/lit/ - Literature

>>14033136
i have no doubt in my mind that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about lol

>>14033136
>isn't that karmic path then analogous to the self?
Yes, but only on an individual scale. It's just one degree of its manifestaiton

>>14033142
Zen teaches that, due to the intangibility and inherently transitory nature of the concept, that the idea of the self is an illusion or just something that we tell ourselves. However, one's karmic path, the choices taken that lead to other choices taken, and the way all choices ripple out into the rest of the world, creates a narrative. That narrative could be said to be a 'self.'
Got it?

It's "analogous", sure. The Buddhist sutras themselves often use the very word self to refer to concepts that make a good analogy (the Tathagatagarbha in the Mahayana Uttarartantra Shastra, eg) But the whole distinction is a subtle philosophical one that arose in contrast the the essentialist-eternalist system of Atman that would be refined by the Nyaya school of philosophy and simultaneously dismantled by Dignaga and Dharmakirti.

This is a complex, philosophically intricate and complex topic of ontology and epistemology, and needs to be understood in the context of the rigorous academic culture of ancient-medieval India. So yes, while many topics in Buddhist theory are analogous to the self, philosophically they are still heretical for complex metaphysical reasons.

>>14033170
There is the "self" and the SELF.

The self, the ego is an illusion... However, the true SELF, the personality exists and is immortal.
Try reading some hinduism because buddhism and taoism are basically the same system with different words.
Buddhism and Zen insist on the vacuity of everything while Hinduism will tell you that Atma/Brahma is the only reality. Same thing, different point of views

>>14033187

*philosophically, it is
Not philosophically, they are

>>14033187
>So yes, while many topics in Buddhist theory are analogous to the self, philosophically they are still heretical for complex metaphysical reasons.
Only certain schools of buddhism. The original one is perfectly in line with it as Ananda Coomraswamy demonstrated. Shankara only attacked the degenerated buddhist schools, not the pure Mahayana

>>14033191
this stuff makes me want to scream

>>14033203
Zen is fucking hard. Don't let anyone tell you it isn't a complex system. Shit you learn in the first year of study that seems like nonsense will click after five years.

>>14033200

Coomraswamy, and others who try to read a kosher self into "original" Buddhism attempt to extricate a system of mystical thought and practice from the commentarial traditions that emerged with it and defined it. For such a profound scholar of religion, I cannot for the life of me understand why he thought commentarial tradition was anything less than the only valid way to understand religious doctrine and instead attempted to read into the 5th century BC from his 20th century perspective.

Furthermore, there's no such thing as 'original' Buddhism, since as the Buddha himself stated repeatedly in many of the oldest texts, he taught different doctrines for different dispositions.

Perhaps we're talking about different subjects but frankly I cannot see any valid way to respect Buddhism's legacy as a tradition and the validity of its scriptures while accepting a doctrine of Self that mirrors the Vedas or Upanishads.

>>14033136
>Long ago, when Nanyue went to the sixth patriarch and was asked, "What is it that’s just come?" he was totally bewildered. His Doubt about it lasted for eight long years. Finally he was able to respond, "Whatever I say would miss the mark."

>>14033225

>coomraswamy

hehe "coom"

>>14033239
That's great

>>14033203
It's not that complicated. You just need to right words to understand it.
The SELF is like... a piece of God, or the Tao, Brahman, however you want to call it (a piece that is still being one with Him/It... Just like the sunrays are still connected to the sun)
While the ego, your individuality, your memories, etc is like a set of clothes around it. It's not immortal because it has a beginning and an end... You can throw away the clothes but not the PERSON (in the ultimate sense) that used to wear them.

>>14033251
Sauce here

https://terebess.hu/zen/great_doubt.pdf

>>14033260
I mean, if you believe in the SELF. Not all Buddhists believe in any of that. Some master or another would ask you to show that SELF to him, and then the school would learn a very important lesson.

>>14033270
Bookmarking. Thanks bro, I've needed something like that to carry around on my phone.

>>14033187
>Dharmakirti
completely destroyed by Shankara

>>14033170
So you are telling me that in computational terms, the self is just the transition probability of mental states? Then what policy is it that differentiates us from any other complex system, mental or otherwise? Maybe it depends on one's views of the division between what is physicalist and mental. Intriguing. I am a Nagelian when it comes to the mind but that doesn't answer anything. Simultaneously the frustrations of being both oblique and obtuse though maybe attempts at effability are futile in this subject of discussion and hence the viewpoint is justified. Brings us back to the matter of faith ultimately.

>>14033337
Personally speaking, I'm a monist, so I don't believe there's any difference between the physical and the mental, it's all one thing. As for the computational terms and the comparisons between humanity and other complex systems, that's rather reductionist. I think you're confusing the self for 'awareness.' Like, to say there is no self is not to say you don't have a personality or continuity between one day and the next. It is to say that the self is just the story that connects actions together, forming one's karmic path. To have awareness is not to say you have a 'self,' as the 'you' that currently exists bears little resemblance to who 'you' were when you were two years old. The only thing that connects those two people is awareness of the chain of events that leads to the current moment. I really hope that makes sense.

>>14033313
Are you sure? This book says the opposite

>>14033384

Homage to the Enlightened Bodhisattva Dharmakirti! Sarva Mangalam!

>>14033371
Hmm that makes sense. Then look at the loss of awareness (pic related). I guess the truth is you say a word enough it loses all meaning. It just is. A word such as I, Me, Mine. A kind of jamais vu (I'm sure everyone has experienced that atleast once in a small way). That would be an insight onto the illusory self.

>>14033384
Yes I'm sure, what they don't teach you in these self-serving Buddhist mythological narratives is that in reality Dharmakirti had extremely shitty epistemology, and that it's quite easy to expose it as illogical and contradictory if you know what you're doing

>>14033136
lmao this is some gay ass bullshit

>>14033384
How did they debate? They didn't even live in the same century.

>>14033136
enough of that gay shit
everybody post your favorite ox herding picture

>>14035148
Explain to me the doctrine of the ox

>>14035158
the ox is the physical body
the process of mastering the body results in forgetting the body
those two about buddha at the end sometimes are some BS tacked on by buddhists who throw a fit at the thought of mastering anything without a spirit guide

>>14035179
hey, thats pretty good
why would I/They return to society at the end tho?

>>14033187
>So yes, while many topics in Buddhist theory are analogous to the self, philosophically they are still heretical for complex metaphysical reasons.
read Dolpopa

>>14035419
>why would I/They return to society at the end tho?
To help those still bound within the illusion of this world.

>>14035419
The one you posted has the two tacked on with buddha, even though it's translated differently.
Traditionally, it ends like the one I posted, with both bull and self transcending

>>14035468
thought youd say that, but one cant force ones help unto another,
theres has to be at least a tiny bit of will.
You cant walk around town offering, really,
hence the stayin the fuck out, being there for those who dared to step out as well.

>>14033187
You are confusing two strands of Buddhism. Theravada would say this karmic stream exists between the different life states, whereas Zen and most of Mahayana would say that this karmic stream is similarly empty and non-substantial. Even Vajranyana, which has considerable differences, agree that illusionary karma can generate other illusionary selfs while itself being non-substantial and passing away.
It is not analogous to the Self, because the Self is the Dharma. You have found yourself at a position that is the antithesis of what these doctrines are trying to teach you.

>>14035485
At that point it's not your individual will that is deciding (since you have no ego anymore) but the Universal will.
Some people are called to be lone hermits, some are called to directly interacts with others.

>>14035498
fair enough

How do I become Buddhist while keeping my Will to Power instead of becoming your typified low-t sissified western monk where I will go around telling people that they need to just move out of the house if they happen to get a termite infestation because muh Buddhist ethics like pic related?

Or must I truly pick between safeguarding Evropa and being Buddhist?

>>14034351

>sunyavada is nihilism
>"valid means of cognition" implying cognition is valid

Shankhara what are you even doing
This is on the same level as "post modern neo marxism" and believing in the atomistic american individual

>>14033187
>potala palace
>not even nalanda university
isn't it mostly a political building

>>14033136
Karma is not a path, it is a state of mind, often created by habit.

>>14036667

>>14036648

Yeah but it's also still standing

>>14033225
>but frankly I cannot see any valid way to respect Buddhism's legacy as a tradition and the validity of its scriptures while accepting a doctrine of Self that mirrors the Vedas or Upanishads.
see >>14035436, Both Jonang doctrine as well as the original Yogachara of Asanga both present completely valid ways of doing do. Unlike the late-Yogachara of Dharmakirti et al or later Yogachara-Madhyamaka hybrid interpretations that regard it as upaya, Asanga himself refers in his works to Parinispanna as the great Self which actually exists forever as eternal non-dual consciousness and not as merely upaya or momentary vijanana.

>>14035668
>sunyavada is nihilism
>Shankara what are you even doing
Many thinkers have written that they consider Madhyamaka to be nihilism, both classical Buddhist thinkers including Theravadins as well as modern Buddhist scholars

>As noted by Roger Jackson, non-Buddhist and Buddhist writers ancient and modern, have argued that the Madhyamaka philosophy is nihilistic and this view has been challenged by others who argue that it is a middle way (madhyamāpratipad) between nihilism and eternalism.[47][48][49

Whether or not Madhyamaka is nihilism is up to interpretation, there are multiple competing interpretations of Nagarjuna within Buddhism, some of which are closer to or farther from what some might consider to be nihilism. One of the standard views is to view him as completely non-essentialist while at the same time there is a tradition both within the Madhyamaka school as well as in later Vajrayana of regarding Nagarjuna as having pointed via negation to a transcendental reality, the scholar David Kalupuhana even goes so far as to accuse the influential Madhyamaka commentator Chandrakirti of being a 'crypto-Vedantist' in the intro to his MMK translation for this reason. Whether sunyavadin is nihilism or not is unimportant to the purpose of why I posted that image, which was merely to show how easy it is to expose Dharmakirti's ideas as garbage, that Tibetan monasteries still continue to heavily focus on him and teach him is a major red-flag that calls a lot of their teachings into question.

>>14037639
Shankara most likely did not read any of Nagarjuna's writings and just interacted with some Madhyamaka proponents which is why he appears to have regarded Madhyamaka as referring to some nihilistic void without even any truth/basis/reality/dharmadhatu such as Nirvana underlying it that might save it from being nihilistic (and this is exactly how Nagarjuna defends himself against the charge of nihilism in his Vigrha-Vyavarttani, that is to say that he explains that he affirms the empirical reality of the phenomenal world while only negating its ultimate reality, and that he is not negating everything as non-existent and that it would be nihilistic to negate everything as unreal but Nagarjuna only negates the relative and phenomenal but this is not nihilism because Nirvana is not negated). It was quite easy for Shankara to expose the contradictions of Sarvastivada and late-Yogachara because they engage in speculative metaphysics and metaphysical realism, Madhyamaka doesn't and merely claims to hold an absence of all views while allegedly exposing the inherent contradictions in all views. If Shankara would have been aware of how Nagarjuna defended himself against the charge of nihilism he might have responded that it implies absolutism of some sort and in doing so is hardly different from the Upanishads and Advaita.

At the end of the day though Madhyamaka is still fundamentally incoherent in that it has no explanation whatsoever for what causes samsara/ignorance and that Nagarjuna uses flawed logic to establish sunyata which was exposed by Richard Robinson as relying on logical fallacies and dishonest argumentation that presents and refutes strawmen arguments against sunyata that its opponents wouldn't actually accept (pic related).

>>14035158
where is that from?

bump

>>14033203
haha

>>14033136
not atta or niratta

what if we were all pratyekabuddhas and our meditation object was literature?