/lit/ - Literature

>>21892615
>Abhinavagupta
Retroactively refuted by Chandradhar Sharmar (pbuh)

Kashmira Shaivism is right in saying that the ultimate reality is the Supreme Self, the transcendental Subject, which is pure consciousness, immediate and indeterminate awareness, self-shining eternal light (prakasha). But it is wrong in believing that this pure consciousness is, at the same rime, self-consciousness (vimarsha). Prakasha or pure consciousness and vimarsha or self-consciousness or will cannot be identified. Self-consciousness involves subject-object duality and objectivity cannot belong to the Self. It need not be argued that in self-consciousness the self itself is both the subject and the object, for the pure Self can never be an object, not even for itself. Again, to say that the object here is pure and that it is not explicitly enjoyed, but implicitly contained in the subject will not save the situation, for no object can be pure and even if it is implicit the reference to it is necessarily there. Objectivity can be traced only to transcendental Illusion.

Pure consciousness, due to avidya, appears as self-consciousness or will. It is not the real nature or power of the Self. This system is confusing between the empirical self and the transcendental Self. In the case of the empirical self pure consciousness remains as its transcendental background and self-consciousness appears as its essence; here the subject and the object are synthesized and every empirical experience, cognitive, emotive, or conative, is based on this synthesis and necessarily refers to an object. This system wrongly imagines that what is true in the case of the empirical self should also be true in the case of the transcendental Self.

Hence the supposition that if the pure Self is not united with the object, it would not be even conscious of its consciousness, would not be able to enjoy its bliss and freedom and would not be able to create anything by the force of its will. So this system treats objectivity as the inherent power of the pure Self and binds the subject eternally to the object. It puts Shiva in eternal embrace of Shakti; without his Shakti or matra (measure) ‘Shiva* would remain a mere ‘Shava' (corpse). This may be true of God and His divine Consort, but not of the Absolute. This is an illegitimate imposition of the empirical nature generated by avidya on the transcendental Self. Pure consciousness is self-shining and self-proved; it needs no other consciousness for its awareness, as this would lead to infinite regress. Pure consciousness is at once pure being and pure bliss. Its unity, its being and its bliss are transcendental and beyond duality. This unity is beyond the categories of unity and difference; this being is beyond the concepts of being and non-being; this bliss is beyond empirical pleasure and pain.

>>20353564

>>20241962
>Kashmir Shaivism mogged the shit out of it and subsumes it completely
Incorrect, Kashmir Shaivism uses totally inconsistent logic and their arguments against Advaita are stupid grug-tier arguments like "hurr durr how can God be alive if he isn't changing"

Chandradhar Sharma refuted Kashmir Shaivism in his book on the Advaita Tradition and he shows how it's an attempt to meld the Absolutism of Advaita with the realism of Sankhya with some added influences of Dharmakirti, but this just leads to inner contradictions (see pic related).

>“Kàshmïra Shaivism admits jivanmukti, emphasises the ultimate reality of the pure Self alone, traces all difference to innate Ignorance, treats bondage and liberation as ultimately unreal, takes everything as the manifestation of the Real, regards immediate spiritual experience as leading to moksa, admits màyà shakti as veiling the Real and as the root-cause of all difference, finitude and limitation and emphasises the need for spiritual discipline to realise the Self. Pratyabhijnâ glides away in aparoksànubhüti of Vedanta. There are many passages in the classical works of this system emphasising the transcendental unity of the Supreme Self and condemning all difference in unmistakable terms. Inspite of all this, this system has a bias against the inactivity of Brahma and the theory of màyà as advocated in Advaita Vedanta and wants to preserve the reality of everything by treating it as the manifestation of the Supreme. We have seen that it is not possible to do so. The School of Kàshmïra Shaivism appears to be a house divided against itself and its inner contradictions can be removed from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta, which is often implicitly contained in it.”

Lastly Kashmir Shaivism died out and the lineage doesn't survive, while Advaita does.

>>20120820
>A thing which has an end must also have a cause
Why? You just asserted this but never offered a reason. An illusion never started to exist but was just wrongly perceived as existing, however the ending of the illusion can take place without the illusion ever involving something actually beginning to have real existence. Also, Advaita says that Brahman is transcendent to time and that time only exists within maya, so from outside time maya is projected as a beginningless illusory realm, but once liberation is reach its realized that maya and time never had any real existence to begin with. So, the maya and the beginingless jivas do have a source that is atemporally projecting them from beyond time.
>True philosophy should be able to explain the foundations of it's theory.
That's if you are searching for rationalism and not a spiritual doctrine that puts conferring liberation as its main goal.
>Saivism establishes the thought that reality can only be undivided if it's understood as a creative force
You say "can only be undivided" but then Shaivism ends up laminating differences and internal divisions as inherently characterizing the Absolute forever instead of these ever being effaced or erased or transcended. You can't say something is undivided while at the same time dividing it into Paramashiva, Shiva, Shakti, and the Sankhya cosmology thats tacked on to this by shaivists, it's inherently contradictory.
>A real non-dualist rejects any theory that maintains that the universe would be less than real.
Do you want to arrive at a single undivided reality, or two or more realities grouped into a monistic whole? The former is non-dualism (without differences), and the latter is monism and includes Kashmir Shaivism and Sri Vaishnavism.
>The Advaitin, who maintains that non-duality is the true nature of the absolute by rejecting duality as only relatively real, is ultimately stuck in a dualism between the real and illusory by the foolishness of his own excessive sophistry.
There is only a dualism between two equal principles or between two things that actually exist, but since one is ultimately non-existent and vanishes in unembodied liberation (Videhamukti), leaving just the single sole undivided non-dual reality of Brahman remaining, it remains a non-dualism. Kashmir Shaivism professes to be non-dualism, but in it's preservation of both unity and difference as both real and as both characterizing the absolute it's virtually no different from Bhedābheda Vedānta (difference and non-difference), which it confusingly claims is the same as the absence of all differences (non-dualism). The inclusion of difference as real (as Shaivism does) is mutually exclusive with the negation of all existing/real separateness and division (which Advaita does)
>Oneness is better understood as a coextensive unity of both duality and unity. They are equally expressions of the absolute
Read pic related and get back to me

>>19657993
> All the inconsistencies and impracticalities of Advaita Vedanta are fixed in Kashmir Sha-

“Kàshmïra Shaivism admits jivanmukti, emphasises the ultimate reality of the pure Self alone, traces all difference to innate Ignorance, treats bondage and liberation as ultimately unreal, takes everything as the manifestation of the Real, regards immediate spiritual experience as leading to moksa, admits màyà shakti as veiling the Real and as the root-cause of all difference, finitude and limitation and emphasises the need for spiritual discipline to realise the Self. Pratyabhijnâ glides away in aparoksànubhüti of Vedanta. There are many passages in the classical works of this system emphasising the transcendental unity of the Supreme Self and condemning all difference in unmistakable terms. Inspite of all this, this system has a bias against the inactivity of Brahma and the theory of màyà as advocated in Advaita Vedanta and wants to preserve the reality of everything by treating it as the manifestation of the Supreme. We have seen that it is not possible to do so. The School of Kàshmïra Shaivism appears to be a house divided against itself and its inner contradictions can be removed from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta, which is often implicitly contained in it.”

>>18971563
>What are some of Sharma's arguments?
You can read all of Chandradhar's Sharma's arguments against Kashmir Shaivism in this picture here in pic related, which includes the entire chapter wherein he argues against it. It's from the book "The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy" which can be found on lib-gen and archive.org. In Sharma's view Advaita is more logically consistent because it doesn't have the same logical contradictions which Sharma says Kashmir Shaivism has.

>>18971574
>According to Sharma it's nearly identical to Mahayana Buddhism
That's not true, Sharma's book points out dozens of important ways in which they differ

>>18971620
That anon has never presented a half-way decent or detailed refutation of any of C. Sharma's arguments, all he ever does is just make vague claims about Sharma not understanding it but he never gives examples or explains why Sharma is wrong. Even the green-texted paragraph you cited is characteristically vague.

>>18971643
Lol nope, "trikanon" has never refuted Advaita, in fact he doesn't even seem to understand that in Advaita "being" and "non-being" are not exhaustive, most of his arguments consist of going in circles trying to classify everything as being or non-being and getting confused when this doesn't work out, but he has never refuted or presented an argument against the Advaitist premise that there are 3, "absolute being", "indefinite relative being" and "non-being"

>>18971667
It's both funny and strange, but in doing so they are causing more people to become aware of the glory of Advaita and Sri Shankarcharya (pbuh), so I've come to not mind it at all.

>>18562927
>What are some of the contradictions he points out?
You can see here for yourself, this is the whole chapter here in pic related. This book is available on archive.org, and also as a pdf on lib-gen

>>16910721
>The point you advaitins make is that Maya is something foreign to Brahman, when like the Sun, its emanation of light is not foreign to it. The energy can never be foreign to its essence (to which it refers).
No it's not, maya is not foreign to Brahman but is sustained by Brahman's omnipotence and omniscience, I have already stated this once in the thread and explained why it is not foreign. I don't know why you keep repeating things I have already explained are wrong.
>Maya's power and its reality is willed by Brahman
>It is a logical conclusion.
No it's not. Willing acts being willed into existence by the willing sentience is a duality (will vs the sentience who wills). Brahman does not need to will maya into existence but it always has been arising beginninglessly out of Brahman's omnipotence forever without any act of will.
>yes, you guys posit the dualism of absolute reality-maya
This is not a dualism which exists in absolute reality, ergo its not dualistic
>you guys accept no willed gradation, which would be the only thing making sense
Making sense to you =/= making sense
>this utter rupture between brahman and maya is what accounts for the dualism in the advaita vedanta system.
It's not dualistic when there is no rupture on the level of absolute reality, all rupturing is contingent on a higher undivided absolute non-dual unicity; ergo its not a real dualism.
>the contigency is all put on maya when in fact it is brahman too.
wrong
>this is dogmatic and illogical. that is why prakashavimarshamaya is superior ti advaita vedanta. the brahman you posit is a brahman ignorant of everything, including himself. it is a dead principle.
Brahman is not ignorant of itself but is self-revealing sentience, Svaprakāśa, that always intuitively and immediately knows itself. It is Kashmir Shaivism which has a long laundry list of like 20 or so major logical contradictions in its doctrines as Chandradhar Sharma explains in pic related. Advaita Vedanta is free from internal contradictions, Kashmir Shaivism is not.

>>16887348
>That is why the Trika Prakashavimarshamaya is much more sophisticated than advaita vedanta.
Kashmir Shaivism is less logically coherent then Advaita Vedanta, Chandradhar Sharma discusses this at length in pic related and points out the various contradictions in its doctrines. Here is one of many examples of the logical pitfalls in Trika below. For the record I think Trika has spirtual value as do all doctrines which espouse non-monastic forms of non-dualism, but it simply isn't as logically coherent as Advaita, which makes me regard it as a slightly lesser path to the same truth.

>The transcendental unity in Advaita Vedanta is above the thoughtforms of unity and duality. Real unity cannot be ‘union of the two’, for if the two are equals they are two independent reals which cannot be related; and if one of the two is primary and the other secondary, this dependent ‘other’ will be found to be dispensable and will glide away into the principal which alone can be called real. It is Kashmira Shaivism which is afraid of losing the finite self and its world and therefore wants to retain them in some form even in the Absolute. If Shiva is the Supreme Self, the pure Subject, how can He be the unity of subject and object? No trace of the object can be ultimately retained in the subject. If this supposed ‘unity*, this ‘union of subject and object' is the subject, there can be no objectivity in it; and if it is an object, it cannot be the unity of subject and object.

>>15030222
Here is the proof that I'm not the pizza guy, this is an image from C. Sharma's book where he completely BTFOS Kashmir Shaivism from the perspective of Advaita, I've posted this image multiple times on /lit/ before, including in response to when other people have denigrated Advaita and recommended Kashmir Shaivism instead, in fact in this link right here I was most likely replying to the Shaivite Pizza man himself a few weeks ago when he said "disregard Advaita and read Abhinavagupta" and I replied to him with pic related btfoing Kashmir Shaivism.

>>/lit/thread/S14956030#p14964274

>>14956642
>Disregard advaita.
>read Abhinavagupta

"The charge of Kashmlra Shaivism against Advaita Vedanta that its Brahma is abstract, formal and inactive and therefore is as good as ‘nothing’ is incorrect. On the other hand, the truth is that the Shaiva conception of unity as ‘union of the two’ falls short of the transcendental unity and is not the true ‘advaita’. Advaita is not afraid, as this system imagines, of duality, for really there is no duality and Advaita is not troubled by illusion and hallucination. The transcendental unity in Advaita Vedanta is above the thought forms of unity and duality. Real unity cannot be ‘union of the two’, for if the two are equals they are two independent reals which cannot be related; and if one of the two is primary and the other secondary, this dependent ‘other’ will be found to be dispensable and will glide away into the principal which alone can be called real. It is Kashmlra Shaivism which is afraid of losing the finite self and its world and therefore wants to retain them in some form even in the Absolute. If Shiva is the Supreme Self, the pure Subject, how can He be the unity of subject and object? No trace of the object can be ultimately retained in the subject. If this supposed ‘unity', this ‘union of subject and object' is the subject, there can be no objectivity in it; and if it is an object, it cannot be the unity of subject and object. To describe the unity of the Self as the unity of subject and object, as the union of Shiva and Shakti, of knowledge and activity, where everything is retained and seen in a new light, where an all-embracing wonderful experience shines, where there is self-conscious experience of being and bliss may represent a grand achievement of thought, but does not point to ultimate reality; it may be good poetry, but it is not sound philosophy. It may satisfy our religious instinct, but it does not resist dialectical scrutiny. Objectivity, duality and attachment are due to transcendental Illusion. To try to retain them in the Absolute is an impossibility. It reflects our attachment to the 'I' and the ‘mine' and is Ignorance par excellence."

>>14709589
>Abhinavagupta
A fine thinker, his system like that of Ramanuja's provides an alternative approach to non-dualist spirituality for those who are not inclined to take up renunciation. As is always the case though, in the finer points of metaphysics it falls apart when compared to the sublime reasoning underlying Advaita Vedanta (pic related)

>Kàshmïra Shaivism admits jivanmukti, emphasises the ultimate reality of the pure Self alone, traces all difference to innate Ignorance, treats bondage and liberation as ultimately unreal, takes everything as the manifestation of the Real, regards immediate spiritual experience as leading to moksa, admits màyà shakti as veiling the Real and as the root-cause of all difference, finitude and limitation and emphasises the need for spiritual discipline to realise the Self. Pratyabhijnâ glides away in aparoksànubhüti of Vedanta. There are many passages in the classical works of this system emphasising the transcendental unity of the Supreme Self and condemning all difference in unmistakable terms. In spite of all this, this system has a bias against the inactivity of Brahma and the theory of màyà as advocated in Advaita Vedanta and wants to preserve the reality of everything by treating it as the manifestation of the Supreme. We have seen that it is not possible to do so. The School of Kàshmïra Shaivism appears to be a house divided against itself and its inner contradictions can be removed from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta, which is often implicitly contained in it.

>>14473654
>Kashmir Shaivism
OH NO NO NO NO

>>14463276
Because see pic related. Advaita is pure metaphysics and Shankaracharya (pbuh) is an infallible logician and metaphysician. You can't fully practice Advaita unless you become a sannyasin although Advaita is still worth studying and merely reading through Shankaracharya's works can be a spiritual experience and fundamentally change how you view the world. While they may not be right 100% about everything like Advaita is, the utility of stuff like Vishishtadvaita and Kashmir Shaivism lie in them providing alternative ways to approaching non-dual consciousness which are compatible with being a householder. One can gain a lot by studying all of them. You can agree with Advaita while also following KS or Vishishtadvaita teachings as part of every day practice. Jnanadeva synthesizes KS and Advaita in his works quite nicely.

>Kàshmïra Shaivism admits jivanmukti, emphasises the ultimate reality of the pure Self alone, traces all difference to innate Ignorance, treats bondage and liberation as ultimately unreal, takes everything as the manifestation of the Real, regards immediate spiritual experience as leading to moksa, admits màyà shakti as veiling the Real and as the root-cause of all difference, finitude and limitation and emphasises the need for spiritual discipline to realise the Self. Pratyabhijnâ glides away in aparoksànubhüti of Vedanta. There are many passages in the classical works of this system emphasising the transcendental unity of the Supreme Self and condemning all difference in unmistakable terms. In spite of all this, this system has a bias against the inactivity of Brahma and the theory of màyà as advocated in Advaita Vedanta and wants to preserve the reality of everything by treating it as the manifestation of the Supreme. We have seen that it is not possible to do so. The School of Kàshmïra Shaivism appears to be a house divided against itself and its inner contradictions can be removed from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta, which is often implicitly contained in it.

>>13043036
Pic related kinda btfos Kashmir Shaivism (from the Advaita tradition in Indian Philosophy by Sharma)

>Kàshmïra Shaivism admits jivanmukti, emphasises the ultimate reality of the pure Self alone, traces all difference to innate Ignorance, treats bondage and liberation as ultimately unreal, takes everything as the manifestation of the Real, regards immediate spiritual experience as leading to moksa, admits màyà shakti as veiling the Real and as the root-cause of all difference, finitude and limitation and emphasises the need for spiritual discipline to realise the Self. Pratyabhijnâ glides away in aparoksànubhüti of Vedanta. There are many passages in the classical works of this system emphasising the transcendental unity of the Supreme Self and condemning all difference in unmistakable terms. In spite of all this, this system has a bias against the inactivity of Brahma and the theory of màyà as advocated in Advaita Vedanta and wants to preserve the reality of everything by treating it as the manifestation of the Supreme. We have seen that it is not possible to do so. The School of Kàshmïra Shaivism appears to be a house divided against itself and its inner contradictions can be removed from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta, which is often implicitly contained in it.

I agree with some of the criticisms the author of pic related makes although I can also see how someone practicing Trika could end up reaching a functionally similar state of liberation/bliss despite superficial disagreements in ontology, I think they complement each other. Some medieval era and latter Advaita texts like Yoga Vasistha and others take some influence from Trika. I especially appreciate the Trika idea of phenomena sorta being the ecstatic dance of the Absolute abounding in a blissful fullness (and this is not itself strictly incompatible with viewing the phenomenal as unreal). To some extent this notion appears in early Advaitic texts like Vivekachudamani and even the Upanishads but there is not as much emphasis on it.