/lit/ - Literature

I already understand that everything is ultimately Brahman –then, now that I have reached the final knowledge, why I can't experience reality as Brahman? What's retaining me to this world? What am I lacking?

Where can I read about the debates between Advaitans and Buddhists?

>Therefore, you must have had an infinite number of prior lives. And, in an infinite number of prior lives, you’ve certainly committed an infinite number of karmas. Each and every one of those karmas produced adrishta phala. As a result, over all your past lives, you’ve accumulated an infinite amount of adrishta phala which is now waiting to fructify. The good news is that you’ve accumulated an infinite amount of punya which will bring happiness to you in this and future lives. The bad news is that you’ve also accumulated an infinite amount of papa which will bring suffering to you in this and future lives

If you have accumulated infinite amount positive and negative karma in your past lives it should be impossible to change the ratio of good to bad sanchita karma during your life. So, you'll have similar prarabdha karma in each rebirth.

He was right about everything.

Thanks for all the replies. What I gather is that even if I'm going to read the Gita it would be dumb to only read one.
Your answers have been enlightening, but I'm still looking for specifics on the parts that are dishonestly interpreted. Like I said, what I've felt ISKCON to have an almost evangelical/redemptive attitude and I'm wondering how this comes across in the translation itself. If the current organization really does differ in scope from Bhaktivedanta's vision than it would be necessary to republish the translation, which they have obviously done. I'm also aware he had ideas that were very unmodern and etc about the role of women and etc that a lot his current western base likely doesn't agree with. Something I've noticed is how easy it is to become a devotee, as a lot of those that I've met strike me as pretty undeveloped. Can you point me to any passages in particular where the error would be clear?

>>21680337
my irony in using that word failed uwu

>>20645036
You got filtered you mean?
One day this entire board will proclaim: Guenonfag was right

Discussing about religions in places like 4chan is incredibly retarded. Religion requires a mind free from distractions and this place it's FILLED with them, from the low effort posts to shitposting, all of this is harmful for your spiritual progress. You talk about how bad porn addiction is (which obviously it is) while you're addicted to 4chan, discord and the internet in general. You have nothing to do with the sages of which you talk about, you are like a worm compared to them. Wake up to reality.

This is my last post on this website.

>pantheist
>gnostic
>crypto-buddhist
>unable to realize unity in difference
>monist
>contradicts himself
>proto-theosophist

What is Shankara's view of reincarnation?

>>19604534
>you cannot merge with God
nigga you can't UNmerge with God

I can't believe how big the Hindu corpus is. Familiarizing myself with some essential text I am thrown down a rabbit hole of footnotes of dozens of other essential texts, which in turn reference even more essential texts.
Are Christians insecure that they have 1 book while Hindus literally have hundreds?

Mundaka Upanisad. I.ii.10

>10. These ignorant men regarding sacrificial and charitable acts as most important, do not know any other help to bliss; having enjoyed in the heights of Heaven the abode of pleasures, they enter again into this or even inferior world.

Are the inferior parts of the Vedas unnecessary for full realization of Brahman? Or is what is being said that these rituals are necessary but only as a stepping stone to full enlgithenment? I feel that it must be the former because of what is said earlier in the same Upanisad:

>5. Of these, the Apara is the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, and the Atharva Veda, the siksha, the code of rituals, grammar, nirukta, chhandas and astrology. Then the para is that by which the immortal is known.

>6. (By the higher knowledge) the wise ralize everywhere that which cannot be perceived and grasped

So clearly a disctinction is made between all the different Vedas and the true understanding of Brahmand lies in knowledge alone, wholly independent of all other practices. Shankara also says earlier than this that in Brahman all actions cease because all distinction is lost in nonduality. So why would the inferior rituals of the Vedas be necessary? And if they are unnecessary for the highest realization why are they in the Vedas at all?

>>18954068
>theology
that is an exoteric point of view, I prefer to study metaphysics

I read Guenon and I must say that I prefer Advaita over the abrahamic religions. Is there any chance for a westerner to find an authentic advaita guru(I will move to India if that is necessary)? Do I need to be part of the caste system? I am also interested in other forms of hinduism as long as they are initiatic.

Alright, I’ve read Adi Shankara’s commentaries on the upanishads. Now how do I put this knowledge into practice? How do I find a guru?

Buddhism?

sounds gay

No need to redirect me to his books, it's unreadable and he talks about the four elements etc., about ether: I don't want to waste my time dissociating culture from philosophy.

When I ask a Thomist for Aquinas' arguments in favor of the existence of God, he doesn't redirect me to the summa: he summarizes them in a few lines in contemporary terms.

So I ask the advaitins: concretely, what are the arguments of Adi Shankara?

In particular, but not only, about the identity between personal phenomenal consciousness and God?

That our consciousnesses participate in the divine consciousness as our existences participate in the divine Being, even Aquinas would agree. But from there to proclaim a strict identity...

Seriously. If so, with what arguments?

ITT: men who undoubtedly held divine knowledge

>is the conclusion to all theology and philosophy
nothin personell kid...

Where do I start with pic related?

>>14614229
"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."

Adi Shankara - Brahma Sutra Bhasya 2.2.32.

>>14328377
>Neoplatonist doctrines.
Advaita is superior though

>>14058953
The final redipill is merging this world and god. Transcending both by means of non-duality