger: Okay, I agree that it doesn’t make much sense to consider mental functions as self-aware, what about if I say that the awareness is part of the Ego as another one of its functions, and that it observes the other components?

Adi Shankara: If you admit that Awareness knows all the contents and functions which you assign to the Ego, and that it’s neither identical with any of those other functions of the Ego, and that none of them possess the quality of Awareness but are invariably known by It, what is the purpose of grouping it with them if it differs from them by having a different nature from them?

Metzinger: You’re right, that doesn’t make sense either. Where can I learn more about this understanding of the real self of awareness?

Adi Shankara: Start with Guenon’s book on Vedanta and then read my Upanishad commentaries

>>19219318
>There is no self
This foolish claim was soundly refuted by the inestimable Sri Śaṅkarācārya (pbuh), the Self is our unchanging innermost awareness which reveals all thoughts and sensations

>"No one, they (Buddhists) claim, can possibly deny this chain of causation (Pratītyasamutpāda) beginning with nescience. And once the whole causal chain beginning with nescience is admitted to exist, and to be revolving continually like a wheel with buckets at a well, it is found to imply that the formation of aggregates must be possible. But this is not right, as the causes so far mentioned lead to production (of the next effect in the series) only (and not to aggregation of any kind). An aggregate could be admitted if an intelligible cause were assigned for it. But it is not. Nescience and the rest may cause one another mutually in your cycle, but they only cause the rise of the next link in the chain. There is nothing to show that anything could be the cause of an aggregate. True, you claimed that if nescience and the rest were admitted, an aggregate was necessarily implied.

>To this, however, we reply as follows. If you mean that nescience and the rest cannot arise except in the presence of some aggregate and so are dependent on it, then you still have to explain what could be the cause of the aggregate. Now, we have already shown in the course of our criticism of the Vaisesikas that aggregation is unintelligible even when supported by such assumptions as that of the existence of eternal atoms along with eternal individual experiencers who serve as permanent loci for the conservation of the effects of past action. So it will be all the less intelligible in a theory in which only atoms of momentary existence are admitted, without any permanent experiencer or any permanent locus for anything. If the Buddhist now claims that it is this causal chain beginning with nescience that is the cause of aggregation, we ask how this causal chain (pratītyasamutpāda) could ever be the cause of aggregation (of its constituents into a united whole that can produce nescience etc) when it depends on (that) aggregation for its own existence?
- Shankaracharya (pbuh)

You're going about your business performing fire sacrifice to the gods in order to obtain wealth and cattle as your ancestors always did when this guy comes around and says
>bro, you are not your body, bro! All is, like, one, bro! Just meditate and merge with the one, bro!
That sounds like fucking buddhism, you fucking buddhist.

What do?

>>17387355

>>17384006

> "Lastly, the Buddhistic assumption that the extinction of that consciousness is the highest end of human life, is untenable, for there is no recipient of results. For a person who has got a thorn stuck into him, the relief of the pain caused by it is the result (he seeks); but if he dies, we do not find any recipient of the resulting cessation of pain. Similarly I if consciousness is altogether extinct and there is nobody to reap that benefit, to talk of it as the highest end of human life is meaningless. If that very entity or self, designated by the word 'person' -Consciousness, according to you-whose well-being is meant, is extinct, for whose sake will the highest end be? But those who believe in a self different from consciousness and witnessing many objects, will find it easy to explain all phenomena such as the remembrance of things previously seen and the contact and cessation of pain-the impurity, for instance, being ascribed to contact with extraneous things, and the purification to dissociation from them."

>>16393706

>”From whatever new points of view the Buddha's system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well, dug in sandy soil. It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon and hence the attempts to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly. Moreover Buddha, by propounding the three mutually contradicting systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only and general nothingness, has himself made it clear that he was a man given to make incoherent assertions or else that hatred of all beings induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which they would become thoroughly confused…Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness."

Sri Shankaracharya - Brahma Sutra Bhasya 2.2.32.

>>15974229
No, Shankara had this to say about Buddha:

>"From whatever new points of view the Buddha's system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well, dug in sandy soil. It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon and hence the attempts to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly. Moreover Buddha, by propounding the three mutually contradicting systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of ideas only and general nothingness, has himself made it clear that he was a man given to make incoherent assertions or else that hatred of all beings induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which they would become thoroughly confused…Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness."

Sri Shankaracharya - Brahma Sutra Bhasya 2.2.32.

>>15822088
>Advaita Vedanta is memed on here by a single hipster who thought that Buddhism was too mainstream.
No I like it because it makes more sense than Buddhism, which is completely illogical, Shankara correctly writes about Buddhism in his Sutra Bhasya "From whatever new points of view the Buddha's system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walls of a well, dug in sandy soil. It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon and hence the attempts to use it as a guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly."

>Advaita totally annihilates the personhood and mind of God in favor of constructing a purely mechanical being that's only there to solve a few metaphysical problems.
Just because a Deity is non-anthropomorphic does not make it mechanical

>This goes completely counter to orthodox Hinduism where God is very real, very active, very personal, and does many many things.
No it doesn't, the Upanishads mention both a higher and a lower Brahman and when talking about the higher Brahman the Upanishads describe It with such terms as 'unchanging' 'pure intelligence' 'undifferentiated' etc

>It also goes completely counter to the orthodox Hindu belief that you cannot achieve moksha in this life (you have to be reborn to have union with God),
This is not a belief of "orthodox Hinduism" but the Upanishads themselves discuss attaining moksha in this life such as in Brihadaranyaka .4.4.23. - "Evil does not overcome him, but he overcomes all evil. Evil does not afflict him, but he
consumes all evil. He becomes sinless, taintless, free from doubts and a true Brahmana. This is the World of Brahman, O Emperor and you have attained It."

>This totally denies the Hindu idea of karma and reincarnation in a way that's completely illogical, whereas Hindus accept that the Buddhist idea of rebirth and karma are totally logical,

1) Reincarnation/Transmigration and Karma are not Buddhist ideas but appear first in the pre-Buddhist Upanishads like the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads from the 8th-7th centuries BC and then they were copied by Buddhism.
2) Advaita Vedanta does not deny karma and transmigration at all but they are taught as part of it, do you even know what you are talking about at all?

>>15822124
>Advaita Vedanta is based around the works of Shankara, who was basing his works around commentaries on the Upanishads from between the first and fifth centuries AD.
Incorrect, Shankara wrote commentaries on much older Upanishads including the pre-Buddhist ones from the 8th-7th centuries BC, some of his longest and most in-depth commentaries are on the pre-Buddhist Upanishads

>that Shiva made it so atheists would get hoodwinked into practicing a religion,
Wrong, it was Vishnu who did that not Shiva. This story is from the Bhagavata Purana which is a smriti text and not a revealed scripture anyway, it's not an axiomatic view of "orthodox hinduism"

>>15774087
Shankara's Upanishad commentaries

https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf
https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-vol2.pdf

>solves philosophy

>>15440233
>and that there is some some subtler consciousness at the base I can't put my finger on.
and that is the Atman

>>15398793
>Which book will explain consciousness to me once and for all?

Adi Shankara's Upanishad commentaries

https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf
https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-vol2.pdf

>>15096195

Śaṅkarācārya calmed rebutted "Well, if that's true then you should have picked a better word to express that then emptiness, but in any case your theory is still wrong because you still deny the ultimate reality of the Self and the aggregates which you believe produce the false sensation of it, if the Self and aggregates do not exist in ultimate reality then there wouldn't be any conscious experience at all; something that lacks existence at the level of ultimate reality cannot suddenly turn into seemingly real conscious experience at the basis of conditional reality, if there is no underlying existent basis for the illusion of Self to arise then it would not arise and we would not even be conscious. Illusions never appear where there is no existent basis but only where there is a real existing substratum in which they can inhere such as seeing a snake in a rope or a man in a post. Hence the either the Self is real or the real ultimate existence of something which causes the existence of the Self is proven, either way your theory is falsified."

"b-but Śaṅkarācārya, you yourself maintain that the phenomenal world doesn't exist in ultimate reality, how are you not also attacking your own doctrine?" Nagarjuna stuttered

Śaṅkarācārya replied "Ah but you see I maintain that there is an absolutely real Entity that is intelligence and bliss, the Brahman of the Upanishads, who while existing as the substratum in which this illusion inheres creates it with His magical power of maya, so my doctrine doesn't face the same contradictions since there is an absolute Reality causing those illusions

Nagarjuna sat back in disbelief and after a pause stated "I see how you are right, truly illusions cannot arise where there is no ultimately existent basis, but is not the moksha (liberation) you describe still a form of bondage, how can you assert that it is complete liberation and the highest aim when you still say that one exists as Bliss-Awareness? Is this not the extreme of eternalism? This very eternal Awareness being a form of bondage?