/lit/ - Literature

>year 5126 of the Kali Yuga
>still unrefuted

>Beginning with the Tathatavada of Asvaghosa and the Vijnaptimatrata or the Abhutaparikalpa of Asanga and Vasubandhu, Buddhism was marching slowly but steadily towards the Upanisadic view of the Brahman as the Supreme Being. In the conception of the Vajrasattva and the Lord Srimahasuka of the Vajrayanists the monistic view of the Supreme Being is clearly established. In the conception of the Sahaja or the svabhavika-kaya (the body of the ultimate nature) of the Sahajiyas the same proclivity to conceptualize it in the image of the monistic Supreme Being cannot be ignored. Quite often, the Upanisadic portrayal of the Brahman as having hands and legs on all sides, having eyes, heads and faces on all sides, having ears in all the worlds on all sides and as pervading the whole universe, are all applied to this Sahaja.

>And this Sahaja is none but the self, and all the worlds are the transformations of this one Sahaja-self, all the universe is pervaded by the Sahaja-self, and nothing else is to be found anywhere. All the various phenomena produced by the deeds (karma) of the beings are nothing but the modes and modifications of the self-revealed Sahaja; but though they are Sahaja in the ultimate nature, they are created in their varieties through mentation as the subject and the object. The Sahaja is all itself the sustainer, the performer, the king, and the Lord. It is the life of the sentient, it is the supreme and immutable, it is all-pervading and inhabits all the bodies, it is the great life (the vital process) and the whole universe is imbued with it, all the existent and the non-existent and everything else ensue from it and it alone. It is the Being of the nature of pure consciousness, it is the eternal sovereign personality, it is the jiva (the individual personality), it is time, and it is the ego.

Shankara called, he said that it's okay that the Vajrayanists borrowed his homework, he says that they can keep it and he hopes that it helps them in their pursuit of enlightenment

Where to start with Shankara and why is his system better than Theravada?

Where to start with Shankara and why is his system better than Theravada?

Millennia old tradition of Vedanta accomplished what Kant and subsequently Schopenhauer embarked on centuries ago.

I’m a hard materialist but have no way of accounting for that I can simulate feelings of pain, or paint pictures in my mind totally independent of external stimuli. Vedanta, from my very limited understanding, solves this…. But then it starts telling me that division is an illusion and everything is really One. Listen, I’m a pragmatist (if it works it’s true) and I know for a fact that none of you ACT like everything is truly One. Acting like division is real certainly works for the benefit of survival. Eating your underwear for breakfast because “division is maya”, where does that lead you?

>Solipsism... but BETTER