/lit/ - Literature

>>20813391
>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, 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?
- Adi Shankara (pbuh)

>>18480236

>>18451112
>i seek only the geniuses brave enough to confront this terrible truth and bring the ultimate moral good: To Drag ALL into the void!

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, 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.
- Adi Shankara (pbuh)

>>18438447
>The next step is Buddhism btw.
Buddhism was retroactively refuted by Sri Shankaracharya (pbuh), go peddle your annihilationist nihilism elsewhere

>>18403519
Shankara refuted Buddhism and vanquished it from India, Buddhists can only seethe and gnash their teeth in despair.

>>18053950
>Buddhism
>Jainism
retroactively refuted by Sri Shankaracharya (pbuh)

>>17973018
Jainism was retroactively refuted by Sri Śaṅkarācārya (pbuh) along with Buddhism and several other false doctrines

>If God created the world, where was he before the creation?
outside of and anterior to time and space, which are contingent upon Him, and which have their relative existence sustained through His power
>If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now?
The same place that He always has been and will be as the metaphysical infinite. He is the support of everything else and needs no support.
>How could God have made this world without any raw material?
Because matter and material doesn’t exist as an independent physical entities with their own reality but what we apprehend as matter is just God’s power appearing as such within the span of consciousness. The problem of the emergence of the matter is eliminated with this solution, because it just requires God exist eternally or outside time while being able to wield His own power that then appears as inert matter
>If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression.
there is no regression with the above solution, the power and the world that it appears as are the same
>If you declare that this raw material arose naturally
I’m not saying that
>If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense?
This would only be a problem for people who believe that physical matter exists as an independent reality, if its existence is relative in the manner held to be Advaita for instance than there is no problem
>If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him?
God (Brahman) does not sustain the relative existence of the world because of Him being compelled by an act of will, but Brahman does with without beginning and without end because it is Brahman’s eternal and uncreated inherent nature to do so.
>If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world?
As the formless, he provides the necessary ground and support of form, just like how in order to exist objects need to be grounded in three dimensional formless space. As the actionless Self who is free from change and decay, He provides the constant light by which all actions are perceived, He is all-embracing in the sense of filling everything without interior or exterior, this presents no difficulty to God because the world doesn’t emerge or be created as an independent entity aside from God, instead its false appearance is merely sustained via His power

>tfw buddhism is gay

>>16902554
>*vanquishes Buddhism from India for all time with his irrefutable criticisms that not a single Buddhist ever had the brains to refute*

nothing personal kid

>>16756873
Trying to redefine your opponents terms into a meaning which they don't use it in, and then pointing to a contradiction which results from that misinterpretation as a proof of the flaw of the opponents position is not actually a logically sound argument. It's what's known as sophism, a favored tactic of Buddhist philosophers.

By their sophistry was no match for the great Adi Shankara...

>>16755478
>enlightened being with no attachments who exists outside of space and in all time and yet is somehow going around bumfuck india/japan/korea taking offerings.

He who is clothed in knowledge roams the earth freely, whether dressed in space itself, properly dressed, or perhaps dressed in skins, and whether in appearance a madman, a child or a ghost.
The wise man lives as the embodiment of dispassion even amid passions, he travels alone even in company, he is always satisfied with his own true nature and established in himself as the self of all.
The wise man who is always enjoying supreme bliss lives like this - sometimes appearing a fool, sometimes a clever man, sometimes regal, sometimes mad, sometimes gentle, sometimes venomous, sometimes respected, sometimes despised, and sometimes simply unnoticed.
Even when poor always contented, even without assistance always strong, always satisfied even without eating, without equal, but looking on everything with an equal eye.
This man is not acting even when acting, experiences the fruits of past actions but is not the reaper of the consequences, with a body and yet without a body, prescribed and yet present everywhere.
Thoughts of pleasant and unpleasant as well as thoughts of good and bad do not touch this knower of God who has no body and who is always at peace.
Pleasure and pain and good and bad exist for him who identifies himself with ideas of a physical body and so on. How can there be good or bad consequences for the wise man who has brokened his bonds and is one with Reality?
The sun appears to be swallowed up by the darkness in an eclipse and is mistakenly called swallowed up by people through misunderstanding of the nature of things.
In the same way the ignorant, see even the greatest knower of God, though free from the bonds of the body and so on, as having a body since they can see what is obviously still a body.
Such a man remains free of the body, and moves here and there as impelled by the winds of energy, like a snake that has cast its skin.
Just as a piece of wood is carried high and low by a stream, so the body is carried along by causality as the appropriate fruits of past actions present themselves.
The man free from identification with the body lives experiencing the causal effects of previously entertained desires, just like the man subject to samsara, but, being realised, he remains silently within himself as the witness there, empty of further mental imaginations - like the axle of a wheel.
He whose mind is intoxicated with the drink of the pure bliss of self-knowledge does not turn the senses towards their objects, nor does he turn them away from them, but remains as a simple spectator, and regards the results of actions without the least concern.
He who has given up choosing one goal from another, and who remains perfect in himself as the spectator of his own good fortune - he is the supreme knower of God.

>>16745357

>Those Vijnanavadins (Svatantra-Vijnanavadins like Dharmakirti) who uphold the reality of the momentary vijnanas only make the position worse by degenerating into solipsism. Shankara says that his criticism of the theory of momentariness also applies to Vijnanavada. Momentary ideas cannot ideate themselves. They can neither apprehend nor be apprehended by themselves. There must be a permanent self to synthesise the fleeting ideas and give them unity and meaning. If the Vijnanavada Buddhist replies that the idea is self-conscious and is self-shining like a luminous lamp, he is wrong, for to say that the momentary idea illuminates itself is as absurd as to say that fire burns itself.

>Infact, it is only the eternal Self which is self-luminous and self-proved as the undeniable foundation of all our knowledge. A momentary idea which arises and falls cannot be treated as self-shining. An idea is apprehended by the self. An idea is just like an object in relation to the knowing self, who is the subject. If the Vijnanavadin Buddhist says that by idea he means pure consciousness and that we Vedantins too who accept the ultimate reality of pure consciousness accept his view, he is utterly mistaken because for us an idea is only like an object to be illumined and known by the self.

>It is the self, not a momentary idea, which is pure consciousness. Again, if the Vijnanavadin rejoins that our transcendental Self which is self-shining and self-proved is only his idea in disguise, he is wrong, because whereas his ideas are many and momentary and are no better than scattered objects originating and dying away and depending on the self for being illumined and known, our Self, on the other hand, is non-dual and eternal and is the transcendental Subject, the foundation of all knowledge and experience, which synthesises these scattered ideas into a unity and illuminates them and makes them known. If the momentary vijnana were the only reality and there is no self, then there would be no experience at all. And all empirical life, morality, spiritual discipline, bondage and liberation, etc., will crumble down.

How will Buddhists ever recover?

>>12632310
>duality

Advaita Vedanta = Eastern Orthodox
Vishishtadvaita Vedanta = Catholic
Dvaita Vedanta = Protestantism

Discuss

Can someone explain the difference between Monism and Non-Dualism to me?

>there is no muh

>>11478410
>The only thing you can do, other than try and fix yourself and live your own life, is try to fix other people. Which always works out super well, go for it.
Nah, you can have this doomed world; I don't want it anymore. As for me, I will practice jnana yoga and realize my atman with brahman to achieve moksha. Fuck y'all, I'm outta here!

>>11070307

The one accompanied by Adi Shankara's commentary

https://archive.org/details/Bhagavad-Gita.with.the.Commentary.of.Sri.Shankaracharya

>>11054525
As a theologian and organizer of mainstream orthodox understanding Adi Shankara is much more impressive than Aquinas, his works demonstrate a much more sophisticated understanding of the principals underlying reality, and unlike Aquinas he didn't overeat until the point of morbid obesity but renounced possessions as a Sannyasa, living by what villagers doled out to his begging bowl.

'Ye shall know them by their fruits'

What are some essential reads for Advaita Vendata?