/lit/ - Literature

>>21889909
>But that the true metaphysical enquiry rests on anubhava, that is, our immediate self-awareness.
This immediate self-awareness is invariably present always and already known according to Advaita and there is not even any possibility of samsaric experience being possible without it so when you say "metaphysical enquiry requires anubhava" it's basically a tautology that's not stating any new information whatsoever since enquiry like all mental acts and modes requires the presence of immediate self-awareness as per Advaita 101

>2. The ignorance that is talked about as being present in deep sleep is not metaphysical ignorance, but it's just the absence of a second th-ACK!
"And it was pointed out (by the Pūrvapakṣa) that if all distinctions are obliterated during resorption (Pralaya) there will be no reasonable ground regulating the re-emergence of creation with the usual differences. That too is untenable for the very reason that there is a supporting illustration. As in natural slumber and samādhi, although there is a natural eradication of differences, still owing to the persistence of the unreal nescience, differences occur over again when one wakes up, similarly so it can happen here."
- Shankara, Brahma-Sutra Bhasya 2-1-9

Shankara refutes the underlying bedrock of K.A. Krishnaswamy's and Satchidanadendra's whole system right there in that one passage. Their entire system depends on metaphysical ignorance being absent in dreamless sleep and in the above verse Shankara explicitly disagrees and says the presence of metaphysical ignorance (unreal nescience) in slumber is involved in differentiation being established again after it's made unmanifest in dreamless sleep (since there is differences in dreams, by 'natural slumber' he obviously means Prajna). Then, he cites this fact as a supporting illustration for defending the thesis that Pralaya periodically takes place (at a conditional level and not as an absolutely real change). When Satchidanadendra bases his whole system on avidya being absent in dreamless sleep and then just ignores this passage (as far as I have seen after looking a long time) from Shankara that unequivocally disagrees it makes literally everything else he says suspect, and this is only one of the many gargantuan elephants present in the room of his writings. And you were calling me the one who was intellectually dishonest, kek. I don't make retarded omissions like that about anything. And there is no way to somehow square or Shankara disagreeing with Satchidanadendra on sleep but otherwise disagreeing with him since the point about sleep is what Satchidanadendra's whole system of interpretation rests upon.

>>16458990
>>being the sentient witness of perceptions who is different from those perceptions results in an infinite regress

This argument was retroactively refuted by the legendary Adi Śaṅkarācārya in section 4.3.7. of his Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣadbhāṣya

I quote the relevant sections hereafter, he uses 'intelligence' to refer to the Self, or sentience, and uses 'consciousness' to refer to sensory-perceptions etc

Śaṅkarācārya: Now to those who believe in an objective world we reply: Objects such as a jar are not self-luminous; a jar in darkness never reveals itself, but is noticed as being regularly revealed by coming in contact with the light of a lamp etc. Then we say that the jar is in contact with light. Even though the jar and the light are in contact, they are distinct from each other, for we see their difference, as between a rope and a jar, when they repeatedly come in contact and are disjoined. This distinction means that the jar is revealed by something else; it certainly does not reveal itself.

Objection: But do we not see that a lamp reveals itself? People do not use another light to see a lamp, as they do in the case of a jar etc. Therefore a lamp reveals itself.

Reply: No, for there is no difference as regards its being revealed by something else. Although a lamp, being luminous, reveals other things, yet it is, just like a jar etc., invariably revealed by an intelligence other than itself. Since this is so, the lamp cannot but be revealed by something other than itself.

Objection: But there is a difference. A jar, even though revealed by an intelligence, requires a light different from itself (to manifest it), while the lamp does not require another lamp. Therefore the lamp, although revealed by something else, reveals itself as well as the jar.

Reply: Not so, for there is no difference, directly or indirectly (between a jar and a lamp). As the jar is revealed by an intelligence, so is equally the lamp. Your statement that the lamp reveals both itself and the jar is wrong. Why? Because what can its condition be when it does not reveal itself? As a matter of fact, we notice no difference in it, either directly or indirectly. A thing is said to be revealed only when we notice some difference in it through the presence or absence of the revealing agent. But there can be no question of a lamp being present before or absent from itself; and when no difference is caused by the presence or absence, it is idle to say that the lamp reveals itself.

It's pre-Shankara Advaita

>>16201310

I recommend the translation of the Upanishads which includes Shankaracharya's commentaries on them, which I find to elucidate their meaning incomparably better than the vast leagues of insignificant and mediocre modern 'scholars' whose uninspiring commentaries and notes end up forming the lenses through which most people end up reading the Upanishads. I'm glad you asked. I recommend beginning with the 8-Upanishad commentary compilation translated by Gambhirananda and then reading Shankaracharya's commentaries on the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads in that order. The Chandogya commentary translation below I consider to be inferior to the translation by Gambhirananda so if you are serious and read through all his Upanishad commentaries I recommend ordering a hard copy of Gambhirananda's Chandogya translation. If you are confused about anything you can clarify those points by reading the entirety of, or by scanning the table of contents and then reading the relevant chapter of either Guenon's 'Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta', or just the chapters on Vedanta in Sharma's 'Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy', both of those are on lib-gen

https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf
https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-vol2.pdf
https://archive.org/details/Brihadaranyaka.Upanishad.Shankara.Bhashya.by.Swami.Madhavananda
http://www.tbm100.org/Lib/Jha42.pdf

>>16170492

A significant volume of philosophical literature produced by Indian academic philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century can be placed under the rubric of ‘Śaṁkara and X’, where X is Hegel, or a German or a British philosopher who had commented on, elaborated or critiqued the Hegelian system. We will explore in this essay the philosophical significance of Hegel-influenced systems as an intellectual conduit for these Indo-European conceptual encounters, and highlight how for some Indian philosophers the British variations on Hegelian systems were both a point of entry into debates over ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’ in contemporary European philosophy and an occasion for defending Advaita against the charge of propounding a doctrine of world illusionism. Our study of the philosophical enquiries of A.C. Mukerji, P.T. Raju, and S.N.L. Shrivastava indicates that they developed distinctive styles of engaging with Hegelian idealisms as they reconfigured certain aspects of the classical Advaita of Śaṁkara through contemporary vocabulary.

These appropriations of Hegelian idioms can be placed under three overlapping styles: (a) Mukerji was partly involved in locating Advaita in an intermediate conceptual space between, on the one hand, Kantian agnosticism and, on the other hand, Hegelian absolutism; (b) Raju and Shrivastava presented Advaitic thought as the fulfilment of certain insights of Hegel and F.H. Bradley; and (c) the interrogations of Hegel’s ‘idealism’ provided several Indian academic philosophers with a hermeneutic opportunity to revisit the vexed question of whether the ‘idealism’ of Śaṁkara reduces the phenomenal world, structured by māyā, to a bundle of ideas.

The theme of the emergence of certain forms of Hinduisms through various types of east–west dialogical interactions has been extensively studied in recent decades. From around 1900 onwards, some Hindu thinkers began to assimilate and critically interrogate a diverse range of European ‘imaginations’ of India, such as Christian missionary critiques of Hindu socio-religious universes, Orientalist projections of golden Vedic antiquities and enquiries into Indo-European linguistic morphologies, and utilitarian denunciations of the ‘primitivism’ of Hindu cultural systems. A topic that has been relatively underexplored in these intellectual transmissions and exchanges is the engagement of a range of Indian academic philosophers in the first half of the last century with a variety of Hegel-inspired philosophical systems.

>>16083397
The real question at hand is 'what is the best version of the classic Shankara sitting image?'

I like this one