/lit/ - Literature

>being duped into taking "eastern" "mysticism" seriously

>>12039527
Dark ceases to be dark if you need it to balance light.

>>12039527
I really don't think any serious practice of either of these traditions would lead you to the conclusions you've arrived at here.

>>12039593
So does light?

>>12039598
i really doubt serious practice of either tradition is possible in this age, or would yield any conclusions at all

>>12039650
It absolutely fucking is. Don't be defeatist.

>>12039645
If the balance is the good, then shunning evil is also acceptance of dark. Light does not cease to be light, but dark ceases to be dark.

Ofc only if dark = bad, light = good in traditional terms

>>12039652
Weak blood, deformed souls, fetid tree from which they all sprout. Not possible, if anything its a demoniacal mockery of the real thing that we grasp and cultivate sickly personas around extinct races’ creeds and mysteries.

>>12039676
OK, so you're a half-baked "esoteric" nut who's not actually serious about Gnosis in the slightest.

Have a good day.

>>12039676
just join a temple in china bruh

>>12039676
>he thinks ascension comes from anything other than within

>>12039650
ironically the freedom these traditions are pointing at is freedom from the need to have any conclusions. intellectual understanding of their apparent differences doesn't lead anywhere, and trying to have a conclusion or defend a point of view or even applying these methods in order to attain some imagined state is sustaining exactly what both of them are trying to eliminate: the false self

>>12039598
Can you explain it and answer my question then?

>>12039584
Shut up Jew

Read Shankara and Plotinus.

>>12040568
based and red-pilled

>>12039527
Advaita Vedanta's Brahman seems much more akin to Yogacara basis-consciousness where underneath the interpenetration of all conventionally designated and ultimately unreal phenomena there is a singular, intrinsically existent reality which serves as foundation. For both the ultimate is a matter of transcendence. Daoism is more like Prasangika-Madhyamika and Zen/Chan where the ultimate is immanence within particularity. Any conceptual sense of some Ultimate-Other is dependent on conventionally designated / ultimately unreal phenomena so there is no escaping the relative. Nirvana is Samsara. The goal of liberation is a non-dual realization of emptiness, and emptiness is just dependent origination.

"Before I had studied Ch’an for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance, I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers."

“Not to understand is profound; to understand is shallow. Not to understand is to be on the inside; to understand is to be on the outside.”

>>12041210
>“Not to understand is profound; to understand is shallow. Not to understand is to be on the inside; to understand is to be on the outside.”
Zhuangzi is so based holy fuck

>>12041336
I don't get it. Can someone explain this for a brainlet please

>>12041343
It has nothing to do with brainletism, anon. It's just daunting to read eastern thought for us occidentals that have a completely different way of thinking and displaying that thought.

It basically means: To understand is shallow, because reality transcends understanding and category, reification etc. Not to understand is to have a mystical awe for the Dao, or the ineffable way of the world. Not to understand is true connection with life, and non-understanding is therefore, in a way, understanding, or to be on the inside. Understanding, in our explicit and systematic categorizations, is to analyse and decipher reality, but never actually experience the intimacy of it; aka true understanding.

>>12040343
>he thinks there's a within
>laughingchinesebitches.png

>>12040520
so ride the tiger and accelerate capitalism?

>>12041210
>>12041336
so the japs were just badly plagiarizing the chinks all along?
>Earth, mountains, rivers, hidden in this nothingness. In this nothingness, earth, mountains, rivers revealed. Spring flowers, winter snows. There's no being or non-being, nor denial itself.
>-Saisho Hiroshi

>>12041357
Thanks anon. Can you explain the rest of this >>12041210
What is the difference between Dao and Dharma? They sound similar to me. They both sound like the natural way of things.

>>12041386
>Dharma
Dharma in buddhism is a escape from the natural way of things

>>12040520
In what way is avoiding intellectual or conceptual thought beneficial? It seems like you have to really buy into the idea that everything achievable through the intellect is basically worthless for this to make sense as a goal. Doing it half-heartedly only seems like a way to become a mentally lazy brainlet.

>>12041441
balance

>>12039527
>Does Taoism conflict with Advaita Vedanta?
No not really, only on a surface level.

>On one hand, Tao sounds the same as Brahman or maybe Dharma, but on the other hand,
Not so much the Hindu Dharma (or Dharma would coincide only with one aspect of it), but yes Brahman denotes a similar concept and Daoist texts describe the Dao in an identical or highly similar way to how the Upanishads describe Brahman in many cases

>Taoism says you need to have a balance of dark and light,
Daoism does include the idea of balance but in my understanding it's not about taking action to acquire that balance but more a recognition that the Dao and the natural state of things is characterized by its own balance of this type and that one should align oneself and one's actions and being to it or at least not oppose it. To some extent one can read into certain passages of Daoist texts as implying the Dao is really beyond such distinctions although it's not a fundamental premise of Daoism.

>whereas in Sanatama Dharma it is believed that only good is desirable, and evil is a perversion that we have to fight against.
This is wrong, at least if you are talking about Advaita specifically as a school of thought. Within the larger Hindu tradition one finds those ideas but Advaita teaches that the correct understanding is the good and evil don't exist in an absolute sense because the ultimate reality is the Nirguna Brahman (Brahman without attributes), that is completely distinctionless; good and evil are seen as basically false impressions created by ignorannce along with all other qualities and manifestation in general. At the same time there is a balancing act where Brahman is equated with the ultimate good and perfection but it's because of Its absence of qualities and differentiation that it is so and not in spite of it. Daoism and Vedanta align on a lot of topics, the subject of good and evil isn't one where this occurs significantly but they do coincide to the extent that they emphasize going beyond a standard black/white, evil/good understanding to a level beyond it.

>>12039527
No
They are both made up bollocks
/lit/ - literature
Fuck off to /his/ and take the rest of the ooh spooky deep thinking crowd with you

>>12041441
I'd say its a real problem when people hide behind ineffability and the inability of discursive reasoning to arrive at any valid correspondence theory of truth or reality. Its lazy and what it effectively entails is not a transcendence of conceptualization but a stagnation and reinforcement of current habituated thought patterns. In terms of the Zen metaphor about the man who uses the boat to cross the river but once hes reached the other side he leaves the boat behind, people are ditching the boat when they've hardly made any progress. One of the many problems with Zen enthusiasts in the West is they are often so far removed from the context which allows that school to work; like you don't even belong to a Sangha or have a teacher but you're gonna disregard all the Sutras because "kill le buddhaXD"? Those people are closer to the mere scholastic tinkerers than they'd ever want to admit.

Philosophy is Upaya, so its okay to think about things.

Advaita is closer to Plotinus than Daoism.

>>12039527
>Taoism says you need to have a balance of dark and light
if I am not wrong, Taoism says there IS a balance of dark and light. Wuwei, even though you are beyond thought, is usually portrayed as good. It's similar to Karma Yoga in that respect.

>>12041383
>meticulously take in and synthesize Chinese writers, along with earlier Indian masters, to painstakingly reclaim the lineage of the masters while giving them all the credit throughout
>LOL PLAGARISIM MAN LMAAO
you truly are aware of vacuity

>>12041993
i like the poem, i'm just being negative to try to fit in, is it working?

>>12041930
That makes sense because Hinduism and the Greeks are both Indo European in origin, while Taoism is not.

>>12039676
brummagem

the word you're looking for is not "demoniacal," but "brummagem"

>>12041766
I have listened to an Advaita Vedanta guru who believes in good vs evil.

>>12042111
There is conventional and nonconventional understanding and they are both mutually complementary. In a conventional sense, yes, it is important to say stuff like robbery, rape, murder and so on are evil, wrong. This is just basic commonsense allowing us to live and function with some degree of happiness and sanity. Good and evil are also good terms to describe that which is “spiritual”, evolving, inwardly progressing, and “anti-spiritual”, devolving, degenerating, getting further from the source of enlightenment. So it’s almost as if you could say, yes, good and evil do exist, and it’s useful to talk about them. However, at a higher plane, such distinctions aren’t quite so easy to make or so necessary. In non-duality, there are no distinctions, no opposites. If you find this confusing, that’s good, it’s supposed to be.

>>12042136
In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna talks about the importance of fighting your enemies so they do believe in good vs evil.

>>12042136
Why is it supposed to be confusing

>>12041441
because conceptualization is reifying, structure is determinacy and determinacy is always a check on freedom, the model must never take priority over what it is a model of

>>12041383
I still don't understand. What does this mean?

>>12041357
>It has nothing to do with brainletism, anon. It's just daunting to read eastern thought for us occidentals that have a completely different way of thinking and displaying that thought.
Do Easterners have similar trouble understanding Western thought?

>>12042328
I don't think they even try very hard do they? Do Chinese universities teach Hegel and shit

>>12039527
I've been working on marrying taoism and hermetic principles

>>12042348
>Do Chinese universities teach Hegel and shit
yes, you'd be surprised how common western philosophy is in asia. I know a professor from Korea who specializes in Hegelian thought, and when I was in Japan you could find whatever volume you needed (Plato, Lacan, and everyone in between) pretty handily. The first time I started reading Plato actually was in Hong Kong.

>>12042328
I don't think there's enough westerners scrutineering them to be able to know.

>>12042420
That's interesting. Do they have people who go all 'the westerners are so much more profound than us, read Plato' a la mirror image of Guénon or whatever?

>>12042449
to my knowledge, not really. In the more westernized asian nations, it's pretty much like having two canons instead of one, and they are somewhat interchangeable (for instance viewing Dogen's concept of Buddha Nature through Whitehead, or comparing it with the Spinozian God like Masao Abe did)

>>12042111
I've read a decent amount of Shankara's writings and he states unequivocally that any sort of conditioning, attribute or force other than Brahman is not real in an absolute sense. If the Guru you were listening to talked about evil that would either make me think he meant on a conventional level and did not make clear enough addendums to what he was saying; or the other conclusion I would draw is that he is a Neo-Vedantist or 'New-Age' Vedantist who departs from the traditional teaching in some way. This is not to cast judgement on those people, but it's important to make the distinction because sometimes they make significant departures from what was taught by Shankara (and those before him, he was just the acme of a tradition long predating him). Advaitins still accept the existence of evil and right and wrong on a conditional level but never more than that. This isn't the sort of thing where there are a range of interchangable views all equally acceptable like how certain texts differ on the exact relation of maya, ishvara, etc but the acceptance of the existence of evil in a non-conditional sense changes it to a degree that it no longer resembles traditional Advaita Vedanta.

>>12042253
That's incorrect. Krishna in the BG does not talk about the importance of fighting enemies but rather about the importance of following one's own Dharma. Arjuna was a Ksatriya and was supposed to fight in the battle at Kurukshetra but was overcome with fear and emotion upon seeing the enemy and all his relatives and freinds among them. He asks Krishna for advice and first Krishna explains to him that as a Ksatriya it is his duty to fullfill his Dharma by fighting and that by not doing so he would incur great dishonour. In Krishna's further comments which form the main content of the Gita he specifically talks about how He is in all beings, and he instructs Arjuna to perceive things this way and to regard himself as not really slaying anyone nor being slain himself but to know that in essence there is only the unchanging godhead that is never slain.

>>12042556
The guru I was listening to was this guy. What are your thoughts on him?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wEBUpFkadUo

>>12042556
Well what is the relationship between Brahman as intrinsically existent ultimate reality and conventionally existent illusory phenomena? It is either dependent on or independent from it. If it is dependent than Brahman as intrinsically existent ultimate reality is not so as it it depends on conventionally existent illusory phenomena to serve as that which grants it status as substratum. If it is independent from conditional phenomena than it is like a sky-flower, something of which we could not even speak of.

>>12042749
I know who he is but have not read any of his books but I have listened to one or two interviews before. He lists himself on his website as ordained by some Vaishnava Acharya in India and the vast majority of Vaishnavas follow either Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita or some type of Bhedabheda like Chaitanya's Achintya Bheda Abheda Vedanta (And when I say follow many regular people might have little knowledge of the specific Vedantic doctrines underlying their worship but the theological basis of their particular sect/organization that its priests study will in most cases base itself in the position of one or another Vedanta school founder; and this is distilled into a more accessible and simple form for people in that sects basic teachings).

So much of what he says might contradict Advaita Vedanta in certain areas. I'm not aware of what Ramanuja's thoughts were on evil but I'm assuming that guy differs from Advaita there because he was almost certainly taught a different school of Vedanta. Anyone who's studied Advaita would still find much in common but there are also obvious differences. One person I'm aware of who is currently involved in making high-quality videos of talks on Advaita Vedanta in English is Swami Sarvapriyananda. He is involved with one of the various Ramakrishna-based groups started by Vivekananda. Some people think everything involved with them is Neo-Vedanta but its basically just Vivekananda, their translations by Gambhirananda et al are very good and Sarvaprayananda at least definitely seems to know what he is talking about based on the few talks of his that I've listened to. This is a talk of his on Gaudapada's Mandukya Karika.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykcdg0Vd3I4

>>12042779
>Well what is the relationship between Brahman as intrinsically existent ultimate reality and conventionally existent illusory phenomena?
This is one of the main topics discussed in Shankara's commentaries and he goes about discussing this and answering various hypothetical questions about it in a hundred different ways. The TLDR is something like that Brahman is eternally unchanging, spotless, infinite, blissful and omniscient existence-awareness which is the only thing that exists and so on. The illusion does not really exist but is mistakenly perceived due to ignorance as one wrongly perceives an object in the corner of one's eye to be a spider. Upon destruction of ignorance the illusion ceases to falsely appear real as well, at which point the Atma remains in its own nature which it always had in reality. There are cycles of manifestation (cycle itself taken in a symbolic sense as time does not really exist) within Brahman which (appear) to give birth to universes, these are transient, unreal and ultimately 0 in relation to the infinite and unchanging nature of the manifest; as these two distinctions are themselves only conditionally real distinctions as Brahman itself is undivided and One. Maya/Ignorance is mostly considered a part of the cycle of manifestation, there can't arise universes without delusion accompanying them; but these universes and all their contained illusion are nothing in comparison to the infinitude of the supreme reality of Brahman and it is forever unaffected by them; it is because of its perfection and fullness (or non absolute void) that some of the infinite possibilities contained within it appear to manifest but really there is only the unchanging and perfect, beginningless first cause forever at peace established within itself.

>>12042779
>>12043173

>It (Brahman) is either dependent on or independent from it (illusionary phenomena).
You have it backwards, Brahman is not seen as dependent on illusion or anything else. Brahman is seen as the only thing that exists and so 'independent from Brahman' would be considered an oxymoron, there cannot be anything independent from that which is the only thing that exists. It is considered perfectly within itself, without need of cause or support. The conventionally existent illusionary phenomena are seen as (conditionally!) dependent on Brahman just as the false appearance of a snake wouldn't be seen without the substratum of the rope for the image of a snake to be superimposed upon by the viewer. However, this is only conditional and from the perspective of absolute reality it was never dependent upon Brahman and never existed in the first place.

>If it is dependent than Brahman as intrinsically existent ultimate reality is not so as it it depends on conventionally existent illusory phenomena to serve as that which grants it status as substratum.
It's true that if it was dependent on something than Brahman would not be the ultimate reality but Brahman is considered not dependent on anything; it's status as the substratum of everything is inevitable for something which is the only thing that exists, it's part of the inherent nature of Brahman and is not granted to Brahman by the illusion. The capacity of the rope to falsely appear as a snake is not granted to it by a snake or the viewer but the capacity inheres in the very fact of the occupancy of that spot by the rope.

>If it is independent from conditional phenomena than it is like a sky-flower, something of which we could not even speak of.
There is no independent from Brahman, even unreal illusions are ultimately still within its totality and infinity. But going along with your reasoning if Brahman was totally independent from conditional phenomena it's true we could not even speak of it but this is not actually so because the conditional phenomena is not independent of Brahman and so there is a connection of sorts. In what appears to be our present state, it is initially through the conditioned that knowledge of the ultimate and unconditioned is reached (which is the reality within which the conditional falsely appears to take place).

>>12043173
*unreal and ultimately 0 in relation to the infinite and unchanging nature of the UNmanifest

>>12043173
>>12043175
Brahman as intrinsically existent universal monism in which all particular conventionally designated and ultimately unreal phenomena are circumscribed and/or find their basis is to set up an ontology where fundamentally the one is ground for the many. It is an alluring and subtle bias whose modus operandi finds that the parts of the chariot are more fundamental than the whole, that the subatomic particle is more fundamental than the atom, is more fundamental than the molecule, and so on. It is prejudice. To the degree to which the particulars are grounded, contained, established, or circumscribed by the universal - the inverse is true as well. This is the subtle point of emptiness. This (>>12041210) is the difference between transcendence and immanence. It is prejudice which denies dependent origination = emptiness = interpenetration on the basis that there must be some ground otherwise the whole ontology falls apart.

bump

>12043401
>It is an alluring and subtle bias whose modus operandi finds that the parts of the chariot are more fundamental than the whole
uhh what? That's like the opposite of what Vedanta teaches, it's all about how there are no parts, they are not fundamental, there is only the whole.

>To the degree to which the particulars are grounded, contained, established, or circumscribed by the universal - the inverse is true as well.
That's wrong though, maybe not initially (which Vedanta doesn't deny) but it is possible for the universal to abide in itself without particulars and without being grounded, contained in, established by or circumscribed by them or their proposed hypothetical existence; and this is itself reality.

>This is the subtle point of emptiness.
The "shoehorn nagarjuna and sunyata into the discussion and claim all eastern philosophy that doesn't agree with them is incorrect" posters are tiresome desu. The failure to understand or properly conceptualize the relation between universal and particular does not mean it is all ultimately empty. You nowhere proved the assertion that the universe is equally conditioned by particulars, you'd have to begin with that before you could proceed but you can't because all you have is a clown like Nagarjuna whose unfalsifiable reductio ad absurdum arguments relying on ideas lifted from earlier Hindu texts apply equally to his own assertions and even more so since these assertions negate themselves and result in contradictions.

>This is the difference between transcendence and immanence.
In your post that you quoted you mistakenly appear to be under the perception that Advaita posits an transcendent Ultimate-Other which is completely wrong because the whole point of it is that there is only the Ultimate-Now where there is no distinction of self or other and no distinction of transcendent or immanent. Advaita non-dual realization is both immanent and transcendent, both collapse into eachother and what remains is distinctionless and neither. Attempting to label it as one or the other reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what it's getting at.

>>12043401
>It is an alluring and subtle bias whose modus operandi finds that the parts of the chariot are more fundamental than the whole
uhh what? That's like the opposite of what Vedanta teaches, it's all about how there are no parts, they are not fundamental, there is only the whole.

>To the degree to which the particulars are grounded, contained, established, or circumscribed by the universal - the inverse is true as well.
That's wrong though, maybe not initially (which Vedanta doesn't deny) but it is possible for the universal to abide in itself without particulars and without being grounded, contained in, established by or circumscribed by them or their proposed hypothetical existence; and this is itself reality.

>This is the subtle point of emptiness.
The "shoehorn nagarjuna and sunyata into the discussion and claim all eastern philosophy that doesn't agree with them is incorrect" posters are tiresome desu. The failure to understand or properly conceptualize the relation between universal and particular does not mean it is all ultimately empty. You nowhere proved the assertion that the universe is equally conditioned by particulars, you'd have to begin with that before you could proceed but you can't because all you have is a clown like Nagarjuna whose unfalsifiable reductio ad absurdum arguments relying on ideas lifted from earlier Hindu texts apply equally to his own assertions and even more so since these assertions negate themselves and result in contradictions.

>This is the difference between transcendence and immanence.
In your post that you quoted you mistakenly appear to be under the perception that Advaita posits an transcendent Ultimate-Other which is completely wrong because the whole point of it is that there is only the Ultimate-Now where there is no distinction of self or other and no distinction of transcendent or immanent. Advaita non-dual realization is both immanent and transcendent, both collapse into eachother and what remains is distinctionless and neither. Attempting to label it as one or the other reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what it's getting at.

>>12043401
You wrote:

>Any conceptual sense of some Ultimate-Other is dependent on conventionally designated / ultimately unreal phenomena so there is no escaping the relative.
This is completely wrong and reveals an ignorance of basic Vedanta doctine but I don't blame you because most people outside of /lit/ have never heard of it because it's not cool and hip for midwits to read like Zen Buddhism is. A essential element of Advaita teachings is that the Ultimate is can only really be described through negation, that it can never be dependent on anything, that it is not the objection of knowledge not can it ever be; it is the natural state of being and Ultimate reality (which is considered always as, is and will be the Ultimate Now) and when under the instruction of a teacher one is able to negate everything (including mind, ego, thought, personality, memory, sensory data, etc) other than one's state as pure consciousnesses-being one arrives at it, - "The Self seems limited because of ignorance, Destroy ignorance and the limitless Self is revealed like the sun when clouds pass away.” This is considered entry-level stuff in Advaita and is covered in all the Upanishad passages negating everything and those saying 'he who says he knows does not know' etc, this is discussed in multiple of the principle Upanishads including several pre-Buddhist ones. It's quite possible to arrive at the Ultimate by negating the unreal and this is discussed in multiple non-Madhyamika Buddhist schools as well as in many other traditions and faiths including Sufism.

>Nirvana is Samsara.
Yeah and Brahman is coextensive with Maya and all that is within and without, give me a break I've heard all these basic Buddhist 101 conceptualizations of ideas found in every tradition a million times already. The source of that idea was already in pre-Buddhist Upanishads describing an eternal infinite all-pervading Lord that is the Self which is coextensive with the Maya that makes it appear to have difference.

>>12043401

The goal of liberation is a non-dual realization of emptiness, and emptiness is just dependent origination
b-b-but.. I looked on w-wikpieda and it said nn-nagarjuna was i-important .. i-in Mahahahayana s-s-so I r-read him and accept e-everythinig he said on faith?!??! No the goal of liberation is not realization of emptiness, that only is accurate when describing one aspect and level of it and not in it's totality.True non-duality is distinctionless and there is neither being nor non-being, neither emptiness nor content, but this non-duality is experienced by a pure awareness which is non-different from the non-duality itself and that this pure awareness is in it's totality not a void or empty in an absolute sense but just is and this is-ness is itself not empty (btw it's a source of endless amusement to me how posters like you cite various Buddhists who say this kind of stuff and assume it references emptiness when it applies equally to pure being which simply is). Nagarjuna overly focused on negation and in doing so itself lost sight of the forest through the trees. True non-duality would not be experienced as having attributes or the negation of such attributes as fullness and emptiness; any attempt by the founder of a major doctrine (not including Nagarjuna here) emphasizing either fullness (such as Abhinavagupta) or the negation of the conditioned (Buddha) does so for the purpose of arriving at that which is beyond both. People who sperg out over Nagarjuna are like people who get stuck at Stirner, Kant or Wittgenstein not realizing they are not the end-all be-all of everything and are forever left in that method of consideration, endless posting in threads 'hey guys don't you get it this was already refuted ages ago by X' because you can't think yourself out of the box you formed with them.

>>12043401

>It is prejudice which denies dependent origination = emptiness = interpenetration on the basis that there must be some ground otherwise the whole ontology falls apart.
No one denies origination = emptiness, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita both more or less state there is no origination and that origination is unreal, and that there is only the unchanging absolute which is without origin, it's just that you seem to feel it's necessary to extend emptiness to the Absolute which is beyond where is applies. What Vedanta would regard as a conditional and basic conceptual model for describing the interplay between manifestation and Maya you take a description of ultimate reality, all of the insights of all three of those are actually integrated into Vedantic cosmology, manifestation is similarly seen as empty, falsely appearing to have origin and the implications of the infinite all-pervading unchanging Atma cotextensive with that manifestation functionally results in interpenetration. No shit that which has origin is empty of reality or inherent existence but origin cannot falsely appear to take place without the unchanging as its basis. Nagarjuna and the Hindu texts predating him who say so are right that origination is impossible, however origination cannot be witnessed by complete emptyness and the conscious observing of seeming origination means there is something which is not empty and not nothing. Origination is equally as impossible with regards origination from nothing as to one thing from another, if anything 'is' (which includes awareness) than it must necessarily be one and the same as the origin-less eternal and indivisible absolute.

>>12043787
>The goal of liberation is a non-dual realization of emptiness, and emptiness is just dependent origination
this is what philosophers believe

>>12039871
It would be pretentious and insulting to the ancients who actually perceived whatever truth can be ascertained from their practices. Reread my post
>>12040343
>he hasn't actually read any Daoist texts or practiced the vaguest amount of meditation but parrots 90 iq nigger spirituality and christtard mysticism
>>12042091
This is a good word, thank you. But, I really mean to convey that I think there is something malevolent in theatrical, narcissistic, and frankly schizophrenic spiritual adornment like what pretty much all mystics and spiritualists do in this age. Really does come off like you're desecrating a grave

>>12043840
stupid ones

>all those words
OP can't into the Dao
Neither can I, having named the Dao

Is Brahman the same thing as the Monad in Greek philosophy

>>12043846
>>he hasn't actually read any Daoist texts or practiced the vaguest amount of meditation but parrots 90 iq nigger spirituality and christtard mysticism

what do you mean by this? who "gets it right" in your view? if the past is a no-go, and there are no contemporary gurus worthy of name, where else can you turn to but within?

>>12044479
what's taoist meditation? Qi Gong?

>>12042556
>Krishna instructs Arjuna to perceive things this way and to regard himself as not really slaying anyone nor being slain himself but to know that in essence there is only the unchanging godhead that is never slain.


Ok, and how can we distinguish between that and retroactively appealing to such priciples in a crowleyian "do what thou will shall be the whole of the Law" type of thing?

How can you say anything at all about good and bad if all is an extension infinite godhead just phenomenally changing in a dream-like state? Would just enable anyone to do any murder, any crime and injustice?

You are talking that Krishna is instructing Arjuna to follow his Dharma; aka the role to kill his enemies and keep the game going; is that right? So does this come down to the same free will vs principle of spiritual authority dilemma?

>>12039527
Experience the screen upon which the canvas appears.
Separate or not separate appearances are both judgements of one position.
It is both judgements of appearances within the screen.
Forgetting the screen, positionality arises.
Duality of positions; for or against.
The screen however is neutral. It is the eternal experiencer of the canvas.
No change is possible, once the screen is discovered.

>>12039658
The point is that dark does not exist.

Light and Dark are dualistic no matter the sophistication, you seek to justify them by.

Dark is the abscence of light.

Light is the only Reality.

>>12044466
similar in some aspects but not the same

>>12044538
Tai Chi is rooted in Daosim

>>12043779
>uhh what? That's like the opposite of what Vedanta teaches, it's all about how there are no parts, they are not fundamental, there is only the whole.
So Brahman is ontologically fundamental as it is the only ultimate reality but not ontologically foundational in the sense that it does not serve as ground for establishing other real entities. Epistemically it is fundamental and foundational because there is knowledge both of the rope as rope and of the rope as snake - ignorance exists, we'd both agree. So in terms of reality-status there is no dependency of Brahman on anything else, but epistemically? Well the Ultimate can not be known by a discriminating "I" that takes it as its object. It can be apophatically hinted at, "it is not this, that, etc." but it is only actuated in a state of pure-conscious non-dual awareness through a process of destroying ignorance and eliminating false views. The part I want to parse is the language of reality which says Brahman is real and Maya is unreal. I think we'd both accept defining the real in terms of the eternal, pure, permanent, unadulterated, intrinsically existent and so on. So Brahman is these things and Maya is temporary, impure, impermanent, etc. How could what is real and intrinsically existent be obscured by what is ultimately unreal and nonexistent? What causal power could there be of what is unreal over the real? If Brahman were intrinsically existent and real it could not be contaminated, but we persist in ignorance so obviously it has. To say that it hasn't and it is just us and our false beliefs is fallacious because in your own system we do not exist only Brahman does. Do the false beliefs of what is unreal obscure what is real and true? That is untenable. Does what is real and true persist in unrealities and falsehoods? That is also untenable Reification even in the most well developed forms still leads to contradiction. So is it nihilism? No, because nihilism only obtains for those who have the ontology of real intrinsic existence and then fail to find anything that satisfies the criteria. The middle way between reification and nihilism is the path of the Buddha, who taught that dependent origination is emptiness, and emptiness itself is empty.

>>12045477
>How could what is real and intrinsically existent be obscured by what is ultimately unreal and nonexistent?
Through ignorance obviously

>What causal power could there be of what is unreal over the real?
That's the whole point there is no causal power, the real is unaffected by the unreal, basis entry-level doctrine is Atma is changless and forever unaffected by anything it witnesses. There is no causal exerted upon awareness by anything it witnesses within itself.

>If Brahman were intrinsically existent and real it could not be contaminated, but we persist in ignorance so obviously it has.
Yes it's true that Brahman can not be contaminated and ignorance does not contaminate it because ignorance is unreal and exists in mind only. Is the snake contaminated when you imagine it as a rope, is the desert contaminated by a mirage one person falsely sees in it? The idea that an unreal illusion would inevitably contaminate the substratum that allowed it to appear is itself nonsensical.

>To say that it hasn't and it is just us and our false beliefs is fallacious because in your own system we do not exist only Brahman does.
Ummm ... sweetie.. the first thing you learn when you study Advaita is that Atma is Brahman. The only real aspect of our being which is the pure and unchanging consciousness-awareness of Atma is the same as Brahman itself. Only Brahman exists, there is no 'us' what appears us is actually the one undivided pure consciousness of Brahman. Maya is part of manifestation, but manifestation is unreal and equivalent to 0 in the totality of things which remains forever affected by manifestation or Maya.

>Do the false beliefs of what is unreal obscure what is real and true? That is untenable.
It is obscured by ignorance just as ignorance of the boxes contents prevents one from knowing that fact and when the objects are known for what they are ignorance is destroyed and the unreal is no longer perceived. Or falsely believing the rope to be a snake obscures its nature as rope. How is that untenable? seems like a pretty basic demonstrate and application of how ignorance and knowledge works.

>>12045477

>Does what is real and true persist in unrealities and falsehoods?
There can be nothing outside of Brahman for it is everything and is coextensive with maya and manifestation. Persists implies location and duration neither of which apply to Brahman, Brahman is the all-comprehensive reality in which unrealities and falsehoods can appear to exist.

>That is also untenable Reification even in the most well developed forms still leads to contradiction.
What's the contradiction?, so far you haven't demonstrated anything other than you misunderstand basic aspects of what you are talking about, I'm still waiting for you to show what the supposed contradiction is.

>The middle way between reification and nihilism is the path of the Buddha, who taught that dependent origination is emptiness, and emptiness itself is empty.
Nice try faggot but there is no evidence at all Buddha taught those ideas, they come from morons like Nagarjuna who had no connection to the Buddha other than belonging to a Mahayana sect over 600 years after he died. There are other Mahayana ideas contradicting Nagarjuna which could equally claim to be representative of what Buddha actually taught, Mahasamghika teachings about Tathagatagarbha which Nagarjuna didn't even know about are most likely handed down from his time and closer to what he thought. There are certain things Buddha said and did that don't mesh well with Nagarjuna, such as when he speaks of the luminous nature of the purified mind and in the grove when he asked the people chasing the woman whether it would be better to seek after her or themselves. Early Buddhist commentators has a poor knowledge of Sanskrit nuances and the Pali made them misunderstand key aspects of Buddha's teachings which was fortunately preserved by some Mahayana doctrines (not nagarjuna), the academics who have studied the very earliest texts and used linguistics etc to determine the earliest elements in those texts and so on have on several occasions concluded they hint at a teaching of some sort of transcendental tathagatagarbha. Regarding the Ultimate as empty is just discount non-dualism. It might be helpful for avoiding sadness/stress but it's not by any means the final stage. There are so much better things in Mahayana than Nagarjuna I don't know why you guys get so hung up on him.

Bump

>>12045702
Emptiness is fun and also opens up to the Vajrayana, which lets be real, Tantra is fucking based as fuck. Theravadin = zzzzzzzzzzzz.

>>12046759
OP here. Thanks for bumping my thread. Have a good one buddy

>>12042291
this,

the world doesn't have conclusions in and of itself, any conclusion you draw is a fiction in your own head. the elimination of these fictions is important. but yes you can warp this to be a content brainlet as well.

>>12045688
>Through ignorance obviously
Okay, but is ignorance itself real or unreal? If it is real than it cannot be destroyed as it is intrinisically existent and eternal. If it is unreal then it doesn't exist, and truly existent Brahman pure-consciousness should emanate supreme because how could the unreality of ignorance obfuscate the true real, how could the son of a barren women obfuscate the Ultimate real? that is not encountered and ignorance exists.


I'm drunk so imma have to get back to you on the other points tomorrow but dude just calm down this is a good conversation and i beilieve we both gain by talking it out but lets just stick to the arguments stop the 'midwit' 'oh this is basic is vedanta' axgrinding like im not an idiot who picked up some pop zen trite and is regurgitating shite 'atma is brahman' im not fucking dumb i know that cunt eease up