/lit/ - Literature

>>14696938
Madhyamaka is theravadin

>>14696938
>inb4 Guenonposter spam

>>14696958
there's more falseflagging than unironic guenonposting now

>>14696965
but guenonposting IS falseflagging

>>14696938
>Where to start with Nagarjuna
The Verses on the Middle Way (Mula-madhyamaka-karika). There are many other texts, but they are probably/probably not/definitely not by the same author. Only the karikas are for sure.

>and why is his system better Advaita?
Because it's the original and Advaita is a much later non-Buddhist take on it? Though that doesn't make one better than the other.

>>14696938
Nagarjuna builds lots of mental gymanistscs to try to refute Sarvāstivādins abidharma.

so you have to read the Sarvāstivādins abidharma.

What is the general consensus on Vajrayana Buddhism? It is the biggest sect in my country and all the local resource centres and monasteries belong to this with the exception of one Therevada and an Ethnic Chinese Mahayana place.

śunyasaptati is an easier first read but it definitely needs to be read again after mmk.

the dispeller of disputes is good if you have doubts but you must have a good grasp on the mmk before opening thqt one

>>14696938
>why is his system better Advaita?
It's not, because Nagarjuna's logic was completely BTFO and exposed as garbage by the Buddhist scholar Richard Robinson, whereas nobody has even been able to do the same for Shankara

>>14697165

>>14697136
It's generally considered a purer form of original Buddhism as opposed to shit like Zen.

>>14697165
>whereas nobody has even been able to do the same for Shankara
*ahem*

>>14697165
>nobody has even been able to do the same for Shankara
*ahem*

>>14697165
>whereas nobody has even been able to do the same for Adi Shankara
*ahem*

>>14697165
>whereas nobody has even been able to do the same for Adi Shankara
*cough*

>>14697165
>"exposed by Buddhist scholar"
>said scholar still persisted with Mahayana Buddhism, of which Nagarjuna was the most influential in building its philosophical foundation
nothing personnel, Pracchanabuddha

>>14697287
>Bhaskara
Is that Bhaskara from the quadratic formula? Was he a religious scholar? What sect did he belong?

>>14697314
>Is that Bhaskara from the quadratic formula?
No.
What sect did he belong?
Bhedābheda

>>14697136
>Vajrayana Buddhism
not one Mahayana is buddhism

>>14697165

>>14697136
Based. Read Marco Pallis for the perennial take on it.

>>14697362
me big brainlet, someone explain this pic to me

>>14697291
>>14697287
>>14697275
>>14697274
If any of them actually had any good arguments against Shankara's ideas you would have posted them already instead of spamming pictures of people, so far only arguments refuting Nagarjuna have been posted, it remains an unsubstantiated allegation that someone has ever refuted Shankara.
>>14697298
Robinson rejects Nagarjuna, says he has shitty logic and in his history of Buddhist philosophy writes that Buddha didn't use emptiness in the same way Nagarjuna did but that the latter invented it. I don't know why he still was Buddhist after that but his religious convictions are irrelevant to his refutation of Nagarjuna's logic which retains the same validity regardless of who makes it.

>>14697412
Bhaskara (9th Century CE), the propounder of bhedabheda-siddhanta was one of the earliest Indian philosophers to attack Mayavada. In his commentary on Vedanta-sutra, Bhaskara does not mention Sankara by name, nor does he mention the name of his philosophy. However by reviewing his arguments against the monistic doctrine of maya and the Advaitic concept of anirvacaniya, it is obvious who and what he is alluding to.

Bhaskara is positively vitriolic when writing about the Advaitin’s concept of maya, referring to it’s adherents as bauddha-matavalambin (those that cling to Buddhist ideology) and goes on to say that their philosophy reeks of Buddhism (bauddha-gandhin). Bhaskara concludes that, “No one but a drunkard could hold such theories” and that Mayavada is subversive of all sastrika knowledge:
>Expanding on the contradictory and baseless philosophy of maya propagated by the Mahayanika Buddhists, the Mayavadis have misled the whole world. (Bhaskara’s Brahma-sutra-bhasya 1.4.25)

In his Siddha-traya, the Vaisnava philosopher Yamunacarya (917–1042 CE) stated that Buddhism and Mayavada was essentially the same thing. The only difference he could see was that while one was openly Buddhist (prakata-saugata), the other was simply covered (pracchana-saugata).

Following on from Yamunacarya, his disciple Sri Ramanuja (1017-1137 CE) also concurred that Mayavada was another form of Buddhism. In his Sri Bhashya commentary on the Vedanta-sutras, Ramanuja says that to claim that non-differentiated consciousness is real and all else is false is the same as the Buddhist concept of universal void. Furthermore, Ramanuja states that the concepts of such crypto-Buddhists make a mockery of the teachings of the Vedas (veda-vadacchadma pracchana-bauddha).

Another acarya in the line of Ramanuja, Vedanta Desika (1269–1370) wrote his famous Sata-dusini, a text expounding one hundred flaws found in Mayavada. In that work he refers to Sankara as a rahu-mimamsaka (one who obscures the true meaning of Vedanta), a bhrama-bhiksu (a confused beggar), a cadmavesa-dhari – one who is disguised in false garb, and goes on to assert that, “By memorizing the arguments of the Sata-dusini like a parrot, one would be victorious over the crypto-Buddhists.”

In another work, Paramata-bhangam, Vedanta Desika refers to Sankara as, “One who studied the Vedas in the shop of a Madhyamika Buddhist” (referring to Sankara’s param-guru Gaudapada of whom we will speak of later in this article).

1/2

>>14697412
Later philosophers also declared Mayavada to be crypto-Buddhism. The Sankhya philosopher Vijnana-bhiksu (1550–1600 CE) tried to reconcile Vedanta with Sankhya philosophy and synthesize all theistic schools of Indian thought into a philosophy that he called Avibhagadvaita (indistinguishable non-dualism). He was an impartial writer who analyzed both the merits and problems of the various doctrines that he encountered. Concerning Sankara’s philosophy, Vijnana-bhiksu states in his Sankhya Pravacana Bhasya
>There is not a single Brahma-sutra in which bondage is declared to be a mere deception. As to the novel theory of maya propounded by vedanta-bruva (those who claim to be Vedantists), it is only another type of Buddhist of the Vijnanavada school (vijnana-vadyekadesin). This theory has nothing to do with Vedanta and it should be understood that this doctrine of these new Buddhists, who assert the theory of maya and reduce our bondage to mere illusion is in this way refuted. (Sankhya Pravacana Bhasya 1.22)

Later on in his work, Vijnana-bhiksu also quotes the famous verse from Padma Purana (mayavadam asat-chastram). Vijnana-bhiksu considered Buddhism to be nastikavada, or atheism, as it was opposed to Vedic thought. Thus, in effect, he was declaring Mayavadis to be out and out atheists.

Amongst all acaryas and philosophers, Sri Madhvacarya was certainly the most hostile towards Sankara. Throughout his campaign to establish his philosophy of Dvaitavada, Madhva continuously attacked Mayavada, which he considered to be the worst kind of heresy. In his Anu-vyakhyana, Brhad-bhasya and Tattvodyota, Madhva also makes the claim that the Advaitins are crypto-Buddhists – na ca sunyavadinah sakasad vailaksanyam mayavadinah (there is no doctrinal difference between Buddhism and Mayavada). He even quotes Buddhist texts and compares them to Advaitin works to prove his point.

2/2

be careful, guenonfag is gonna have a meltdown and spam threads until he gets banned again!

>>14697412
David Kulaphana seem to think that Nagarjuna is faithful to the Tripitaka.
>>14696946
Which scholar is correct?

>>14697435
>Kulaphana
Kalupahana*

>>14697412
>I don't know why he still was Buddhist after that but his religious convictions are irrelevant to his refutation of Nagarjuna's logic which retains the same validity regardless of who makes it.
I mean it seems odd to say that he 'rejected' him if he still continued a tradition which was largely influenced by Nagarjunian thought (a fact that even his immediate Buddhist detractors maintained in kind). For someone of your embrace of 'logic', you seem to dismiss this line of thinking entirely.

im fully convinced of the mmk.
i find the actual canonical sutras boring though and dont think there are any madhyamik sanghas near me

what do?

>>14697466
Mainstream Tibetan Buddhism is Madhyamaka

>>14697469
yeah but the tibetan buddhist orgs here seem like a scam.
im not paying a subscription to join a sangha

>>14697473
Really? I went to a introductory class (but didn't commit for other reasons) and they only asked for donations.

>>14697422
Calling something crypto-buddhist is not a refutation of it. Again, only Nagarjuna has been refuted, you have never amidst the countless images that you spam ever posted an argument that attempts to logically debunk the ideas of Advaita.

>In his Sri Bhashya commentary on the Vedanta-sutras, Ramanuja says that to claim that non-differentiated consciousness is real and all else is false is the same as the Buddhist concept of universal void.
Wrong for many reasons, but first and foremost because the undifferentiated consiousness of Brahman in Advaita is eternal whereas in the Buddhist void there is no eternal consciousness.

>>14697435
Well, Kalupuhana in the intro to his MMK translation also accuses the highly influential founder of the Prasaṅgika Madhyamka subschool Chandrakirti of being a "crypto-Vedantist" because he isn't anti-essentialist enough for Kalupuhana's liking (he even writes that he started to worry about Chandrakirti because he met some Vedantists who didn't have any qualms with Chandrakirti's ideas), and so I have doubts that Kaluphana is impartial and I think he has some personal attachment to the idea of the most anti-essentialist interpretation possible of Nagarjuna as being "true Buddhism" which leads Kalupuhana to make the research conclusions that he wants to be true.

>>14697490
1 - not everybody you talk to is the same person retard

2 - even though i have never debated your gay cryptobuddhist philosophy with you, i have seen other people do it, and at a certain point you just repeat "No that isn't true though I disagree I refuted you BTFO" until they give up and leave

as this picture says >>14697362 you presuppose advaita is right for the sake of proving advaita is right, which makes no sense. the most recent one i saw was when you kept saying that advaita was "orthodox" vedanta and the guy kept replying that this isn't at all the case, that many hindus would disagree etc., and you just kept repeating that it was true and that those other hindus were wrong.

you can't just tell people their interpretations are wrong, no one gives a fuck what you think, the point is to have a discussion and try to actually convince the other person, retard.

>>14697490
>Calling something crypto-buddhist is not a refutation of it.
most of these thinkers consider Buddhism to be anti-Vedic, atheistic and wrong. They also point out that Advaita is basically Buddhism. Therefore they refute Advaita as a legitimate system.

This is a basic syllogism you can't seem to grasp Mr. Logician.

>>14697518
Everything you posting is just meaningless babbling and irrelevant personal attacks, I asked for refutations of Advaita and you still haven't posted any. Your continued posting of personal attacks and muh crypto-Buddhism instead of actual logical arguments such as the ones Robinson makes is a tacit admission that Shankara hasn't been refuted.

>>14697528
>Therefore they refute Advaita as a legitimate system.
No they don't lol, they are simply trying to discredit it without actually pointing out anything in it which is wrong. You can only logically refute something by addressing it head on and explaining which idea of it is illogical or logically inconsistent etc, you cannot refute something by calling it names. That would be like me saying "Madhyamaka is nihilist, therefore I refuted Madhyamka". I shouldn't even have to explain this.

>>14697549
nobody wants to have a conversation with you for the reasons i just outlined. you're starting from a position that precludes the possibility of a good conversation. i've seen you outright lie multiple times when people were bending over backwards to be friendly and meet you halfway.

>Refute me! I refuted you! You have never refuted me!

chill out dude, seek a hobby that isn't arguing about your neovedanta bullshit online. you've been repeating this exact shit for three fucking years and nobody cares. learn to have a discussion.

>>14697571
a lot in advaita is perfectly logical, all the parts shankara stole from buddhism (so roughly 90%)

>>14697581
He is a troll, you would think people would get it by now. Take your earnest attempts at open discussion and save it for someone capable of reciprocating.

>>14697581
Okay, lets say that Advaita is just Madhyamaka with Atman swapped in for Sunyata like a different brand of lightbulb. Assuming that they are not just two words attempting to describe the same transcendent concept and that the alteration significantly changes the teachings and directs it toward a different end, which one out of the two would you consider to be the most logically consistent variation?

>>14697611
not him
the difference is that sunyata is itself empty. it is mere the description of conditionally dependent things and it itself is a conditionally dependent thing, there is an emptiness of emptiness and so the regress continues.

brahman is full. it is the end of the regress of explanation.

>>14697581
Robinson's arguments clearly refuting Nagarjuna have been posted, but any attempt to ask for the arguments that expose the alleged inconsistencies in Shankara's thought are instead met with a bizarre string of unhinged personal attacks. One again I am forced to conclude that these arguments allegedly refuting Shankara simply don't exist in leu of your unwillingness to post any (because you're so above getting into a debate even though you're still willing to spam countless images and write endless paragraphs of deranged personal attacks)
>>14697592
I am legitimately interested in having a good faith discussion of whether Advaita or Madhyamka is more logically coherent, and a good-faith examination of the various arguments in favor of each side, but your friend is seemingly incapable of doing so. I have already made the opening move in posting Robinson's argument and laid out why I think Advaita is more logical, all that remains to be done to have a serious discussion is for someone to reply with an actual logical critique of the ideas of Advaita made by anyone, but evidently nobody is able to do so even though I would welcome it.

>>14697650
step 1 in having a good conversation: stop saying "refute" 5 times per paragraph

how often do you see a christfag post something like "luther has never been refuted to my knowledge, refute luther if you can catholics, BTFO you can't refute luther he's never been refuted i remain unconvinced by any refutation of luther"? it's fucking weird dude, you're discussing entire religious traditions like you're debating which super smash bros character is the best

shankara was refuted by guénon (pbuh)

>>14697695
Again, more personal attacks and zero arguments. You would think that someone who defends Buddhism so passionately would assimilate some of its teachings and display them in their behavior but I guess that's too idealistic.

>>14697571
>You can only logically refute something by addressing it head on and explaining which idea of it is illogical or logically inconsistent etc, you cannot refute something by calling it names
did you even read my post, I already said they point out the how mayavada (aka sunyavada) is anti-Vedic and false. Ramanuja for example argued that knowledge of Brahman is impossible if Jiva is said to be Maya since Jiva (according to Shankara) always was Brahman behind the scenes to begin with. Any mayavadic system, whether Buddhism or Advaita (where it inherited this paradox) is therefore contradictory. All those Hindu thinkers that pointed out the Buddhistic nature of Shankara's system in their own way, already knew it to be refuted because they associate it with an already false doctrine.

>>14697695
I empathize with your sentiment, but you'll have to address Robinson's points that advaitafag has assimilated as his own . >>14697165

Since guenonfag (who is both him and advaitafag) requires 'hurrr arguments bro prove the logically logical mclogic inconsistencies refutation now'

>I. Ramanuja rejects the following metaphysical claims made by Shankara
A. Brahman is non‐differentiated pure consciousness.
B. The universe is unreal (i.e., a non‐enduring existent).
C. Individual souls (jivas) are unreal (i.e., a non‐enduring existent).
D. Individual consciousness is dissolved in moksha. (Follows from C, for the unreality of souls is not a denial of their provisional existence, but a denial of their enduring character).

>II. Scriptural Arguments (BS, 49‐55): Ramanuja rejects Shankara’s doctrine of non‐dual Brahman on the grounds of the testimony of the sacred scriptures (sastras), the very scriptures Shankara allegedly accepts. Ramanuja contends that the sastras, for example Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, directly affirm or logically entail that Brahman is differentiated.
A. Many passages in the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita affirm that Brahman has attributes (saguna), but without any suggestion that this is a provisional fact about Brahman. However, since nothing can have an attribute and be non‐differentiated, for possessing attribute Q entails that one is distinct from anything that does not have Q, it follows that the sastras teach a Brahman differentiated from other things. (BS, 49, 54)
B. The satras teach that Brahman is satchitananda (being‐consciousness‐bliss)which (i) has no meaning unless its constituent terms have meaning, but (ii) the constituent terms have no meaning unless they are differentiated from their opposites, that is, non‐being, non‐consciousness, and non‐bliss. (BS, 50‐53)
C. Brahman says, “May I be many, may I grow forth” (Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.2‐3),and this Ramanuja takes to show that the world of diversity is as real as Brahman, being a manifestation of Brahman. (BS, 51, 54, 79‐80)

>III. Whereas Shankara appeals to sastra passages (e.g., Mundaka Upanishad 1.1.6)that state that Brahman is nirguna (without attributes), Ramanuja provides an alternative interpretation of these passages.
A. When the sastras state that Brahman is without attributes, they mean to say that Brahman lacks all evil qualities (or qualities supervening on material nature, prakrti). For example, Brahman is not perceived by senses, colorless, having no body, not grasped, etc. “Brahman is the opposite of material things.” He must therefore be differentiated. (BS, 49‐50, 52, 79)
B. “Brahman is one only without a second” (ChandogyaUpanishad 6.1.1) means that Brahman alone is the efficient cause of the universe and the highest reality because Brahman has “excellentauspicious qualities,” by virtue of which he is differentiatedfrom everything else.(BS, 49, 50‐51).
C. Tat Tvam Asi– Thou are That! (Chandogya Upanishad 6.13.3) does not mean (as Shankara maintains) “thou Atman art identical with that Brahman, but Thou Jiva art the body of Brahman. In other words, Brahman is the Self of everything in that all individual things have Brahman as their essence. So Brahman exists in two modes, as the Jiva (micro or atomic version of Brahman) and as the Supreme cause of the world. So the relation between each individual soul and Brahman is one of part to whole and thus only a partial identity.

>IV. The Scriptural arguments show that Ramanuja wants Vedanta to most accuratelyand consistently reflect the totality of the teachings sastras. Is Ramanuja aware of the presuppositions brought to the sastras that govern his interpretive moves? In either case, his engagement with the sastras involves a rigorous application of rules of grammar and logic. He is not demanding blind faith in the teachings of the sastras.(BS, 73‐81)

>V. The Philosophical Argument from Sources of Knowledge: Ramanuja argues that our sources of knowledge do not permit a proof that Brahman is non‐differentiated pure consciousness. (He seems at points to conflate this weaker claim with the stronger one that the considerations prove that Brahman is not non‐differentiated. BS, 19, esp. 23, which seems to be the fallacy of appeal to ignorance: we cannot prove p, therefore p is false.
A. Experience: Only objects can be experienced, but objects are qualified by some difference; therefore we cannot experience a non‐differentiated object. (BS, 20)
B. Consciousness: (i) Conscious is always intentional, i.e., directed towards an object, which is necessarily distinct from “consciousness” as that by which the object is apprehended or to which the object is given. (ii) Consciousness is also said to have qualities like eternal and self‐luminous, but this makes no sense unless consciousness is differentiated from those things that lack these qualities. (BS, 20)
C. Direct Perception: Perceptions are of two kinds, determinate (savikalpa) and non‐determinate (nirvikalpa). The former necessarily involves differentiated objects, as when one sees a cow we see an object qualified by a generic nature or essence: “this thing here has a cow essence.” The first time we see a cow we perceive it together with its generic character, but we don’t differentiate the individual cow and its generic nature because we haven’t see other cows that have the same generic nature. So the individual and essence is undifferentiated, but the object of perception remains differentiated in relation to other kinds of things. So according
to Ramanuja, non‐determinate perceptions do not involve apprehension of an object devoid of all attributes, but only devoid of some attributes. (BS, 21‐22).
D. Inference: All inference involves a distinction because it involves a relation between things that are objects of perception, and – as already established –perception deals only with objects qualified by difference.
E. Scripture: Arguments given above.

Conclusion: Since all our sources of knowledge involve objects qualified by difference, we are not permitted through such sources to prove that there are any non‐differentiated objects. (One might consider this an inductive argument for supposing that no non‐ differentiated objects exist).

VI. Consciousness and Existence cannot be One

Ramanuja’s brief argument is that consciousness and existence cannot be the same because existence is always an object of consciousness. Since that by which we grasp an object (consciousness) is different from the object we grasp, consciousness and existence cannot be one. (BS 26)

VII. The Self Cannot be Pure Consciousness

Here Ramanuja argues that the Self cannot be identical with pure consciousness. His argument is as follows. The Self is really the knower, which is the substrate of consciousness, for the knower has permanence or continuity of existence (which is true of the Self), as is shown from a knower at any time being able to recall an object seen earlier. There is a persisting “I,” but this persisting “I” is not identical with consciousness since consciousness is not permanent, as is shown from our saying “I knew this” or “I forgot that.” (BS, 34).

Compare this argument to what Ramanuja argues later (BS, 41), namely that in deep sleep the “I” persists but consciousness does not. Therefore the Self (which is the “I”) cannot be identical with consciousness, pure or otherwise. “I slept happily,” not “I was pure consciousness.”

>>14697808
i admire your courage, he's going to respond with contrary interpretations of contrary verses from the chandogya and brihadaranyaka now, and just as the conversation becomes potentially interesting, he'll start repeating "but Ramanuja's interpretation is plainly wrong, the Advaita one is correct, the brihadaranyaka and chandogya simply are Advaita and those other interpretations are spurious"

do you have any recommendations for a contemporary historical reading of vedanta as developmental/heterogeneous?

>>14697808
>B. The satras teach that Brahman is satchitananda (being‐consciousness‐bliss)which (i) has no meaning unless its constituent terms have meaning, but (ii) the constituent terms have no meaning unless they are differentiated from their opposites, that is, non‐being, non‐consciousness, and non‐bliss. (BS, 50‐53)
Another objection from a more contemporary view point would be this. So Brahman is Being, Consciousness and Bliss. Consciousness of what? There is no such thing as consciousness unqualified. Consciousness is consciousness OF something. Therefore Brahman is non-dual. But but it's consciousness of himself. The same. Even consciousness of oneself implies a duality.

And now we move to Madhva's refutation of Advaita

>The Central doctrine of Advaita is Atmaikya i.e. Brahman alone is ultimate Reality.
However, we are in the midst of manifold empirical world. The emergence of this manifold world and the jiva has to be explained. How this one brahman is developed into many and what is the status of these has to be explained.

Three important concepts which forms the base of advaita are:

1) Ajnana
2) Mithyatva
3) Upadhi

It is Ajnana i.e. Avidhya that projects the world over brahman.

It bifurcates the jivas and jagat by playing the role of upadhi i.e an adjunct or a conditioning factor.

The status of the jiva and jagat brought about by ajnana/avidhya is mithya i.e neither real nor totally unreal. In this way these three concepts explain emergence and the status of the manifold empirical world.

Dwaita rejects these three concepts and rejects the theory of Atmaikya and the mithyatva of the Jiva and Jagat

>Sri Madhwacharya has composed three small treatises 1) Mayavada-Khandana 2) Mithyatvanumana Khandana 3) Upadhikhandana to reject these concepts of advaita. He has rejected these concepts in detail in his major works. Here, he has put the main drawback of these concepts in a nutshell

In Mayavada-khandana the concept of Ajnana is rejected. In Mithyatvanumana-khandana, the concept of mithyatva is rejected.

In this Work i.e Upadi-Khandana, it is clearly pointed out that the so called Ajnana cannot play the role of upadhi/an adjunct or conditioning factor for Brahman and manage the bifurcation of brahman into Jivas and jagat. The Ajnana playing the role of upadi is rejected on the following grounds.

1. Ajnana has no ashraya-Locus, nor Visaya (Topic/subject/Domain) the object to operate upon (Origin/source/base) – According to Advaita there is no second object than brahman. Brahman is Sarvajna. Therefore he cannot be the locus or the object to be affected by Ajnana.

2. The question whether the so called Ajnana plays the role of Upadi in a real way or plays it illusorily? If it plays the role of Upadi in a real way and bifurcates brahman into Jiva and jagat, then advaita position is given up

3. In case it plays its role illusorily, it results in interdependence. Jiva will have Ajnana only when he is bifurcated by Ajnana and Ajnana can play its role only when it is located in Jiva.

Incidentally the concept of upadhi adopted by Bhaskara is also rejected.

According to Bhaskara, Antahkarana is upadhi. it is real. Brahman is bifurcated into many jivas by the upadhi of Antahkarana. There are as many antahkaraNas as there are jivas. The difference brought about by antahkaranas is also real however, it is not natural.

The above claim of Bhaskara is rejected on the following grounds:

1. An adjunct does not cause the difference but only indicated it. When the part of the cloth is coloured, the adjunce colour only indicates the difference between the coloured and uncoloured parts but does not create the part. Even in the case of Akasha within a Jar, etc. the difference between the Akasha in the Jara and outside is not caused, it is only indicated.

2. If the upadhi has to cause the difference, then the question arise as to whether it differentiates by actually contacting the object concerned or without contacting? The second alternative is not feasible. In the first alternative whether its contact is with a part of the object or the whole of it. if it is with a part, then, to cause that part another upadhi will be required. Similar question will arise in respect of that upadhi also. This will lead to infinite regress.

3. In view of the above, it is not possible to work out the difference between Iswara and Jiva by utilizing the concept of Upadhi it has to be accepted as natural and real otherwise, it would be difficult to account for the difference in the experience of Joy and Sorrow.

After refuting the views of those who tried to manage the difference between brahman and jiva by utilizing the concepts of Mithyopadhi and Sathyopadhi, the author established the Jiva-Ishara-Bhedha by Prathyaksha-Perception, Anumaana-Logic/Inference, Sruthi – Agama/Veda.

So far as one’s own self is concerned it is Saakshiprathyakshasiddhi. The self of others could be ascertained by their activity This enables to comprehend the difference between the two.

The difference between Iswara and Jiva also is comprehended by prathyaksha by the realization of one’s own limited nature and the greatness of God conveyed by Shruti. The limited nature of oneself is cognized by perception.

The Shruti यः सर्वज्ञः सर्ववित् etc. declare the greatness of Iswara. The Sruti नेह नानास्ति किञ्चन does not deny the world. it denies the difference between the God and His attributes.

Since the very concept of Ajnana, Avidya, is rejected, the advaita scheme of eligibility, subject matter, the goal and the relation among these becomes irrelevant and he cannot proceed to explore the scripture.

From the above analysis, it is clear that the three concepts 1. Ajnana 2) Mithyatva 3) Upadhi cannot stand the logical scrutiny.

>>14697808
>>14697815
>>14697819
>>14697822
>>14697826
>>14697848
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>>14697867
Ooooooooooh noooooooooo

>>14697960
Uh oh Bhaskara joins the chat
>Among the earliest refutation on the tenability of avidya was Bhâskara (750 A.D.), who held that there is both identity and difference (bhedâbheda), and elaborately criticized the avidya of Sankara in his commentary on the Brahmasütra, the Bhaskarabhasya.

Wait you too Yamunacharya?
>The Visistàdvaitin, Yamunacharya (916-1038 A.D.) argued to refute the Advaita concept of avidya in his Samvit-siddhi, and his critique was subsequently elaborated upon by Ràmànuja (1017-1137). Ràmànuja's arguments were further elaborated upon by his commentators Sudarsana and Vedànta Desika in the Srutaprakâsikâ and Satadusani.

No no no please don't refute us Desika
>Ràmànuja's arguments were further elaborated upon by his commentators Sudarsana and Vedànta Desika in the Srutaprakâsikâ and Satadüsani respect. Satadushani is a work written by Vedanta Desika who lived in the 12th century. He is considered as one among the most illustrious Acharya of the Vaishnavite tradition and is the leader of the Vadagalai sect of the Vaishnavas. Though the title of the work suggests hundred refutations, only 66 of them are now available. Satadushani is a work of logic otherwise called as Tarka in Hindu philosophy. It is a refutation of the nirvesesha Advaita of Sankaracharya. It establishes the validity of the Vishishtadvaita philosophy of Ramanuja as against the Advaita of sankara. It is said that at the age of around 50 or 55 Vedanta Desika was invited by his disciples at Srirangam to engage in a polemical debate with a group of Advaitins from North India. The arguments made in the form of refutations against these men are said to be the content of this work. The late Surendranath Dasgupta in his magnum opus The history of Indian Philosophy has allotted almost 40 pages for this particular book of Vedanta Desika in the third volume of the series. The late R. Kesava Aiyangar, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India has written an exhaustive introduction to this work in English for the book titled Vedanta Desika's Satadushani by Srivatsankacharya.

>>14697761
>did you even read my post, I already said they point out the how mayavada (aka sunyavada) is anti-Vedic and false.
1) Maya is not sunya as maya admits of an eternal enduring essence/reality and ultimate cause (Brahman) while sunya does not, this is the very last thread where this allegation could be taken seriously as all the Buddhists here know full well that it is different
2) Maya could not possibly be anti-Vedic when it is taught in the Upanishads by name, both the Brihadaranyaka and Svetasvatara Upanishads have passages mentioning maya by name in connection to multiplicity and the world saying that they are caused by maya.

>Ramanuja for example argued that knowledge of Brahman is impossible if Jiva is said to be Maya since Jiva (according to Shankara) always was Brahman behind the scenes to begin with.
It would be more helpful if you posted the actual passage where he wrote this or explained the underlying reason behind it instead of leaving me to guess why he thinks it is impossible, if you don't post the reasoning and explain how A leads to B like Robinson does it's not a fully-fledged argument but anyways; Ramanuja appears to not know what Shankara is talking about, Shankara does not mean that the Jiva who was really Brahman knows Brahman (itself) as an object of its own mind despite the Jiva being unreal, Shankara rather means that the Jiva is an appearence of Brahman, and when this false appearance is dissolved in spiritual realization the self-luminous reality of Brahman naturally shines forth of its own accord which automatically leads to consciousness (which had appeared to be a Jiva) being revealed as Brahman, non-dual knowledge is like light which disperses the cloud of Jivahood previously obscuring it when this light dawns, there is no Jiva left to "know" Brahman but only the self-luminous non-dual awareness left. Ramanuja's attack doesn't actually critique this concept which is what Shankara actually taught. There is no need for the Jiva to "know" Brahman, because in spiritual realization the illusionhood of Jivahood is dissolved to reveal the reality of Brahman as its underlying basis without requiring any additional act of "knowing" by the Jiva.

>>14697960
How will gu*nonfag ever recover?

>>14697986
>It would be more helpful if you posted the actual passage where he wrote this or explained the underlying reason behind it instead of leaving me to guess why he thinks it is impossible, if you don't post the reasoning and explain how A leads to B like Robinson does it's not a fully-fledged argument
"If it were possible to destroy the bondage of avidya merely by knowledge of Brahman, it would become purposeless. The bondage of phenomenal unreality cannot, however, be so destroyed as Brahman is superimposed onto Jiva; and it follows as a matter of course that Jivanmukti, or the soul's release from such a bondage even while it is in the embodied condition, is altogether impossible. The idea of jivanmukti is thus illogical, and is further opposed to scripture." From his Sri Bhasya

see also:
>>14697808
>>14697815
>>14697819
>>14697822

>Ramanuja appears to not know what Shankara is talking about
of course he doesn't. Advaita debate tactics 101: accuse the other party for 'misinterpreting' him and scramble for an explanation...

>tfw guenonfag actually did spur discussion of indian philosophy on /lit/
>tfw it was by being so incredibly annoying that others were forced to organize their thoughts & posts just to drive him away efficiently
>tfw he was such a terrible poster that he actually punched through to the other side, and caused good posts to appear

>>14697808
I'm at work and am replying to this on my phone, I will try to respond to as much of it as I can but some of it may have to wait until i get home in 5-6 hours, I will respond to everything eventually though (I have yet to see a response to Robinson's points that address them as I will address these). Everything you posted is about to get retroactively refuted, prepare yourself!

>I. Ramanuja rejects the following metaphysical claims made by Shankara
>The universe is unreal (i.e., a non‐enduring existent).
Ramanuja himself admits that the universe is non-enduring in the sense of there being an endless cycle of creation and dissolution of the universe, Shankara maintains that this cycle never ends and goes on forever as Ramanuja does, Shankara only says that the universe is not itself absolute reality which is reserved for the unchanging and formless higher form of Brahman alone; which is the "One without a second" described in Chandogya Up.
>Individual souls (jivas) are unreal (i.e., a non‐enduring existent).
this calls for clarification, the exterior aspects are but the inner conciousness animating them is admitted to be eternal and real
>D. Individual consciousness is dissolved in moksha.
Wrong, Shankara says that the appearence of individualization dissolves but the conciousness itself that was appearing to be individualized does not itself dissolve but remains and is eternal, it is just revealed as non-individual

>>14698282
>Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, directly affirm or logically entail that Brahman is differentiated.
Of course they do which Shankara doesn't deny, but they also say that "Brahman appears manifold because of maya" (Brihadaranyaka) and "Through Brahman's power of maya He projects the universe" (Svetasvatara), these two lines clearly imply that since the differentiation into the universe is because of maya that it is not truly real. Ramanuja fails to explain how the Upanishads can be internally consistent (which he himself believes) when he denies that differentiation/creation is unreal in any way, Shankara's interpretation reconciles both types of verses by saying Brahman creates an empirically real but ultimately unreal universe via maya, but Ramanuja fails to reconcile them and is forced to abandon the meaning of certain scriptural sentences.

>but without any suggestion that this is a provisional fact about Brahman.
Except when the Brihadaranyka says that Brahman appears as manifold (i.e. as a differentiated multiplicity) because of maya

>However, since nothing can have an attribute and be non‐differentiated,
It can if it has two differing forms like Saguna and Nirguna, multiple primary Upanishads mention a higher and a lower Brahman. Ramanuja himself admits that Brahman has two forms but takes the Saguna to be highest.

The Katha Upanishad ties liberation from death to the realization of the formless and attributeless when it says: Having realized Atman, which is soundless, intangible, formless, undecaying, and likewise tasteless, eternal, and odourless; having realized That which is without beginning and end, beyond the Great, and unchanging—one is freed from the jaws of death.

>but (ii) the constituent terms have no meaning unless they are differentiated from their opposites, that is, non‐being, non‐consciousness, and non‐bliss. (BS, 50‐53)
Shankara doesn't disagree with this, Advaita agrees

>Brahman says, “May I be many, may I grow forth
Yes, but as mentioned Ramanuja fails to reconcile this with the verses mentioning maya

>>14698282
>I'm at work and am replying to this on my phone,
>*1 minute between 2 lengthy posts*
we both know you don't work, you're just scrambling for explanations and are trying to stall

>>14698300
to be fair he probably typed it all up in advance

>>14698282
>I'm at work and am replying to this on my phone, I will try to respond to as much of it as I can but some of it may have to wait until i get home in 5-6 hours, I will respond to everything eventually though (I have yet to see a response to Robinson's points that address them as I will address these). Everything you posted is about to get retroactively refuted, prepare yourself!
LMAO we're literally driving him insane bros

>>14698303
during 'work'? Don't think so. I wonder what he does for money if he has this much time to shitpost.

>>14698303
t. guenonfag

why do streetshitters invoke the names of spiritual teachers and books instead of actually discussing the metaphysics? their theology is full of holes and really comes off as dogma and/or idol worship

>>14697136
>this is what mahayanists believe

https://old.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/f1klyx/dzigar_kongtrul_rinpoche_gives_a_talk_about_one/
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

literal Judeo-Christian moral principles.

>>14698337
nah i mean, i dislike him, but if he posts legitimately he should be treated like a normal poster. i would enjoy reading an exchange between him and >>14697867

>>14697986
>but only the self-luminous non-dual awareness left
you’ missing the whole point of the other anon’s arguments. There can’t be a non-dual awareness because awareness is always awareness of something, so it’s necessarily dual. The expression “non-dual awareness” is an oxymoron, hence logically contradictory.

>>14698282
>Shankara only says that the universe is not itself absolute reality
Am I misunderstanding Shankara? I thought according to him there only was an absolute reality? So you are saying there is on the one hand an absolute reality and on the other there is a universe, so two realities, one absolute and the other not absolute?

>>14698282
You also didn’t address the point above about consciousness always being consciousness of something, so necessarily dual.

>>14698288
>Brahman has two forms
lmao so Brahman is dual?

I am a newbie to these topics so apologies if this is a dumb question but how do Buddhists and Advaita people answer the question of why there is illusion at all? Why is it the nature of nothing to think it is something, or of Brahman to become confused about "itself"? Doesn't this just turn both schemes into a substance monism + emanationism?

>>14698678
I don’t know about Buddhists (I think it might be the same answer though), but the Advaita answer is lol maya. They fundamentally don’t have an explanation when you examine them thoroughly. It always boils down to “lol i dunno it’s magic n shieet” if you pursue the logic to its fundamental premises.

>>14696965
nope, he's just gotten smarter about his strategy. Instead of making his copypasted reply the first, he waits for other anons to engage first so his spam looks more organic

>>14698678
Buddhism has no idea, in Advaita it's considered the svabhava or self-nature of Brahman to always be effortlessly wielding His power of maya (without being affected by it) like it is the nature of the sun to always emit light, another metaphor that Shankara uses in his Brahma Sutra commentary is that it is like the rhythm of breath that is always occuring even when doing nothing, it naturally follows as the consequence of Brahman existing with maya as His power.

>>14698836
So Brahman and maya both exist. That’s dualism my dude.

>>14698836
Yeah I don't see how this isn't just dualism like >>14698867 says, or at least how it doesn't accord ontological status to maya, which would then be an emanationist pantheism.

>>14698886
The answer is, as explained above “lol it’s maya ain’t gotta explain shhit”. It always boils down to that when you press advaitins on the doctrine of maya. You should check out the letters guenon and evola exchanged on vedanta. evola presses him on that exact point

>>14698867
Maya is sublatable, the Atma is unsublatable and remains when all else is sublated and so it's not dualism.

>>14699141
If Brahman is capable of being "sublated" it's monism, not nondualism. Kind of like Thales saying everything is water.

>>14699159
Brahman isn't sublated, only maya is. Maya is not Brahman Itself

>>14699170
So they're two different things but the latter thing is capable of being assimilated into the former, gotcha. Some sort of dualism-monism dialectic (definitely not nondualism, though).

>>14699183
When maya is sublated it's revealed that it never really existed to begin with though, just as the snake that we imagined the rope to be never existed either. I still consider that to be non-dualism although I can understand why you would consider it to be as you describe.

>>14699223
>that it never really existed to begin with
So how is it perceived? How is there a world to begin with? How can you believe such a convoluted metaphysical theory that seemingly has no point of contact with reality. This is what I meant by "it's maya, ain't gotta explain shit". On the one hand you affirm maya, the world, as having a relative sort of reality. It is Brahman's power that he wields (same thing Shaktists and the like believe). Then when pressed on the issue you turn around and say "lol actually it doesn't real". This is bad reasoning. This is a subpar metaphysical teaching. Find a better one, bro. This advaita crap is nonsensical.

>>14696938
https://discord.gg/B8z4G37

>>14698913
That's fascinating, do you have a link to the one(s) you mean specifically? I'm looking myself but maybe I'm missing them

>>14699293
https://evolaasheis.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/a-controversy-about-the-vedanta/

>>14699253
>So how is it perceived?
Because its seeming reality stems from the actual reality of Brahman. Maya is not simply illusion but it has to be understood as Brahman's ability to present as real something which doesn't truly exist and which has no independent reality in itself and which is sublated. Your objections to maya are already anticipated and answered as being non-applicable in the second and third pages of this picture, I would post the most relevent sentences myself but am on my phone and cannot copy and paste from the PDF that is on my computer.

>>14699337
>its seeming reality stems from the actual reality of Brahman.
If Brahman is the only reality then nothing can "stem" from Brahman, seemingly or otherwise.
>Brahman's ability to present
If Brahman is the only reality there is nothing to "present" nor anyone for it to be "presented" to. Not reading that, because the discussion boils down to babby-tier easy points that I just want to see you address in a way that makes sense. We don't need to get all textual. Just explain how anything can be or seem to be or be sublated into anything else or seem to be sublated to anything else if all reality is NON-DUAL. NON. DUAL. There cannot be two things, or appear to be two things (appearance and reality are a duality). Reality is non-dual. Advaita metaphysics doesn't make sense, and when you press advaitins they just double down on it. The counter-arguments are so simple we don't need to get all nitpicky and textual. Just address them. I don't want to read commentaries on the poopooshads.

one of the many things that prevents me from fully understanding and appreciating indian philosophy is the weirdly long and unpronounceable names. I cant hold an idea in my head if i cant even name them

>>14699386
>I cant hold an idea in my head if i cant even name them
sounds like some kind of zen koan desu

>>14697136
Vajrayana is shamanistic buddhism. It kind of assumes you already have achieved a certain level of attainment. But yeah Vajrayana and Theravada are incredibly accurate and don't have shit that is actually bad for you like Mahayana.

>>14699337
Ok, I looked at it for a second.
>The advaitin admits that it is a self-contradictory category that defies all logic
lmao! Allow me to refer you to the following post
>>14697571
>You can only logically refute something by addressing it head on and explaining which idea of it is illogical or logically inconsistent
You just retroactively refuted yourself.

>>14699390
i dont understand, are you measuring my commitment to learn?

>>14699337
This still doesn't really make sense to me. Even if you say that it's not a substance dualism, but a complete "indifference-point" (to use Schelling's phrase), you still have to explain why there is a distinction (a duality) between reality-as-indifferenz-point and reality-as-normally-experienced i.e. reality as differentiated. Why would a truly nondual reality "seem" to do anything at all, other than just be what it is, an undifferentiated monad? "Seeming" then becomes a second kind of thing, with ontological status.

Saying that maya ultimately resolves into Brahman doesn't explain why Brahman needs to be resolved in the first place. Again, that just creates a dualism of resolved/unresolved Brahman. At best it's an emanationism.

>>14699412
no im saying you have nothing to learn. you are already enlightened, my son

>>14699409
>guenonfag retroactively refuted himself
pottery. we've come back to where we started. the circle is complete.

Pure Land/Chan Buddhist here. Why do some people in this thread not like Mahayana? All Buddhist teachings are valid if they lead to liberation.

>>14699547
>All Buddhist teachings are valid if they lead to liberation.
based ruthless ends justify the means pragmatism. brb going to commit serial rape while maintaining inner equanimity

>>14699562
Morality is implied to be conductive and necessary towards liberation in the Buddhist sense though, so that point makes no sense.

>>14699576
zen buddhists don't shy away from killing. im sure they aren't the only ones with antinomian tendencies. don't pigeonhole buddhism to fit what you want it to.

>>14699588
>Zen Buddhists don't shy away from killing
Which Zen practitioners advocate killing aside from radical Japanese Zen priests during Imperial Japan's era? I'm honestly curious. There are earlier Zen koans involving killing, but those are symbolic in nature and don't actually involve killing.

>>14699615
>radical Japanese Zen priests during Imperial Japan's era
These ones. They are just as Buddhist as anyone else. Who are you to say that they aren't?

>>14699628
That's like saying radical Salafi terrorists are part of the Muslim fold. They may belong in name, but they're so outside of the traditional practice and beliefs that your statement doesn't really hold.

Guenonfag irrecovably retroactively refuted.

It's time for Guenonposting to become bannable offense.

>>14700152
the supreme irony is that it was he that retroactively refuted himself, quite literally

Okay guys Advaitabro here, I'm about to head home from work in a moment. You've got maybe an hour and a half or two hours before every single argument against Advaita in this thread is retroactively refuted.

If any of you feel like you have the brains to offer a point by point refutation of Robinson's deconstruction of Nagarjuna's logic then now would be the time to post it. It might be a little embarrassing to the Sunyavadins on /lit/ if all the arguments against Advaita are refuted while Robinson's takedown of Nagarjuna is left unchallenged.

any advaita posters below this line hereby admit to being gay in real life if they post ITT

_______________________________________

>>14700597
It's too late. You've already retroactively refuted yourself. You're going to have to address your own refutation of yourself before you address ours, but in doing so you will have double retroactively refuted yourself only digging yourself into a deeper pit. You have started something like a snowball effect of retroactive refutation upon yourself. You are have transformed into the Ouroboros.

Guenonfag has really been getting facefucked in his own threads lately, what gives?

>>14700630
>facefucked
there are STILL people who deny that Guenonfag's haters have a homoerotic obsession with him

>>14700683
He is called GuenonFAG for a reason.

>>14700683
>>14700698
see >>14697430

the dude posts about "girlcock" regularly on other boards

>>14700714
That was the Swede who has also made disparaging posts about Guenon on occasion, he is not Guenonfag (pbuh)

>>14700733
>posts links to shankara commentaries 10,000 times on /pol/ over a year
>it's n-not guenonfag i swear

t. girlcockfag

>>14700745
kek he shills guenon on /pol/ too?

>>14700779
yes he loves posting about guenon, at least when he's not posting about how much he loves "feminine cum"

What is the point of shilling a dead person and his ideas? Is he trying to create a cult?

>>14700916
Wait does a person dying invalidate their ideas?
Wow so actual retards come on /lit/. I thought people were just being tongue in cheek from time to time.

bumping to keep thread alive while I type my retroactive refutation

>>14701792
dis gun be good

>Dude the asdfgayana of blablatana means muhwordisvana not lmaomurana, you dumbyata shitpostervista

Repent, non dualistic and anatta heretics. This is just barren mental gymnastics devoid of divine love. Your ethics and practice of ascension is name-calling one another on the internet.

>>14702005
>dude the transcenditus deum of ecclesium paracelsius in terra pax means nulla salus infinita secundum not pietas transubstantialis vaticanus, you dumb sedevacantist

>>14702005
why do women want spirituality to be about love so much? is it because they are sluts so after their orgies with coomers they want to care about other people, starting with their kids?

alright guenonfag, let's see those "retroactive refutations"

>>14700630
reminder

>>14702085
This time, to be fair, he mainly facefucked himself >>14699409

soon lads...

>>14702408
who cares, it's just gonna be more circular reasoning

>>14702411
I'm not Buddhist

guenonfag actually thinks he's gonna slink away without answering the objections in this thread (let alone his own self-refutation itt). nope. we're gonna keep this thread bumped

Okay put on your seatbelts folks! It's time for some RETROACTIVE REFUTATION!


Continuing off from these two posts >>14698282 >>14698288 in which this post >>14697808 was refuted

note: the only Upanishads I quote here in these series of posts are the primary Upanishads, i.e. Sruti
>>14697815
>A. When the sastras state that Brahman is without attributes, they mean to say that Brahman lacks all evil qualities (or qualities supervening on material nature, prakrti).
The Upanishads don't specify that Brahman only lacks evil qualities but they describe Him in His real nature as without any attributes aside from those which are His very nature as eternal Bliss-Awareness. For examples

Isha Up. 8: "without a body, without blemish, without muscles"
Svetasvatara Up. 6.8: "He is without a body or organs"
Svetasvatara Up. 6.9: "nor is there even a sign of Him by which He can be inferred"

The Brihadaranyaka Up. points to Brahman using apophatic negation through the denial of there being a more appropriate descriptions for Him other than "not this":

Brihadaranyaka 2.3.6.: "Now, therefore, the description of Brahman: "Not this, not this"; for there is no other and more appropriate description than this "Not this."

The Brihadaranyaka also states that Brahman has two forms in verse 2.3.1. and then says the gross (perceptible) form of Brahman is mortal, limited and definite in verse 2.3.2. and that the subtle (imperceptible) form of Brahman is immortal, unlimited and indefinite. in verse 2.3.3.

The Mandukya also describes the transcendental fourth state Turiya (which is identified with Brahman) as not related to anything and as the negation of all phenomena, it also says that the Turiya is the Atma which the same Upanishad says in verse 2 is Brahman:

Mandukya Up. 2: "All this is verily Brahman. This Ātman is Brahman. This Ātman has four quarters."
Mandukya Up. 7:"(It is) unseen. not related to anything, incomprehensible, uninferable, unthinkable, indescribable, essentially of the nature of Consciousness constituting the Self alone, negation of all phenomena, the Peaceful, all Bliss and the Non-dual."

>For example, Brahman is not perceived by senses, colorless, having no body, not grasped, etc. “Brahman is the opposite of material things.” He must therefore be differentiated. (BS, 49‐50, 52, 79)
Ramanuja's claim that Brahman must be differentiated is directly contradicted by the Svetasvatara Up. verse 4.1 which says when speaking of Brahman "He, the One and Undifferentiated".

>>14702809
>B. “Brahman is one only without a second” (Chandogya Upanishad 6.1.1) means that Brahman alone is the efficient cause of the universe and the highest reality because Brahman has “excellent auspicious qualities,” by virtue of which he is differentiated from everything else.(BS, 49, 50‐51).
The notion of Brahman's real nature/form being characterized by excellent auspicious qualities is contradicted when the Katha Upanishad indicates that Brahman is different from both righteousness and unrighteousness (if Brahman had excellent auspicious qualities it would be wrong to say Brahman is other than righteousness) when Nachiketa asks Yama about Brahman by saying:

Katha Up. 1.2.14: "Nachiketa said: That which you see as other than righteousness and unrighteousness, other than all this cause and effect, other than what has been and what is to be−tell me That."

>C. Tat Tvam Asi– Thou are That! (Chandogya Upanishad 6.13.3) does not mean (as Shankara maintains) “thou Atman art identical with that Brahman, but Thou Jiva art the body of Brahman.
How can the Jiva be the body of Brahman when both the Isha Up. 8. and Svetasvatara Up. 6.8. (both quoted above) say that Brahman is without a body?

>So the relation between each individual soul and Brahman is one of part to whole and thus only a partial identity.
How can there be such a relation of parts and whole in Brahman when the Svetasvatara Up. in verses 6.5. and 6.20. both state that Brahman is without parts?

>>14697819
>V. The Philosophical Argument from Sources of Knowledge: Ramanuja argues that our sources of knowledge do not permit a proof that Brahman is non‐differentiated pure consciousness.
Which is funny because Ramanuja himself accepts the Sruti as a valid source of knoweldge and they state in Svetasvatara Up. 4.1 that Brahman is undifferentiated and in Aitareya Up. 3.1.4. that Brahman is consciousness.

>A. Experience: Only objects can be experienced, but objects are qualified by some difference; therefore we cannot experience a non‐differentiated object. (BS, 20)
Only objects can be experienced in a subject-object duality, but the Upanishads repeatedly instruct that the same Brahman which they say is "not this", "without parts" "without a body" "incomprehensible, uninferable, unthinkable, indescribable" is to be realized nevertheless, i.e. Svetasvatara 1.8: " The jiva by realizing the Supreme Self is freed from all fetters." So why would the Upanishads instruct us to realize Brahman if it is beyond the range of our experience? Because Brahman is directly realizable in a spiritual realization which transcends the normal subject-object duality, "He who knows the Supreme Brahman verily becomes Brahman." - Mundaka Up. 3.2.9.

>>14702814
>B. Consciousness: (i) Conscious is always intentional, i.e., directed towards an object, which is necessarily distinct from “consciousness” as that by which the object is apprehended or to which the object is given.
Not sure exactly what he is trying to say here but Advaita would say that intentions are a mental phenomena which inhere in the mind, and that intentional mental acts appear in the field of or are given to the non-intentional witness-consciousness which registers them and which is separate from the mind.

>(ii) Consciousness is also said to have qualities like eternal and self‐luminous, but this makes no sense unless consciousness is differentiated from those things that lack these qualities. (BS, 20).
Undifferentiated can have two meanings here 1) undifferentiated from a prior state of unity/monism/non-duality/uniformity/etc or 2) A is differentiated from B as being separate from it. Advaita says that in the first sense Atma/Brahman is actually undifferentiated but that in the second sense Atma/Brahman can be differentiated from that which It is not (i.e. Atma/Brahman is not inert and unconcious objects like rocks and hence can be distinguished from them). This seems ridiculous to me but it appears that Ramanuja didn't realize this and thought that Advaita said that the Atma is undifferentiated in the second sense. The Advaitic position is that Brahman as the Atma is eternal non-dual ineffable immutable Bliss-Awareness existing in *an undifferentiated state*, not that Brahman cannot be differentiated from rocks, memory, emotions, food, one's body etc.

>C. Direct Perception: Perceptions are of two kinds, determinate (savikalpa) and non‐determinate (nirvikalpa). The former necessarily involves differentiated objects, as when one sees a cow we see an object qualified by a generic nature or essence: “this thing here has a cow essence.” The first time we see a cow we perceive it together with its generic character, but we don’t differentiate the individual cow and its generic nature because we haven’t see other cows that have the same generic nature. So the individual and essence is undifferentiated, but the object of perception remains differentiated in relation to other kinds of things. So according to Ramanuja, non‐determinate perceptions do not involve apprehension of an object devoid of all attributes, but only devoid of some attributes
This argument appears to hinge on the above misunderstanding. Advaita DOES say that when Brahman is realized in spiritual realization as Itself existing in an undifferentiated state that this realization itself involves a differentiation between what is Brahman and what is not Brahman (i.e. maya etc), in any case the analogy would be fully applicable as the Upanishads stress that Brahman is not an object.

>>14702817
D. Inference: All inference involves a distinction because it involves a relation between things that are objects of perception, and – as already established –perception deals only with objects qualified by difference.
This cannot be used to argue that Brahman cannot be realized if He exists in an undifferentiated state or that he cannot exist as such because Mandukya Up. 7. says that the Brahman-Atman-Turiya is "uninferable" and so He is not bound by the limits of our ability to use inference.

>Conclusion: Since all our sources of knowledge involve objects qualified by difference, we are not permitted through such sources to prove that there are any non‐differentiated objects. (One might consider this an inductive argument for supposing that no non‐ differentiated objects exist).
The Upanishads repeatedly affirm that Brahman is not an object and is beyond the range of the senses such as in the verses already quoted above and for example Katha Up. 2.3.12: "Atman cannot be attained by speech, by the mind, or by the eye", and so saying that our sources of knowledge do not permit us to know an undifferentiated object proves that Brahman is differentiated is nonsensical since the Upanishads say that Brahman cannot be known via normal sources of knowledge anyway and also state directly that Brahman is undifferentiated (meaning that He exists in an undifferentiated state) such as in Svetasvatara Up. 4.1.

>>14702820
>>14697822
>VI. Consciousness and Existence cannot be One
>Ramanuja’s brief argument is that consciousness and existence cannot be the same because existence is always an object of consciousness. Since that by which we grasp an object (consciousness) is different from the object we grasp, consciousness and existence cannot be one.
Shankara actually says in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya that the Brahman-Atma (which is the inner pure consciousness) as He really is in actuality is different from existence and non-existence as we normally understand those terms to be (which is a whole other conversation) but regardless; Ramanuja doesn't sufficently demonstrate or explain why the existence of the conciousness is nessecarily separate from the existence of the object perceived. Ramanuja himself maintains that the world and its objects are modifications of Brahman and that the Jivas (souls) are parts within the whole of Brahman, would that not mean that everything from the soul to the objects that it witnesses are contained within Brahman's existence and are non-different from that existence by virtue of them being parts and modifications of it? And this is not even to get into all the arguments one could make if one cites the Upanishad verses about multiplicty/universe appearing because of maya, which imply that the existence of those things isn't actually completely real, and which as a consequence points to the witnessing inner consciousness alone as being the truly Real or the truly Existent, this last point being confirmed by verses like Svetasvatara Up. 6.15: "the Supreme Self alone exists"

>>14702826
>VII. The Self Cannot be Pure Consciousness
>Here Ramanuja argues that the Self cannot be identical with pure consciousness. His argument is as follows. The Self is really the knower, which is the substrate of consciousness, for the knower has permanence or continuity of existence (which is true of the Self), as is shown from a knower at any time being able to recall an object seen earlier. There is a persisting “I,” but this persisting “I” is not identical with consciousness since consciousness is not permanent, as is shown from our saying “I knew this” or “I forgot that.”
When Advaita talks about the Self being Pure Consciousness they also mean that Pure Consciousness is the persistent and enduring knower, that is to say, that there is a persistent field of unchanging attributeless Consciousness to which is presented the sensory data, mental activity etc. The example that Ramanuja gives does not disprove this because when Ramanuja says the I is not identical with consciousness he gives the example of memory/attentiveness, i.e. "I knew this" "I forgot this", however memory is not the Pure Consciousness that Advaita is talking about but rather belongs to the activity of the mind which Advaita says is observed by the Knower/Consciousness, all memories and objects of attentiveness while themselves changing are presented to the unchanging Knower. Ramanuja is confusing the Consciousness of Advaita with the little "c" consciousness of memory and wrongly trying to say, "the Self is not Pure Consciousness because memory/attentiveness changes and flutters in and out", to which Advaita responds, "we never said that memory and attentiveness are the Pure Consciousness and Self in question, quite the contrary in fact"

>Compare this argument to what Ramanuja argues later (BS, 41), namely that in deep sleep the “I” persists but consciousness does not. Therefore the Self (which is the “I”) cannot be identical with consciousness, pure or otherwise. “I slept happily,” not “I was pure consciousness.”
Advaita agrees with Ramanuja that the "I" i.e. the Knower persists throughout deep sleep and dream while (little "c") consciousness doesn't. Ramanuja's argument here is predicated on the same misunderstanding as above, but I would also add the point that one would never have the sense "I was/am Pure Consciousness" anyways until after spiritual enlightenment because the Self is normally wrongly identified with the intellect (because of avidya), as stated in Brihadaranyaka Up. 4.3.7: ""Which is the self?" "This purusha which is identified with the intellect".

>>14702836
>>14697848
>B. The satras teach that Brahman is satchitananda (being‐consciousness‐bliss)which (i) has no meaning unless its constituent terms have meaning, but (ii) the constituent terms have no meaning unless they are differentiated from their opposites, that is, non‐being, non‐consciousness, and non‐bliss. (BS, 50‐53)
Advaita doesn't disagree, Ramanuja's confusion over the Advaitic use of the term 'differentiation' has already been discussed.

>Another objection from a more contemporary view point would be this. So Brahman is Being, Consciousness and Bliss. Consciousness of what? There is no such thing as consciousness unqualified. Consciousness is consciousness OF something. Therefore Brahman is non-dual. But but it's consciousness of himself. The same. Even consciousness of oneself implies a duality
"There is no such thing as" is not a sufficient argument to say the Upanishads cannot possibly instruct about the existence of an unknown and supersensuous thing since Ramanuja already accepts that the Upanishads are a valid source of knowledge regarding the supersensuous, i.e. Brahman and moksha. You cannot simultaneously say without contradicting yourself that the Upanishads are the source of knowledge of Brahman and moksha which are not known from anywhere else but at the same time that Brahman cannot be unqualified consciousness because we do not know any example of that in the world. In Svetasvatara Up. 6.15: "the Supreme Self alone exists" is denied any other that can be the object of Brahman's Consciousness (as He really is in His true state, and not viz the objects that the Jiva appears to observe because of maya).

Lastly, Ramanuja is making the mistake here of trying to extend analogies from the empirical world to Brahman and assuming that He is subject to the same rules and patterns of this world when Ramanuja himself admits that Brahman is the creator of this world, is superior to it and is not tarnished by the faults that appear in it like evil, suffering etc, if Brahman is not tarnished by those faults or affected by anything in the world at all why should He be limited by the analogies that we draw from it and be subject to the limitations of the creatures which He himself created?

>>14702838
>>14697862
>And now we move to Madhva's refutation of Advaita
>The Central doctrine of Advaita is Atmaikya i.e. Brahman alone is ultimate Reality.
Atmaikya follows from a literal reading of Svetasvatara Up. 6.15: "the Supreme Self alone exists".

>However, we are in the midst of manifold empirical world. The emergence of this manifold world and the jiva has to be explained. How this one brahman is developed into many and what is the status of these has to be explained.
via maya etc.
>Three important concepts which forms the base of advaita are:
>1) Ajnana (ignorance)
>2) Mithyatva (unreality/sublatability)
>3) Upadhi (limiting adjunct)

>It is Ajnana i.e. Avidhya that projects the world over brahman.
Yes, ignorance causes superimposition/projection, although ultimately this ignorance is itself traced back as originating from Brahman's own power of maya

>1. Ajnana (avidya) has no ashraya-Locus, nor Visaya (Topic/subject/Domain) the object to operate upon (Origin/source/base) – According to Advaita there is no second object than brahman. Brahman is Sarvajna. Therefore he cannot be the locus or the object to be affected by Ajnana.
Brahman cannot be the locus and object affected by ignorance. However, through maya; which Svetasvatara Up. 4.9 explicitly states is a power of Brahman, there appears to be a multitude of Jivas who are subject to ignorance. Maya is beginningless just as Brahman is as it is the very nature of Brahman to weild His power of maya at all times forever; within this beginningless maya there are a multitude of Jivas in a beginningless cycle of transmigration, the Jivas are the ones who are ignorant, while the inner Self (Brahman) animating all of them is not subject to their ignorance, bondage, attachment, desire, sin etc and remains at all times in It's actual undifferentiated state "just as the Sun is not tainted by the ocular and external defects, it being transcendental" - Katha Up. 2.2.11. There is really nothing other than Brahman, but Brahman's own power of maya makes it appear as though there is a multitude of ignorant transmigrating beings.

>>14702840
>2. The question whether the so called Ajnana (ignorance) plays the role of Upadi (limiting adjunct) in a real way or plays it illusory? If it plays the role of Upadi in a real way and bifurcates Brahman into Jiva (souls) and jagat (material world), then advaita position is given up
It's a wrongly premised question, everything within maya that is caused by it including avidya, upadi, jiva, jagat are all ultimately unreal, they are all part of the illusion of maya. It is Madhva himself and others who are mistakenly trying to bifurcate the unreality of maya into "real maya" and "unreal maya". Brahman is never actually bifurcated, but His power of maya is responsible for the false appearance of the beginningless series of universes and the jivas and jagat within them. Trying to untangle how the jivas and jagat arise is completely irrelevant as they are all equally a part of maya and are beginningless like maya is anyway, also I don't remember Shankara ever writing anywhere specifically that avidya bifurcates the world into the jivas and jagat, that may be a misunderstanding of Madhva. To Shankara maya is the cause of the appearance of the manifested world, whenever he speaks of aviyda it always implicitly means "the avidya caused by Brahman's maya".
>3. In case it plays its role illusory, it results in interdependence. Jiva will have only when he is bifurcated by Ajnana and Ajnana can play its role only when it is located in Jiva.
Again, this attack is premised on the same above misunderstanding as above, the question of interdependence becomes completely irrelevant anyway when 1) Advaita insists that causality is not absolutely real and that the working parts of the machine of the universe are given their coherence directly by maya rather then through interfacing with each other other via causality (this has parallels with Islamic occasionalism), and because of 2) the whole thing with all its parts is a false appearance which is sublated in spiritual realization and is revealed as never having actually existed to begin with. It's like demanding to know how the illusory snake that we imagined the rope to be digests its food if it's an illusion.

>>14697867
>The above claim of Bhaskara is rejected on the following grounds:
All of this is about Bhaskara's views, who is a Bhedabheda Vedantin and whom I'm not defending and so I will just ignore this part concerning Madhva'as attacks on his views and only address the portions about Advaita, which has totally different views than Bhaskara and Bhedabheda.

>The Sruti does not deny the world
See - Svetasvatara Up. 6.15: "the Supreme Self alone exists".

>>14702845
>From the above analysis, it is clear that the three concepts 1. Ajnana 2) Mithyatva 3) Upadhi cannot stand the logical scrutiny.
You only posted Madhva's arguments against Bhaskara's position on those subjects and not Advaita's, the two attacks that Madhva has made so far against Advaita I already explained above were completely wrong and based on his ignorance of what Advaita teaches. I would like to point out though that Avidya/Ajnana (ignorance), Upadhis (limiting adjuncts) and Maithyatva (the unreality of illusions and their sublatability) are taught in the Upanishads though, for example in:

Katha Up. 2.3.13: "He is to be realised first as Existence limited by upadhis and then in His true transcendental nature."
Katha Up. 2.2.1: " He who meditates on Him grieves no more; liberated from the bonds of
ignorance, he becomes free"
Svetasvatara Up. 1.10: "Through constant meditation on Him, by union with Him, by the knowledge of identity with Him, one attains, in the end, cessation of the illusion of phenomena."

>>14697965
>Ràmànuja's arguments were further elaborated upon by his commentators Sudarsana and Vedànta Desika in the Srutaprakâsikâ and Satadüsani respect. Satadushani is a work written by Vedanta Desika who lived in the 12th century. He is considered as one among the most illustrious Acharya of the Vaishnavite tradition and is the leader of the Vadagalai sect of the Vaishnavas. Though the title of the work suggests hundred refutations, only 66 of them are now available.
All of Vedanta-Desika's arguments were refuted by Advaitins, for a detailed summary of how Vedanta-Desika's arguments were garbage you can read the picture here >>14699337 or read the book it's in, it's the chapter on post-Shankara Advaita in "The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy". Here are some typical examples of the quality of Vedanta-Desika's argument and how the Advaitins replied and debunked his arguments, taken from the book:

(1) If Brahma is qualityless and indeterminate then there can be no inquiry into its nature, for all inquiries are possible about qualified objects only. No knowledge, whether general or specific, is possible about an unqualified Brahma. Again, if Brahma is beyond thought and language, the Vedanta-texts would not reveal it and this knowledge of Brahma would be false and would not lead to liberation.
The advaitin replies that the opponent is confusing between the relative and the absolute standpoints. The Vedanta-texts do not say that Brahma can be known as an ‘object’ of thought; they reveal Brahma as transcendent to thought and language and teach that Brahma being the self-luminous Self is realised through immediate experience. Thought, language and the Vedanta-texts are transcended only on Brahma-realisation, not before. They work efficiently on the empirical level and point to immediate experience as the ultimate goal.

>>14702846
(2) Liberation can be obtained by devotion and action and not by mere knowledge. Even all illusions do not vanish by a mere knowledge of them. A jaundiced person continues to see white things ‘yellow* even after knowing the truth and can be cured only by taking medicine. If mere knowledge of unity-texts leads to liberation then all those scholars who know their meaning should have obtained liberation.
The advaitin replies that illusions can be removed only by knowledge and by nothing else. Let there be no illusion about this. If a person knows that he is suffering from jaundice and the ‘yellowness’ belongs to the bile and not to perceived objects, then certainly he is not laboring under an illusion, though suffering he might be from a disease. Again, Brahma-knowledge is not verbal knowledge but knowledge which has culminated in immediate experience through removal of avidya.

(3) If the world is false because it is knowable, then Brahma too, being knowable, would be equally false. Again, if the world is false there is no sense in saying that it is negated by right knowledge.
The reply is that the world is false because it is indescribable either as real or as unreal. Everything which is knowable as ‘object’ of thought is false in this sense. But Brahma is the transcendental ground of all empirical knowledge and stands self-luminous and self-proved. It is not ‘knowable’ as an object of thought Again, it is only the false that can be negated.

>>14698477
>>but only the self-luminous non-dual awareness left
>you’ missing the whole point of the other anon’s arguments. There can’t be a non-dual awareness because awareness is always awareness of something, so it’s necessarily dual. The expression “non-dual awareness” is an oxymoron, hence logically contradictory.
Already addressed above, you are saying "I know of no instance in which awareness can exist as undifferentiated awareness which is one without a second and beyond the subject-object duality, therefore it cannot exist", but what you are not realizing is that there is no reason why Brahman, or God, could not have such an awareness (because He is formless and does not have a brain or an intellect etc which are the unreal limiting adjuncts responsible for the normal subject-object nature of our awareness), and that in such a case it would not be valid to extend the limitations of Brahman's creation to Brahman Himself and assume that He is limited by them.

>>14702851
>>14698495
>Am I misunderstanding Shankara? I thought according to him there only was an absolute reality? So you are saying there is on the one hand an absolute reality and on the other there is a universe, so two realities, one absolute and the other not absolute?
There is in absolute reality, only Brahman-Atma. Through His maya there appears to be another lesser conditional reality which seems empirically real to us as embodied beings, but this conditional reality doesn't truly exist in absolute reality and is sublated in moksha and the associated spiritual realization and is revealed when it's sublated to have never actually existed to begin with.

>>14698517
>lmao so Brahman is dual?
No, the Nirguna- or Para-Brahman alone is truly real and is itself the Paramatma which Svetasvatara 6.15. says alone exists, the appeareance of Saguna Brahman as the lesser poise or form of Brahman is due to maya.

>>14699380
>>its seeming reality stems from the actual reality of Brahman.
>If Brahman is the only reality then nothing can "stem" from Brahman, seemingly or otherwise.
I used that phrase figeratively, assuming that you would read the next sentence and understand that I was using it in the sense that I explained in the second half of that post of it stemming from Brahman's power of maya whereby He has the abiltiy to present the unreal as though it were real.
>>Brahman's ability to present
>If Brahman is the only reality there is nothing to "present" nor anyone for it to be "presented" to.
Indeed, this is why maya etc are not actually real because Brahman is the only reality, one without a second. Maya is not some tool whereby Brahman interfaces with some lesser reality, but it is the mysterious and enigmatic power of God or Brahman to cause the false appearence of a world of multiplicity that doesn't actually exist and is sublated, and at the same time maya is itself that world and those beings in it. The observation of maya seems to take place because Brahman is the unaffected and unattached inner Self of all the unreal beings within maya and endows them with seeming individuality and agenthood because of the proximity of the light of His consciousness which they identity with their intellects and bodies. The text Atma-Bodha illustrates the idea with such helpful illustrations as these:

-Emotions and other faculties which belong to manas (mind) are attributed to our Self through ignorance, as one attributes the agitation of waves in water to the moon whose image they
reflect
-When the organs of sense are in action it appears to the ignorant that it is his Self which is acting, as the moon itself appears to be moving when clouds pass across it, .

>Just explain how anything can be or seem to be or be sublated into anything else or seem to be sublated to anything else if all reality is NON-DUAL
It has been explained thoroughly in these series of posts.

>>14702853
>>14698204
>>Ramanuja appears to not know what Shankara is talking about
>of course he doesn't. Advaita debate tactics 101: accuse the other party for 'misinterpreting' him and scramble for an explanation...
I can't help it if Ramanuja chose willingly or unwillingly to attack a strawman misrepresentation of Advaita doctrine. There is nothing I can do except explain clearly why he is wrong.

>>14699409
>>The advaitin admits that it (maua) is a self-contradictory category that defies all logic
>lmao! Allow me to refer you to the following post
>You can only logically refute something by addressing it head on and explaining which idea of it is illogical or logically inconsistent
>You just retroactively refuted yourself.
Wrong, you are misunderstanding what he is talking about, he is simply saying that maya eludes logic because of it's very nature of being an enigmatic power of God to cause the unreal to appear as though real. Despite this Advaitins have still worked out a very logical understanding and formulation of how maya fits together with Brahman which they have been able to defend successfully, and which their opponents have been unable to critique without having their critiques exposed as being based on misunderstandings, as this series of posts should make clear.

>>14702859
>>14699422
>you still have to explain why there is a distinction (a duality) between reality-as-indifferenz-point and reality-as-normally-experienced i.e. reality as differentiated.
Because of Brahman's power of maya, this distinction seems to be empirically real right now, but in spiritual realization it is sublates, vanishes and is revealed as never having existed to begin with
>Why would a truly nondual reality "seem" to do anything at all, other than just be what it is, an undifferentiated monad?
The Upanishads simply tell us that it is the power of Brahman to do so, some Advaita texts discuss this and say that for various reasons it is just the nature of Brahman to effortlessly do so, just as it is the nature of the sun to always be emitting light in all directions for as long as it exists. Shankara writes in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya that it is comparable to the rhythm of in and out breathing, i.e. it follows as a consequence of this infinite being existing.
>"Seeming" then becomes a second kind of thing, with ontological status.
an apparent status which vanishes and is shown to be unreal
>Saying that maya ultimately resolves into Brahman doesn't explain why Brahman needs to be resolved in the first place.
It doesn't need to be, as Brahman is completely unaffected by His own power of maya and is immutable. There only seems to be the need for resolution from our perspective and not Brahman's so long as you are still inside the false illusion
>Again, that just creates a dualism of resolved/unresolved Brahman.
Only from our perspective which is unreal, and not from the perspective of truth/reality itself.
>At best it's an emanationism.
Advaita teaches a causation theory called 'vivartavada' where the effect is only an appearance of the cause and never actually emanates, emerges or is created as a separate existing entity or even as a modification of the unchanging basis, it remains only a false appearance which is eventually sublated.

>>14702865
Now, after having successfully refuted all the arguments against Advaita posted in this thread, it's time for the...


BONUS ROUND

I will now also retroactively refute some of Evola's arguments against Advaita that he lays out in article posted in this here.

>>14699304
>https://evolaasheis.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/a-controversy-about-the-vedanta/


>So, what does the Vedânta say about the world, about Man and his Becoming? First of all, there is the optimistic presupposition that a god exists
*tips fedora*, also in the writings of Shankara many arguments also used by classic western theologians like Aquinas etc come up here and there where he points out that another explanation other than God for the universe like naturalistic atomism and the Buddhist theory are all untenable for various reasons.

>that is to say that the contingent and phenomenal set of things is not what it seemed before, but is only the accidental aspect of a whole which, in fact, is already perfect and is comprised in a superior principle.
accidental in the sense that a thinking deliberative mind did not design it, but non-accidental in that it comes from Brahman's power of maya

>In this case : no certainty of God, outside this experience of the Self which has it as its content. Now, since this experience is not immediate and general but, in order to reach it, a certain process is necessary, there are no demonstrative arguments to assert that God does exist
Wrong, Shankara does use theological arguments when relevant but just doesn't consider them to be super important or necessary for spiritual practice, also in the important Advaita text Mandukya Karika of Gaudapada which Shankara comments on, there is a fairly well-developed argument for Brahman being the most logical explanation for existence in comparison to the other alternatives.

>>14702867
>The world would be the manifestation of this presupposition – God or Brahman. Now, the concept of manifestation according to the Vedânta is extraordinarily ambiguous.
Much of what follows in the next few paragraphs is based on Evola's lack of understanding about vivartavada and maya. At times he seems to confuse the position of Advaita with that of Vishishtadvaita and Bhedebheda Vedanta

>It is said in fact that Brahman in manifestation remains what it is – immutable, motionless – and also that manifestation itself (and, therefore, all that is particularity, individuality and Becoming) are, in comparison with it, something ‘rigorously null’. They are a ‘modifying’ of it, which does not alter it in any way.
Yes, they are null in that they are unreal in an Absolute sense, however they are not a "modifying" of Brahman at all in Advaita, but only a false appearance via Brahman's power of maya. The other non-Advaita Vedanta schools consider manifestation to be a modifying of Brahman.

>Let us pay attention to the fact that, here, there is not the Catholic loop-hole of the ex nihilo, in which the nihil becomes a distinct and, in its way, a positive principle, from which the created things could be materialised so that they would be and, at the same time (in that they are made of ‘nothing’, of ‘privation’), would not be. Brahman, instead, does not have anything outside itself : not even ‘nothing’. Things are its modifications: so how can it be said that they are non-existent?
Wrong, things are not its modifications as explained already. Maya and the manifested world are not said to be "non-existent", but rather anirvachaniya which in Advaita means undefinable either as completely real or as completely unreal. They are undefinable as completely real because they are illusory and are sublated, but they cannot be defined as completely unreal because they appear as empirically real to us in our consciousness unlike the skyflower or the son of a barren women which are actually completely unreal; they are ultimately unreal in an Absolute sense from the perspective of Absolute reality, but from the perspective of our conditional/seeming reality within maya they are anirvachaniya.

>>14702872
>To follow this train of thought further, if Brahman is the absolute synthesis of all, how much scope is there for considering it in a contingent mode? How is it possible that such a mode, such an obscuration in Brahman, could arise?
Brahman is not the synthesis of all, Brahman is self-established with its own stable self-nature and it without parts and components, it cannot be synthesized from parts or ingredients, if Evola means this simply in the sense that it is comprised of the unmanifest and manifest etc even this distinction comes from maya and is not in itself absolutely real. Such a mode of seeming contingency could seem to arise via Brahman's own power of maya.

>How can one fail to realise that the sentence makes sense only on the basis of the presupposition of the existence of a principle distinct from Brahman, actually able to comprise it in a relative and accidental manner – which goes against the original premise?
Maya and all the manifestation and its accidental/relativeness etc which comprises it is in a sense a subservient principle of Brahman in that it is both a power and principle belonging to Brahman, but as has been explained this maya is not ultimately real in the end.

>Guénon says (pp. 30-31) : “Metaphysically manifestation can be considered only in its dependency upon the supreme principle and as a mere support from which to rise to the knowledge of transcendence”. Now, we ask : who is the one who rises to this knowledge? Either it is Brahman itself, and then it must mean, with Eckhart, Duns Scotus Erigenus, Hegel, Schelling and many others, that the world is the very self-cognitive process of the absolute – but then it has a value and a reality, rather than being a ghost outside the pre-existing eternal synthesis, it is the act itself through which this synthesis gives itself to itself. Or there is something ‘else’ over against Brahman, which means to make of Brahman something relative, ‘one of the two’, a view which is against the original hypothesis.
The one who rises to this knowledge is the Jiva, although really the Jiva is awakening from the illusory slumber of Jivahood to its true nature as Paramatma, Brahman. This does mean there is a something "else" over against Brahman as Evola writes, because at the summit of realization and liberation it's revealed that the inner Self of the Jiva was Brahman all along. This does not have value for Brahman Himself since He is always eternally contented and without desires or needs, but for the Jiva such an attainment is the very acme of its existence and the highest aim to which it can attain.

>>14702873
>Again : “Immutable in its own nature, Brahman develops only the indefinite possibilities which are contained in itself, by means of the change from potentiality to actuality… and this without its essential permanence being affected thereby, precisely because this change is only relative and this development is a development only when it is considered from the side of the manifestation, outside of which one cannot speak of temporal succession, but only of a perfect simultaneity” (p. 36). The difficulty is the same one : this would work very well if we were able to explain how a point of view different from the absolute’s can exist and coexist with it.
Uhhh.. because of Maya? Hello? duh? I wonder if he even bothered to read Shankara before publishing this in a journal.

>But if this is not possible,
It is

>the succession, the development and the rest cannot be said to be accidental and illusory, but must be regarded as absolutely real. The only refuge from this dilemma would be the creationism as projectio per iatum of the Catholic theologians, that is the divine capacity to detach from itself distinct centres of consciousness, which can then see from outside what It comprises inwardly in an eternal mode. But even leaving aside the logical inconsistency of such a view, the fact is that it is completely unknown to the Indian wisdom.
Evola doesn't offer any explanation whatsoever for his claim that "the succession, the development and the rest cannot be said to be accidental and illusory", so I'm simply going to point out this is wrong and pass on, anyone who has read this far should be able to understand why this can quite easily be the case indeed.

>Guénon multiplies the points of view in order to explain the antinomies, and he does not realise that this is a pseudo-solution, and even a vicious circle, unless he starts from an original dualism, that is, just from the opposite of that which he wants to reach. Transposed to those points of view, the oppositions not only remain, but they become exasperated. When Guénon says (p. 44) that the manifestation cannot be separated from its principle without its being cancelled – hence the profound sense of the Vedânta and Mahâyâna doctrines, that things are at the same time real (in reference to their principle) and illusory (if taken in themselves) – he is right. It is not this separation for which we reproach him, but that of the principle from manifestation.
>From saying that if the world cannot distinguish itself from Brahman, Brahman instead can be distinguished from the world (as its free cause), to saying that “the whole world-wide manifestation is rigorously nothing in comparison with its infinity”, is a beautiful jump, that is, the surreptitious introduction of an extremely questionable concept of infinity itself.
Here in this paragraph Evola simply says "I don't like it" "I reproach him boo hoo" "this is surreptitious" without offering any real critiques

>>14702876
>This questionable concept is, infinity conceived of as indetermination, as that which in every determined thing can only suffer its own death.
Something can only be determinate by virtue of those very limits which establish the forms and bounds of its determinency, the determinate is inevitably limited and thus not truly infinite in a metaphysical sense, inb4 how can Brahman be Bliss-Awareness then? That's why the Upanishads say it is undifferentiated and indeterminate Bliss-Awareness.

>To us this is not the true infinity, but rather its abstract hypostasis, almost of a character peculiar to the unaware and impotent being. True infinity is potestas, that is, the energy of being unconditionally what one wants.
"Wants" stem from a lack of fulfillment and and the ensuing desire for it, only an entity which is incomplete can be lacking, the incomplete can never be the infinite, and even if one were to attain one's wants the non-infinite cannot become the infinite and so it wouldn't make a difference

>The absolute cannot have, as a pebble or a plant has, a nature (and infinity itself would be such if conceived of as something fatal, immutable, and, therefore, passive towards itself). It is what it wants to be, what it certainly wants to be, the absolute, the infinite.
untenable for reasons already mentioned

>>14702879
>Its manifesting of itself and, in consequence, of the finite, the individual, etc. should no longer then be regarded as the death and the contradiction of the infinite, and therefore as a form of non-being, a nothingness which darkens the pleroma (omnis determinatio negatio est), but instead as its action, its glory, that in which it testifies and asserts to itself its powerful freedom.
Shankara himself defines the nature of the Atma as absolute freedom in his commentary on Brahma Sutra 1.1.4. thus:

"This is the ultimate reality, the changeless eternal, all-pervading like space (but beyond it), free from all causal modification, ever-contented pure bliss, indivisible, self-luminous by nature, untouched by actions in the form of virtue and vice along with their effects (in the form of pleasure and pain), and beyond time in its three tenses of past, present and future; this unembodied reality is called moksa or absolute freedom."

The freedom Evola envisages is not complete freedom

>The best part of this is that this point of view is found also in an Eastern school (which, naturally, Guénon will call ‘heterodox’) – that of the shakti-tantra, which levels against the Vedânta a criticism whose significance is unquestionable.
Guenon responds to this with a letter published in the same journal saying that he viewed some Tantra schools as orthodox and other as heterodox

>It is only if hazy, intellectualistic notions of knowledge (âtman) and the infinite (brahman) are replaced by this activist and concrete idea of power (shakti) – they say – that it is possible to resolve, from a non-dualistic point of view, the various difficulties inherent in the concept of manifestation.
What's lazy is writing a long article attacking Advaita and publishing it in a journal without even bothering to do your proper research into Advaita first. What's funny is that in Advaita maya is the power (shakti) of Brahman, but just in a different way from how shakti works in Tantra, but if Evola had just done his reading he would have found that most of the points he makes are wrong. I could do more but it's pretty late and Evola just keeps droning on and on with his mistakes. Maybe I will refute the rest another time but you get the time.

And with that, I conclude my retroactive refutations for the night.
PS. I'm still waiting for someone to attempt a point by point response challenging Robinson's refutation of Nagarjuna's logic

>be born a christian bourgeois
>hold the name of the female ape
>get bored with Christianity and secular Christianity, ie free masons, like any midwit low bourgeois
>become infatuated with hindu-chinese Christianity ie vedanta-mahayanism
>exactly the same retardation
>shill the retarded idea that all religions are the same
>die a muslism
>It's really only to make idiots feel righeous and like they are in the know
>100 years alter, all your audience is the bored midwit humanist bourgeois like soccer moms posting on Facebook for virtue signaling

>>14702934
ok, hylic.

So is anyone going to respond to Guenonfags reply?

>>14703756
I'm at work at the moment because I'm not a NEET with autismbux and so I cannot type out a 6 page response on my Android when Im expected to be working but when I get home in 4ish hours and take 13 hours to formulate a reply (the same time it took guenonfag), I'm going to retroactively rebut all of that and make a post linking to /RG/.

>>14703756
Its just a autist rivalry between two people, but seeing how insane guenonfag is I wouldn't be surprised if its himself samefagging. Interfere if you dare.

>>14702809
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>>14702886
Oh no Buddhabros, we got too cocky!

>>14703756
I hate guenonfag's shitty behaviours but for the record I do think if he's talking about Indian philosophy (or any topic) in earnest he deserves a reply, as long as he's not being a prick about it. It's obviously even fine to be a bit of a prick for banter's sake, that's just part of 4chan discourse.

I can't read along with all of it because I'm not really interested in this topic and not an expert but I thought I would encourage civil discussion at least.

>>14702865
>The Upanishads simply tell us that it is the power of Brahman to do so, some Advaita texts discuss this and say that for various reasons it is just the nature of Brahman to effortlessly do so, just as it is the nature of the sun to always be emitting light in all directions for as long as it exists.

I still don't understand how this is not just an emanationist pantheism, then. You are describing a thing (God) with a "nature" that compels it to do certain acts, vis-a-vis some other thing (or domain of things) that is not perfectly the same as itself. That is not an absolute monism. An absolute monism would be inert. I have to agree with this guy >>14699380 that Advaita doesn't seem to be describing a true nondualism. And also that a true nondualism seems worthless, because it only gives you an inert sphere.

The dispute seems to come down to this:
>Person 1: Maya has a kind of reality since it exists as something that can be experienced and designated. It's effectively a real state.
>Person 2: No, maya is an illusion of the only real thing.
>Person 1: Then "illusion" has a kind of reality.
>Person 2: No, illusion is just an illusion.

I have read through some of your posts an the Evola thing and I find myself agreeing with Evola even in places where you're quoting him just to say he's wrong. It seems to me that Advaita is an emanationism that doesn't want to admit to itself that it's emanationism. Again I am not an expert on these topics but I am fairly familiar with neoplatonism, Schelling and Hegel, etc., so I am at least able to imagine analogous systems.

Maybe a Buddhist can correct me if I'm wrong here, but Nagarjuna's use of these same "nondualist" ideas isn't supposed to be metaphysical but "therapeutic," humbling discursive reason. That at least seems more plausible than this nondual Brahman thing.

>>14696938
Samkhya is superior.
Philosophy ended with Kapila

Ya'll been RETROACTIVE'D

>>14704109
That's quite beautiful, why are the "organs" satva (essence?) but the actual senses are tamas (matter?)?

>>14702838
You haven't addressed my point >>14697848
Consciousness is always consciousness of something. It is inherently non dual, the Neoplatonists already knew that, thus they posited that Nous couldn't be the highest principel, because it was conscious of himself and therefore dual.

>>14704109
>Touch is the guna of air
>Smell is the guna of earth
That seems entirely arbitrary. Why wouldn't smell or better yet sound be the guna of air and touch the guna of earth, since earth provides solidity? It seems they like they had five elements and five senses and arbitrarily assigned one to each.
Nevermind that this has nothing to do with how our senses actually work.
Nevermind that five elements cosmology is an extremely archaic and outdated cosmology.

>>14704189
Vedanta is sloppy metaphysics. Sloppy, sloppy metaphysics. The Neoplatonists and Scholastics were far more rigorous.

>>14704220
I share the same sentiment, having even a elementary understanding of scholastic metaphysics particularly in its Neoplatonic mode has aided in my conceptualisation of oriental philosophy and Aristotelian ethics particularly in Confucianism

Hypothetical question: If someone retroactively refuted me yesterday, is it a legitimate argumentative strategy to travel back in time to the day before yesterday and retroactively refute HIM before he can refute me?
Only serious replies, please.

>>14696938
G'nite easterboo bros.

>>14703756
Probably not. He's flooding us with too many words for a line of argument that should be rather simple. We could literally resolve this with very short, to the point, posts, but he chooses the route of autistic hairsplitting. It all hinges on the problematic character of the doctrine of Maya. Above he has admitted again that it is illogical, and hence by his own criteria it renders the whole Vedanta philosophy self-refuting. But according to him "maya eludes logic because of it's very nature of being an enigmatic power of God to cause the unreal to appear as though real". So apparently its ok for advaitins to be illogical because its part of the "nature" of the doctrines to be illogical. He has already refuted himself, there is really nothing left for me to add.

>>14704150

>Why'd they assign it like this?

I will get some quotes from Kapila himself, but in the meantime here is Wikipedia:

>The idea of evolution in Samkhya revolves around the interaction of prakṛti and Purusha. Prakṛti remains unmanifested as long as the three gunas are in equilibrium. This equilibrium of the gunas is disturbed when prakṛti comes into proximity with consciousness or Purusha. The disequilibrium of the gunas triggers an evolution that leads to the manifestation of the world from an unmanifested prakṛti.[117] The metaphor of movement of iron in the proximity of a magnet is used to describe this process.[118]

>Some evolutes of prakṛti can cause further evolution and are labelled evolvents. For example, intellect while itself created out of prakṛti causes the evolution of ego-sense or ahamkara and is therefore an evolvent. While, other evolutes like the five elements do not cause further evolution.[119] It is important to note that an evolvent is defined as a principle which behaves as the material cause for the evolution of another principle. So, in definition, while the five elements are the material cause of all living beings, they cannot be called evolvents because living beings are not separate from the five elements in essence.[120]

>The intellect is the first evolute of prakṛti and is called mahat or the great one. It causes the evolution of ego-sense or self-consciousness. Evolution from self-consciousness is affected by the dominance of gunas. So dominance of sattva causes the evolution of the five organs of perception, five organs of action and the mind. Dominance of tamas triggers the evolution of five subtle elements– sound, touch, sight, taste, smell from self-consciousness. These five subtle elements are themselves evolvents and cause the creation of the five gross elements space, air, fire, water and earth. Rajas is cause of action in the evolutes.[121] Purusha is pure consciousness absolute, eternal and subject to no change. It is neither a product of evolution, nor the cause of any evolute.[120]

>>14704214

>seems arbitrary, better dismiss it
Please

>>14704863
The real reason Maya is true can be found in Neuroscience today, see Graziano's Consciousness And The Social Brain--

Our waking consciousness is a process of attention modeling itself, being awareness. Our senses are not only limited, the scope of waking consciousness is too. That's why White Light is a good example. It seems like high intensity and low color. We know this is wrong, it's the muddiest mix of colors.
But for survival reasons, we've evolved to just model it (and thus experience it) as high intensity and low color.
This same effect happens on everything we percieve. Everything we ever experience is a caricature of the actual reality. Including our social life models and our logic.
The very tool we use to force useful data from empirical research is fundamentally untrustworthy.

That's part of Maya. The other part is Samsara, the entanglement of distraction and absorption in petty bullshit that arises from these caricatures we are surrounded in.

>>14704945
I'm not rejecting maya, I'm rejecting maya within the context of non-dualism. Modern Neuroscience is not non-dualistic, so maya does not pose an issue for them. Maya only becomes a logical issue in a non-dualistic scheme.

>>14704954
How is Neuroscience dualist?

>>14705013
I didn't say what it was, I said what it wasn't. It's definitely not non-dualist. I don't know what metaphysical category to put it in.

>>14705028
Physics tends toward Radical (Ontological) Pluralism.
Like early Buddhism, like Heraclitus, like Whitehead (only people that didn't understand P&R think he's a monist)

>>14705122
William James also has an interesting take on pluralism, I've heard. He has a book called "A Pluralistic Universe".

>>14705130
Pragmatism is fuckin based.
Roberto Unger and Lee Smolin wrote a book called The Singular Universe And The Reality Of Time that I haven't got to yet, maybe I'll set these books on Zoroastrianism aside for a while and check it out

Guenonfag, with his gigantic LINGAM, has returned to assert dominance.

>>14704189
>Consciousness is always consciousness of something. It is inherently non dual, the Neoplatonists already knew that
The Vedantist would argue that you are mistakenly and inappropriately attempting to extend analogies from the empirical world to God and wrongfully assuming that He would be limited by them despite Him being unlimtied. In Vedanta it's accepted as a given that the revealed scriptures are a valid source of knowledge with regard to supersensuous things, and so if the scriptures clearly instruct that something is true it is not to be automatically disregarded on the basis of analogies developed on the basis of our dealings in the empirical world. It is a different perspective then the one you are speaking from.

>>14705944
So then your belief is a religious-revelation faith based one. Which is fine, as long as you admit that. In other words, your "challenge" for others to provide logical refutation of advaita has been adequately met (ironically by you lmao). First you admit that the doctrine of maya is illogical, and now you admit that your belief is fundamentally founded on faith in revealed scripture. I guess this finally resolves the long standing arguments between you and board posters. Thanks for playing, lol

>>14706000
Yup
/thread

>>14705357
Based.......

>>14706000
>First you admit that the doctrine of maya is illogical, and now you admit that your belief is fundamentally founded on faith in revealed scripture.
Ramanuja uses this exact reason to disqualify mayavada since the sruti texts such as the Vedas and the Upanishads would be part of Maya itself and could therefore not lead to Jivanmukti (direct knowledge of Brahman). This problem was actually advanced against the early Buddhists by Brahmin thinkers who said that the words of the Buddha should be suspect if his philosophy, that words are unsubtantiated fabrications of the mind, were true. The Buddha however escapes this paradox via his raft parable which makes the case that his Dharma is no longer required once Parinibbana is achieved ie was only meant to shred away the fetter of views (see Wittgenstein's ladder) and since then subsequent buddhists used this argument when these charges were leveled again. The same could not be said for Shankara's mayavada due to the holy nature of the sruti texts and his advocacy of its holy attribute.

>>14706497
god, vedanta is such a fucking mess

>>14706523
Even the Dual and Qualified Non-Dual are.

>>14704220
>>14704402
any books/thinkers you'd like to recommend?

>>14707028
>Proclus Elements of Theology
>Maximus the Confessor Ambigua
>Aquinas Summa Theologica

Currently reading:
>John Scotus Eriugena De Divisione Naturae

>>14707028
As an intro, read Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics, Maritain's Introduction to Philosophy, Armstrong's An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, and Etienne Gilson's The Spirit of Philosophy

>>14704089
>I still don't understand how this is not just an emanationist pantheism, then.
1) Because nothing ever actually emanates from Brahman, but only falsely appears to do so
2) Pantheism means that the universe is identical with God, but this is not the case in Advaita because Brahman never transforms into the universe and is not the substance making it up, they are only false superimpositions. The rope is never actually identical with the snake that we mistake it to be.
>You are describing a thing (God) with a "nature" that compels it to do certain acts, vis-a-vis some other thing (or domain of things) that is not perfectly the same as itself. That is not an absolute monism.
Advaita non-dualism is not monism, they are similar but there is a subtle difference. In monism there is a single substance making up everything, but this doesn't preclude there from being multiplicity and plurality within that monism. Advaita means "without duality" and differs in that there is no duality admitted whatsoever which rules out plurality and multiplicity. Also it's not monism because Brahman is not a substance. Brahman is complete metaphysical freedom and is not compelled by anything as there is nothing else to compel it, but rather Brahman never does anything and the false appearence that Brahman appears to do something viz creation follows from Brahman's very nature.

>>14707642
>Advaita doesn't seem to be describing a true nondualism.
If you think this for the reasons mentioned above then that's a misconception. In the final analysis and when moksha is attained the Supreme Brahman alone exists without even maya. The fact that all multiplicty, plurality etc are admitted by Advaita to vanish in liberation and be revealed as never having really existed to begin with gives one a way of talking about true non-dualism to the extent that it is possible through the inherently dualistic nature of language.
>And also that a true nondualism seems worthless, because it only gives you an inert sphere.
In what sense do you mean 'worth'? In a quantitative financial sense? In the sense of having something that's interesting to think about? In the sense of inducing happiness? Questions of worth are not really relevent for Advaita, as it aims at complete liberation from transmigratory existence to exist forever as eternal Bliss, for Advaita this has the highest 'worth' possible out of anything beings can understand or do, and the worth of everything else becomes insignificant in comparison to this.
>and I find myself agreeing with Evola even in places where you're quoting him just to say he's wrong
He makes many common misconceptions about Advaita in that article, you can make of that what you will. If you read Shankara's commentaries in particular on the Upanishads it becomes clear how off the mark Evola was.

With regard to the dialogue you write out, maya (which is inseparable from the world, they are not two distinct things) is admitted to be empirically real from our perspective but is itself illusionary and is held by Advaita to vanish in liberation, leaving the non-dual Brahman alone. There is actually no "illusion of the illusion" with regard to maya unless you mistake there to be bifurcations in it which are not actually taught by Advaita or unless you confuse the empirical/absolute distinction, there is simply one maya and one illusion, the very seeming fact of empirically seeming to be anything other than undifferentiated eternal Bliss is itself maya, and the rest is contained in this one falsehood which itself vanishes and is revealed to have never had any reality to begin with in moksha.

>>14707642
>substance monism is only possible monism

Teotl is process monism. Taoism is process monism.
Kashmir Shaivism is process monism.

Lots of monism is based in Process Metaphysics.

Also you mean to say Panentheism where you are saying Pantheism

I find Shankara's philosophy with his Brahman and Maya very similar to Parmenides with his Way of Truth and Way of Opinion. Only Being exists and all the phenomenal world is an illusion. Too bad we only have fragments of his book on Nature, and we don't have the part where he explains how is it that the phenomenal world came about.

>>14707879
They're very similar philosophies, and hence fall into the same problems of incoherency and paradox. The main difference is that Parmenides was self-aware about it, and Shankara tried to build up the ultimate irrefutable system out of it, which is like building a stack of cards over the edge of a cliff. Both Parmenides and Heraclitus were very self aware about the paradoxical character of their opposed doctrines, they are both based as fuck.

>>14704220
>Vedanta is sloppy metaphysics.
It's really not, but it's quite easy to misunderstand if you have never studied the primary texts of it yourself. I find Neoplatonism to kind of sloppy insofar as Plotinus equates matter with evil and is never able to fully explain how and why evil arises, among other things. The other day I saw someone who may have been you who said "Plotinus is perfect so long as when you understand that when he wrote X he actually meant Y" and then the guy wrote a fairly long list of stuff where you have to do some mental gymnastics to make Plotinus more coherent, there are no such mental gymnastics required with the work of Shankara. Everything in Shankara's writings can be accepted as they are and it all makes sense, this is why you never see people cite the actual sentences he wrote in his writings for the purpose of explaining why the reasoning in those individual sentences is wrong but you only ever see people attempt to present a portrayal of his ideas which most of the time upon further investigation turns out to be inaccurate.
>>14704189
Another definition would be eternal Bliss, as Bliss can only be experienced by a sentient presence, however Brahman is not a person or subject enjoying Bliss as it's object but pure Bliss itself, which is non-dual, without any duality whatsoever. Pic related addresses this subject.
>>14706497
>Ramanuja uses this exact reason to disqualify mayavada since the sruti texts such as the Vedas and the Upanishads would be part of Maya itself and could therefore not lead to Jivanmukti (direct knowledge of Brahman).
Jivanmukti means one who has been liberated, not knowledge of Brahman. Ramanuja thought that Bhakti and not knowledge of Brahman leads to liberation btw. In any case, this doesn't disqualify Advaita though because the very nature of revealed scriptures of divine origin is to show the reality of the Divine. If the Sruti texts come from Brahman as Ramanuja and Shankara both accept there is no reason why they wouldn't be endowed with the capacity to lead to liberation even if they are a part of maya, while they are a part of the same illusion the very divine nature and purpose of the texts would endow them with the capability to do so.
>The Buddha however escapes this paradox via his raft parable which makes the case that his Dharma is no longer required once Parinibbana is achieved ie was only meant to shred away the fetter of views... the same could not be said for Shankara's mayavada
In fact the same could also be said for Shankara, as Shankara maintains that the main purpose of the Upanishads is to destroy ignorance and that this is what the etymological meaning of 'Upanishad is', this complete destruction of ignorance leads to the self-luminous Reality of Brahman shining forth of its own accord in its true nature, which leads to liberation, so the Upanishads do indeed shred away the fetter of false views and ignorance.

>>14704863
>Above he has admitted again that it is illogical, and hence by his own criteria it renders the whole Vedanta philosophy self-refuting.
You have misunderstood what both that author and what I wrote. Advaita Vedanta has no thesis that it needs to prove to others, it is simply an initiatic spiritual discipline based on the Upanishads with a philosophical basis to it in the form of much logical analysis. Someone was posting criticisms of Advaita by other Vedanta schools, to which I replied with a retroactive refutation.

What the author means there is not that maya is an illogical concept that thereby casts doubt on the correctness of Advaita, but rather that due to maya's very nature as the transcendental source of empirical thought and dealings, it cannot be fully grasped by that thought in the same way that the eye cannot see itself or the way that analyzing matter and the laws of physics tells us nothing about why those laws of physics and the universe exists instead of nothing, the information we glean from that study only pertains to things already within the universe; and that because of this maya defies all attempts to logically refute it (you could say it retroactively refutes all attempts at refuting it) This is why the anupapatti or Ramanuja are all rendered irrelevant and why attempts to prove maya as illogical always end up themselves being shown to be based on misunderstandings like Madhva's attempt that was retroactively refuted here >>14702840. Maya is a coherent concept and is not inherently illogical, but rather it eludes and refutes all possible attempts to prove it wrong via logical analysis due to its nature as the transcendental source of that logic.

>>14706000
>t. In other words, your "challenge" for others to provide logical refutation of advaita has been adequately met
No it wasn't, I replied to all the attempted refutations of Advaita made explaining exactly how and why they are wrong
>First you admit that the doctrine of maya is illogical,
Wrong, you completely misunderstood what that author wrote, as I explained above.
>and now you admit that your belief is fundamentally founded on faith in revealed scripture.
I have never denied that Advaita is primarily a spiritual discipline which does not seek to prove anything to skeptics, I was only disputing that the other schools had come up with any successful refutations of Advaita as you yourself or someone else had previously insisted. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for anyone to attempt to demonstrate that Richard Robinson didn't completely refute Nagarjuna's logic as nonsense.

Advaita and Madhyamaka being close but different would each group consider the other likely to be several reincarnations from the truth because of the proximity? Or is the animosity between the two enough that they are going to claim that the other goes to hell or something?

>>14707969
>>14707979
>>14704109
>Philosophy ended with Kapi-

The false doctrine of Samkhya is no match for Shankaracharya's irrefutable dialectic which retroactively refutes Samkhya and exposes all of its inner contradictions! Now, fall to your knees and beg for forgiveness from Śiva!

>>14708155
>Śiva
Cultural appropriation. Shiva is the God of the Dravidians, of the agamas, not that Aryan vedantic mumbo jumbo.

>>14708116
Several medieval-era Advaitins wrote that if Madhyamaka changed a few things about their system then it would become sort of close to Advaita, but those changes themselves would never be accepted by Madhyamikas. Advaita doesn't claim non-Advaita teachings lead to hell, it says they cannot lead to moksha in this life like following Advaita teachings do but Advaita still has some perennialist-like elements in it where because of the nature of the Advaita cosmology people who have no idea about Advaita or Hinduism etc can still attain spiritual progress through virtues, devotions, meditations, rites etc and have that impact their next life in a positive way through causing transmigration into heavenly realms, into the status of (a long-lasting but temporary) godhood or better human lives with better circumstances and where one is more endowed with intelligence, spirituality etc.

>>14708192
The Shri Rudram of the Yajur-Veda is about Rudra/Shiva, who are treated as epithets of the same entity, the text contains the mantra Namah Shivaya. The Svetasvatara Upanishad mentions Shiva as well

>>14708279
Yeah, that's appropriation. Shiva is not actually Rudra. He's the Dravidian equivalent of Dionysus (the latter is a Pelasgian pre-Greek deity)

>>14708279
Later additions post-conquest like the vast bulk of the Vedas.

>>14708255
Yeah, that's why Hindu nationalists love advaita, it's the only way to unify hinduism.

>>14707642
you didn't really answer the questions, just repeated the things that provoked them

>>14708422
This thread is my first time engaging with guenonfag in an argument. I can see why people are so frustrated with him now. He has a limitless capacity for churning out pilpul. I've never seen anything like it before. I definitely won't make that mistake again.

>>14708428
yeah he's just repeating himself over and over, or saying "Um actually Advaita is correct" when people doubt that advaita is correct

i am disappointed, i guess he's just a religious dogmatist

>>14698678
Samsara is non-different from Nirvana and the reason for the illusionary difference is because of faulty cognition which is solved through a cognitive shift also known as enlightenment. The illusion is epistemic. This is different from the Advaita understanding of illusion as it is an ontological illusion which is caused by their wizard in the sky. Advaita is essentially nihilism as there is no way out of the illusion and there is no escapee. Maya can't be removed just as illumination can not be removed from light. There is no enlightenment. All you can do is to from the relative point of view kinda abstractly think really hard about how it's all Brahman and then pretend you're enlightened.

>>14709036
>>Samsara is non-different from Nirvana
according to mahayana only

>>14709036
if enlightenment is cognitive, shouldn't we just focus on neuroscience until we can cause enlightenment to happen automatically through surgery or pills? all that time meditating is a waste. we just need to figure out which part of our circuitry is causing the cognitive fuckup and figure out a way to change it

>Appayya Dikshita (often "Dikshitar") 1520–1593 CE was a performer of yajñas as well as an expositor and practitioner of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy but however, with a focus on Shiva or Shiva Advaita.

>>14709370
This is why some called Buddhists promote drug usage like LSD to promote neurogenesis and identify with the experience, fucking retards really.

>>14709399

>>14709370
Your question is completely valid, what that poster is talking about ends up becoming a sort of 'spiritual' materialism. I find that Madhyamaka seems to attract a lot of nihilists and atheists who want to give a seeming philosophical pretense to their materialism.
>>14709036
>Advaita is essentially nihilism as there is no way out of the illusion and there is no escapee. Maya can't be removed just as illumination can not be removed from light. There is no enlightenment.
This is simply wrong, spiritual illumination in Advaita dispels the illusion and ends maya via showing that it never really existed to begin with. Nihilism in the proper sense of the word i.e. everything being devoid of any higher meaning is far more applicable to Madhyamka which says that everything is empty than it is to Advaita which admits that such a higher meaning exists.
>>14708329
>Hindu nationalism
based!
>>14708422
In the first half I explained how those labels wouldn't be fully applicable to Advaita according to the widely agreed upon meanings of those words. You can still call it an emanationist monism if you want to but as I explained that wouldn't be an accurate definition. In the second half I explained that what you wrote isn't actually true of Advaita.

Abhinavagupta says:
>But if you say ‘indeterminate knowledge is true knowledge, while determinate one is false’, I would question ‘Why this distinction (why one is right and the other is wrong), because both of them are equally shining?’
That is to say that both Brahman—the formless, thought-free Absolute (‘indeterminate knowledge’)—and the manifest universe of thought and form (‘determinate knowledge’) shine equally within Consciousness. Where else can they shine?

Swami Muktananda writes:
>According to Vedanta, Brahman is the cause of the universe; He is ever pure, awake and free. He is bliss but the world is false, the result of ignorance. Only Brahman is real, and one becomes Brahman when false knowledge is replaced by true. On the other hand, the philosophy of Self-recognition teaches that the world is not false. Emanating from supreme Shiva, it runs by His will. By His will also He withdraws it one day.

>The Shaivite master would say that each of the classical yogas by themselves, bhakti yoga—the path of devotion, jnana yoga—the path of wisdom, and raja yoga—the path of mental and physical control, is incomplete. Shaiva yoga is a combination of all of these yogas. It includes will, knowledge and action in a comprehensive whole.

>>14709574
>Hindu nationalism: based

Akhand Bharat my dude

>>14709574
>Hindu nationalism: based

Based bro

>>14709601
>>14709612
Based

>>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.

>>14709623
Based, thank you for posting this.

>>14709623

>We have seen that it is not possible to do so

>>14709623
why do philosophers keep doing mental gymnastics to talk about enlightenment, instead of getting enlightened?

>>14709771
because they commit to the image of a philosophy before actually understanding the philosophy, and then when the philosophy is full of holes (like advaita) they are stuck with it and have to justify it to themselves

>>14709787
But enlightenment is justification in itself.

>>14709574
>>14709601
>>14709612
>>14709617
BASED HINDPOO NATIONALISM

>>14709828
Why is it always poo

It isn't even a meme anymore, Indians love wallowing in their own shit

>>14709834
NOOOOOOOO NOT THE SMELLY POOJEETS NOT MY FLINGING TURDERINOS

>>14709843
>>14709828
FECES IS BRAHMAN

>>14709787
>then when the philosophy is full of holes (like advaita)
Every single attempt to prove the existence of these holes in this thread have all been retroactively refuted

>>14709861
autistically repeating yourself while multiple people express bafflement at why you're not answering them is not a refutation

i used to think you were at least dedicated to the tradition you obsess over, turns out you suck at even that, you're a potemkin advaitin

HAHA BASED HINDU NATIO-

>While emphasising on religious pluralism, Golwalkar (well known Hindutva) believed that Semitic monotheism were incompatible with and against the native Hindu culture. He wrote: Those creeds (Islam and Christianity) have but one prophet, one scripture and one God, other than whom there is no path of salvation for the human soul. It requires no great intelligence to see the absurdity of such
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_nationalism

WAIT WHAT B-B-BUT....

>Sedgwick wrote about Guénon's life in Egypt that even though he continued his interest in Hinduism and other religions, Guénon's own practice was purely Islamic. He is "not known ever to have recommended anyone to become a Hindu, whereas he introduced many to Islam".[13]
>René Guénon died on Sunday, January 7, 1951; his final word was "Allah".[23]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Guénon

OH NO NO NO NO

>>14709872
>Let it be stated quite clearly: the modern outlook is purely West- ern, and those who are affected by it should be classed as Westerners mentally, even though they may be Easterners by birth; all Eastern ideas are completely alien to them, and their ignorance of the traditional doctrines is the only excuse for their hostility toward them. What may seem remarkable, and even contradictory, is that these same individuals who become the auxiliaries of 'Westernism' from an intellectual point of view-or, more exactly, in opposition to all real intellectuality-sometimes come to the fore as the opponents of the West in the field of politics. But there is nothing surprising in this, for it is they who strive to introduce the idea of (nation' in the East, and all nationalism is essentially opposed to the traditional outlook; they may wish to resist foreign domination, but in order to do so they make use of Western methods, such as are used by the various Western peoples when fighting among themselves; and it may be that in this fact lies the justification for their existence.

Retroactively refuted by guénon (pbuh).

>>14709887
This, there is no Indian "nation." India was at its best when ruled by the Mughals.

>>14709890
>This, there is no Indian "nation."
Yes, Pakistan was defeated in 3 wars by a mysterious non-entity, a maya as it were

>>14710104
India and pakistan are one country temporarily divided, how can they go to war with themselves. It's just civil war.

In time the land will reunite and the people will realize Sufism is the true religion of the Vedas like Guenon did.

>>14709865
You have no arguments left and have to resort to personal attacks which reveals the groundlessness of your claims. You must be really shook by Robinson's destruction of Nagarjuna's logic. Unfortunately, making personal attacks against me will neither save Nagarjuna from refutation nor prove that there are holes in Advaita.

>>14709887
>Those creeds (Islam and Christianity) have but one prophet, one scripture and one God, other than whom there is no path of salvation for the human soul. It requires no great intelligence to see the absurdity of such

face it, Hindus hate Guenon

>>14710138
sorry sweety Robinson was already refuted

>>14710158
True Hindus know that Hinduism and Islam are the same. Mughal rule of India was the most prosperous time in Indian history, the castes were in order and there was free religious dialogue between Islam and Hindu traditions, tending toward a fusion of both (led by the more cultivated Muslim tradition). Guenon is in a very long line who realize India's real Sufi nature. Just because some stupid hindutvas are polytheists doesn't mean anything. Guenon knows India better than they do because he studied the vedas.

>>14710164
this, scholars are in agreement

Based Robinson continuing to honor Nagarjuna by continuing to follow the tradition he eventually shaped.

reminder we've witnessed his descent into insanity in real time

Punished Guenonfag timeline:

2018
>Buddhism has not really degenerated. There are some east Asian schools that have become too 'religious' and some Theravada schools may have become a little too westernized in thought but there are still tens of millions of practicing Traditional Buddhists.

2019
>It's been 24 hours and none of you ming-mongs have replied to this. All the more embarrassing considering YoU CaN't HaVe Up WiThOuT dOwN mY dUdEz loooooollzzlz lmafaooo :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!1!111! was intended to be the epic GOTCHA retort. Writhing animals.

2020
>LOL U MAD??? BASED EPIC. seethe CRINGE le epic guenon (pbuh) XDDDd
>(replying to above) Based... Thank you so much for this post my good friend... I will begin reading guenon immediately...

What school of Buddhism did the Tocharians, Yuezhi and other Caucasian peoples of Central Asia practice?

>>14710172
>True Hindus know that Hinduism and Islam are the same
Hindutvas disagree stongly, you are just having a cognitive dissonance over the fact that your beloved Guenon chose Islam instead of your own ethnic religion.

>Golwalkar (well known Hindutva) believed that Semitic monotheism were incompatible with and against the native Hindu culture. He wrote: Those creeds (Islam and Christianity) have but one prophet, one scripture and one God, other than whom there is no path of salvation for the human soul. It requires no great intelligence to see the absurdity of such a proposition.

>BJP leader and the then leader of opposition, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in 1998, articulated the concept of "holy land" in Hindutva as follows: "Mecca can continue to be holy for the Muslims but India should be holier than the holy for them. You can go to a mosque and offer namaz, you can keep the roza. We have no problem. But if you have to choose between Mecca or Islam and India you must choose India. All the Muslims should have this feeling: we will live and die only for this country.

>>14710172
>True Hindus know that Hinduism and Islam are the same

>Because of the high degree of similarity between Nāgārjuna's philosophy and Pyrrhonism, particularly the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus[30] Thomas McEvilley suspects that Nāgārjuna was influenced by Greek Pyrrhonists texts imported into India.[31] Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360-c. 270 BCE), who is usually credited with founding this school of sceptical philosophy, was himself influenced by Indian philosophy, when he travelled to India with Alexander the Great's army and studied with the gymnosophists.
Was Nagarjuna influenced by Pyrrhus? I thought it was the other way around...

>>14710186

>>14710217
Pyrrho predates nagarjuna and nagarjuna is credited with Madhyamaka... so does this mean advaita was second, no wait THIRD hand rip off greek philosophy all along?

>>14710231
How's the girlcock been treating you, guy who makes posts about himself in the third person and then screenshots them to repost later? >>14697430

>>14710262
the true founder of advaita...

>>14710217
>>14710262
>>14710282

>>14710164
No he wasn't lol, that image is just a blatant attempt at coping which doesn't address any of the points Robinson makes about Nagarjuna's flawed logic. And not only that but the image also lies, only Hayes accused Nagarjuna of equivocating, Robinson never did. You can read Robinson's whole article on sci-hub and the words "equivocation" or "equivocating" don't appear once in the entire article. The image is falsely trying to imply that Robinson's arguments were rejected for the same reasons Hayes' were when in fact they weren't and no scholar has ever shown that Robinson's critique was wrong. Anyone with two brain cells to rub togather can read Robinson's critique that was already posted here >>14697165 and compare it to your image and they will clearly see that your image does nothing to refute his arguments. You actually make the Buddhists on /lit/ and Madhyamaka look even worse than they already do when you post such pitiable defenses that are nothing more than cope and which contain falsehoods on top of that, it would look less bad if you just ignored Robinson's article and refused to respond to any mention of it.

>>14710272

>>14710262
>>14710282
>>14710293
The plot thickens

>>14710306
>h-he didn't get refuted goddamnit, based buddhist Robinson is on my side I tell you

>>14710388
Does Nagarjuna succeed in refuting all views without making any assumptions that are not conceded by the adherents of the particular view under
attack? We can list some axioms upon which his arguments depend, and then go on to inquire how widely others accepted them.

(1) Whatever has extension is divisible, hence is composite, not permanent
and not real.
(la) Corollary: An indivisible, infinitesimal thing could have no extension.
(2) To exist means to be arisen; hence existence is synonymous with
manifestation, and there is no unmanifested existence.
(3) A real thing would have to be an utterly simple individual which contains no diversity. If it had diversity, it would have extension and
therefore would not be indivisible and real.
(4) The perception of arising and ceasing is illusory (MK 21.11, 17.31-33,
7.34).
(5) Only transitive actions and relations are admissible; reflexive actions
are disallowed (the eye cannot see itself) (MK 3.2), the fingertip
cannot touch itself, etc.), and seemingly intransitive expressions such
as "the goer goes" must be recast in transitive form as "the goer goes
a distance."
(6) The Buddhas teach truly that two truths or levels of being are to be
distinguished, the mundane-conventional (lokasamvrti) and the absolute
(paramdrtha) (MK 24.8).

Axiom 1 disagrees with the consensus of all schools, including the sinyavdda of the sitras, that akasa is ubiquitous and indivisible. Thus there is at least one entity that is not composite, has extension, and is permanent. Nagarjuna's attempt to demolish the concept of dkasa (MK chap. 8) selects the relation of akasa to its laksana as the vulnerable point. But as we will see later, his denial of the entity-attribute relation presupposes his denial of extension and is not admissible until after he has disproved the commonly accepted thesis that akasa is extended and indivisible. If it is admitted that there is one extended, permanent and noncomposite entity, then it is not absurd to hold that there are others. And if extension is admitted, then duration must be admitted, too, since the arguments against duration involve the same operations of segmentation as those against extension. What the example of akasa does not render admissible, however, is diversity within an extended substance. Diversity was commonly considered to belong to the objects that occupied space and occurred in time.

>>14710464
Axiom 2 stands in contradiction to another axiom accepted by all schools and even invoked by Nagarjuna himself: that the real is that which has never arisen (has no cause), and hence has no beginning or end, is permanent. One must choose between these two axioms. If reality means becoming, then that which is empty is real, that which is real is empty. But if reality means nonbecoming, then either there is nothing real (a rather pointless inversion of the ordinary meaning of the word "real"), or there is a plane of being which is free from becoming. Nagarjuna is not alone among the thinkers of classical India in promiscuously adhering now to one and later to another of these axioms.

Axiom 3 is simply not accepted by the parinamavadins-Isvarakrsna and Ramanuja, for example. In classical Samhkhya, prakrti has the three gunas, hence has diversity as an intrinsic property (SK 11). The gravest difficulty with this position is that there is no ready commonsense example of a variegated and nondivisible entity; apparent examples turn out to be composite. But if lack of a commonsense example militates against diversity-withinunity, Nagarjuna's Axiom 4 is even more vulnerable on this score. His ostensible examples-a hallucination (maya), a dream, a mirage-are all instances that common sense can establish illusions. Nagarjuna gives no commonsense perceptual criterion for considering all phenomena as maya. He does not examine perception empirically, does not attempt to show that the senses are bad witnesses in all cases, and merely asserts dogmatically that perception is marked by vikalpa (conceptualization), which falsifies. This is an empirical proposition, be it noted, and Nagarjuna's claim is that he does not make empirical assertions apart from those conceded by his opponents. He ought to admit either that he maintains mayavada on the authority of the sunyavadin sutras, which are not agama for the Hinayanist opponents or for the astikas, or that he requires an empirically derived theory of error in order to exclude empirical arguments from the rest of his dialectic. If he adduces the experience of the Buddhist contemplatives (which he does only obliquely in the Karikds, but which the commentators do explicitly), he is not making an empirical assertion but making one that his opponents are not prepared to concede. Non-Buddhists are not going to accept that the Buddhist aryas are authorities, and other Buddhists do not take the experience of the dryas as evidence for sinyavdda. There appears to be no way of forcing a realist opponent to concede that commonsense experience is erroneous except to examine experience and to demonstrate empirically that it is delusive. Merely citing well-known varieties of illusion does not prove the point.

>>14710470
Axiom 5 seems sounder than it actually is because the examples are so graphic. It really presupposes Axiom 1. If an entity possesses extension, then one region of it can act upon or relate to another region of it. This is the commonest sense of reflexive expressions. Nagarjuna, incidentally, is guilty of a sheer quibble when he says that since the eye cannot see itself it cannot see another (MK 3.2). This is not seriously detrimental to his case, which can quite easily be restated without the quibble. But more serious is his failure either to accept or to disqualify the instances of genuine intransitive action that occur in commonsense experience plus the metaphysical ones that are affirmed by some of his opponents. When he denies that the lamp illuminates itself (MK 7.8), he is simply arbitrarily choosing to consider the reflexive object as if it were a nonreflexive object. He is refusing to allow, as ordinary language does, that reflexive statements are either pseudo-reflexive or pseudotransitive. "I saw myself in the mirror" and "I scratched myself" are pseudoreflexives. "Light illuminates itself" and "Water makes itself wet" are pseudo-transitives, better expressed by "Light is inherently bright" and "Water is inherently wet."

This brings us to Nagarjuna's treatment of the relation between entity and attribute. It has already been mentioned that if extension were granted to entities then attributes might belong to them, but that since Nagarjuna denies extension he denies the attributive relation. According to Axiom 3, a real thing must be utterly simple; it cannot have more than one property. But if it has even one property, then it consists of two entities-itself and its propertywhich is incompatible with Axiom 3. The weakness here is that none of Nagarjuna's opponents really adhered to Axiom 3. The realists' infinitesimals were not utterly without extension and permitted each simple to have one attribute. An allied but distinct argument against the entity-attribute relation charges that it involves vicious infinite regress. If A is the attribute, B is the entity, and c is the relation between them, then there must be another relation D which relates c to A, another relation E which relates c to B, other relations F and G which relate E to its relata, and so on ad infinitum.

>>14710464
>>14710470
>>14710470
>>14710476
>i-ill just paste it, hah take that!
cringe

>>14710476

Nagarjuna employs this argument against the properties (laksana) of the momentary dharmas of the Abhidharmikas-arising, abiding, and ceasing. He says that there would have
to be an arising of arising, and an arising of the arising of arising, and so on infinitely (MK 7.3).1 The Abhidharmikas simply did not accept the charge. The Abhidharmahrdaya (Chinese a-p'i-t'an-hsin-lun, Taisho 1550, 811b20ff.), reports the objection and replies that the operation is reflexive and reciprocal; each dharma effects itself and each of the seven others. For example, arising (a) arises of itself, and (b) constitutes the arising of abiding, disintegration, and ceasing and of the four anulaksanas. This implies Abhidharmikas acceptance of complex entities with multiple functions, and rejection of Nagarjuna's axiom.

An important example of an intransitive function is the svaprakasa of Advaita Vedanta. This tenet has been skillfully and extensively defended against heterodox interpretations, and certainly suffices to show that Nagarjuna's critique does not damage the Advaita Vedantic position on this point. Thus it appears that the systems under attack commonly defended themselves by affirming a reflexive, nontransitive or reciprocal operation which obviated vicious infinite regression. The weakness in the defense lies in its arbitrary selection of one, rather than other, place in which to posit nontransitivity.

Axiom 5 concerns the arbitrary introduction of pseudo-subjects and pseudoobjects. This operation is permitted and even encouraged by grammatical conventions in English and Sanskrit. The event which can be reported adequately with the single finite verb "rains" is more usually furnished with a dummy subject "it." Thus we may say "It rains" or "Rain rains," and adding a dummy object in reply to the dubious question "What does rain rain ?" we may say "Rain rains rain." That the subject and object are dummies is shown by the fact that rain never does anything but rain, and nothing but rain is ever rained in the primary sense of the verb (excluding the other meaning, as in "Flowers rained down"). English "rain" is ambivalently transitive and intransitive, thus permitting the addition of dummy objects. The option of adding such objects, though, is not a sufficient warrant for transforming all statements to this form, and then treating the objects as if they were not dummies

>>14710282
>'start with the greeks' wasn't a meme after all

>>14710487
Axiom 6 is dogmatic and serves little purpose in the destructive dialectic. The distinction is not admitted by non-Buddhists, as Candrakirti points out (MKV 27.1), and so the Madhyamika is forced either to refute Samhkhya, for instance, from just one viewpoint, which is irrelevant to the opponent, or fromboth viewpoints, which is cumbrous for the proponent and irrelevant for the antagonist. This axiom is enunciated in Chapter 24 of the Karikas where Nagarjuna is explaining why he cannot be charged with denying all the Buddha's teachings. The opponent here is a Hinayanist who accepts the authority of the Agamas or Nikayas but certainly would not accept as Buddhavacana the sunyavadin satras in which Nagarjuna's doctrine of the two truths is stated. Hence Nagarjuna departs from his avowed method, makes an existential statement about an exegetical principle, and bases his argument on an axiom not acceptable to his opponent.

The nature of the Madhyamika trick is now quite clear. It consists of (a) reading into the opponent's views a few terms which one defines for him in a self-contradictory way, and (b) insisting on a small set of axioms which are at variance with common sense and not accepted in their entirety by any known philosophy. It needs no insistence to emphasize that the application of such a critique does not demonstrate the inadequacy of reason and experience to provide intelligible answers to the usual philosophical questions. This critique of Nagarjuna's critique does demonstrate, however, that critical self-examination is fruitful for philosophy. A similar examination of the axioms and definitions of the other classical darsanas would reveal that each depends on a set of arbitrary axioms and hence does not arrive at any nonexperiential propositions which all reasonable men must accept. More cogent than Nagarjuna's criticism of constructive philosophy is that which T.R.V. Murti makes under Nagarjuna's banner: "By its defective procedure dogmatic metaphysics wrongly understands the transcendent in terms of the empirical modes; it illegitimately extends, to the unconditioned, the categories of thought that are true within phenomena alone."2 I may add that dogmatic metaphysics, like the Madhyamika critique, usually fails to do justice to the categories of thought we commonly employ in thinking about the phenomenal realm. This observable fact furnishes some justification for the Savage in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, who extracted from Hamlet's passing remark the definition: "A philosopher is someone who thinksof fewer things than there are in heaven and earth."


>tfw /lit/ Buddhists are quite literally unable to defend Nagarjuna's garbage logic which is riddled with more holes than swiss cheese


>>14710483
>NOOO YOU CANT JUST EXPOSE NAGARJUNAS LOGIC AS WORTHLESS, NOOO NOT MY PRECIOUS MADHYAMIKINOS!!!

>>14710464
>>14710470
>>14710476
>>14710487
>>14710498
Just to summarize the refractive regurgitation of guenonfag's dependence on a well known [Nagarjunian] Buddhist's discredited article
>Modern scholars reject Robinson and Hayes' claims of equivocation (Magee 1999, Garfield 1995, Napper 1989, Hopkins 1986)
>Modern scholars who unironically affirm Robinson's test of formal logic argue that such methods miss Nagarjuna's intent of his dialectic (Siderits 2016, C.W Huntington 2007)
>Robinson remained a Mahayana Buddhist (like Nagarjuna) for the rest of his life
>Guenonfag could not fathom the fact that Robinson did not convert to his precious Advaita Vedanta
>Bonus: Guenonfag hates western scholars except when it suits him

QED

>>14710513
based

>>14710513
Hello based department? Someone dangerously based is on the loose

>>14710513
based? based.

>>14710464
>>(1) Whatever has extension is divisible, hence is composite, not permanent
>and not real.
>(la) Corollary: An indivisible, infinitesimal thing could have no extension.
>(2) To exist means to be arisen; hence existence is synonymous with
>manifestation, and there is no unmanifested existence.
>(3) A real thing would have to be an utterly simple individual which contains no diversity. If it had diversity, it would have extension and
>therefore would not be indivisible and real.
>(4) The perception of arising and ceasing is illusory (MK 21.11, 17.31-33,
>7.34).
>(5) Only transitive actions and relations are admissible; reflexive actions
>are disallowed (the eye cannot see itself) (MK 3.2), the fingertip
>cannot touch itself, etc.), and seemingly intransitive expressions such
>as "the goer goes" must be recast in transitive form as "the goer goes
>a distance."
>(6) The Buddhas teach truly that two truths or levels of being are to be
>distinguished, the mundane-conventional (lokasamvrti) and the absolute
>(paramdrtha) (MK 24.8).
wait aren't most of these (if not all) Advaita concepts? (2), (3), (4) and (6) are straight out of Shankara's Bhasya

>>14710533
shh don't mention the similarities, he actually doesn't read his pastas

>>14710533
Actually this simple/composite analysis sounds a lot more like Greek philosophy, lending credence to the opinion that both Advaita and Madhyamaka are a rip off of Greek philosophy.

>>14710513
>Modern scholars reject Robinson and Hayes' claims of equivocation (Magee 1999, Garfield 1995, Napper 1989, Hopkins 1986)
This is a fake citation, Robinson doesn't accuse Nagarjuna of equivocating, those articles are about Hayes, why do you keep lying?
>Modern scholars who unironically affirm Robinson's test of formal logic argue that such methods miss Nagarjuna's intent of his dialectic
Again, this citation itself says that modern scholars affirm that Robinson's test of logic is correct, you just BTFO yourself. What could be the point of Nagarjuna's dialectic then if his logic fails? Nagarjuna himself claims to refute all other views using their own logic, without relying on any axioms which are not accepted by those opponents. Robinson shows clearly that Nagarjuna failed to do so, which discredits Nagarjuna's whole project. With Nagarjuna's claimed refutation of other views thrown out there is no longer any justification for Madhyamika views whatsoever and the "dropping of all views" which Nagarjuna advocates instead of leading to Nirvana just becomes a method of turning oneself into an NPC, a non-surgical lobotomy. Granted, most people into Madhyamaka would desire that because they have the desire to dissasociate from themselves and everything else, but for a mentally healthy person it offers nothing.

>>14710513
>Modern scholars reject
This is a bs appeal to authority. Why don't you write down their refutation here, assuming you even read them? Nobody is going to read those books just to find out what they said you asscunt.

>>14710584
>Robinson shows clearly that Nagarjuna failed to do so
nope and cope-pilled

Robinson (pbuh) accepted Nagarjuna (pbuh) as his Lord and Savior until the day he died and went into the Pure Land (pbui) to retroactively renounce Advaita.

>>14710604
based...

>>14710604
>Robinson (pbuh) accepted Nagarjuna (pbuh)
That's wrong, he says Nagarjuna has flawed logic and in his history of Buddhist thoughy says that Buddha never used emptiness in the way Nagarjuna does. Robinson probably followed a later branch of Mahayana which claims to supercede and to be a higher understanding than Nagarjuna like the Yogachara of Asanga for example or possibly Jonang Buddhism.

>>14710533
wait a minute...did Ven. Robinson cryptically wrote this as refutation to Advaita?

>>14710637
but if that's true he wrote it for both Madhyamaka and Advaita (which is pretty the same anyway)

was this an attempt to prove Greek's claim to fame?

>>14710637
guenfag retroactively refuted himself again! (pbuh)

>>14710644
the plot thickens even larger

>>14710637
No, because Advaita does not accept any of those claims and would dispute most of them

>>14710644
>Shankara refuted (via multiple Hindu thinkers)
>Nagarjuna refuted (via 1 Buddhist disciple)
>all that's left is Pyrrhonian Greco-Buddhist μή-διπλοῦς

>>14710701
>(2) To exist means to be arisen; hence existence is synonymous with manifestation, and there is no unmanifested existence.
>(3) A real thing would have to be an utterly simple individual which contains no diversity. If it had diversity, it would have extension and therefore would not be indivisible and real.
>(4) The perception of arising and ceasing is illusory (MK 21.11, 17.31-33, 7.34).
>(6) The Buddhas teach truly that two truths or levels of being are to be distinguished, the mundane-conventional (lokasamvrti) and the absolute (paramdrtha) (MK 24.8).
how are these not Advaitic ideas?

>>14710707
This.

Go for the original instead of the copies.

>no matter how much people try to banter, guenonfag still can't take the joke
>literally starts copypasting the robinson

Hahaha there's that one-track mind autism that killed the old trad threads

>>14710719
I'm sorry, I should have clarified what I meant. Advaita and Shankara never claimed to refute all other possible views like Nagarjuna did, this what Robinson takes Nagarjuna to task for, not for simply holding those views.

Nagarjuna claims to refute the views of all the other schools of thought that he was aware of without relying on any axioms not accepted by them (i.e. refuting them while conforming to their own logic), which Robinson shows he actually fails to do. In those paragraphs Robinson is not criticizing those individual positions as such but rather on a case by case basis examines whether Nagarjuna a) offers any good reason for accepting them to begin with, and b) whether or not in the course of explaining why we would accept them as true Nagarjuna is forced to use reasoning that his opponent wouldnt accept as valid. That text omits the first few pages of the article which can be read on sci-hub for more clarification. Because of this, Robinson's refutation of Nagarjuna's logic doesn't apply at all to Advaita because Robinson is not refuting those positions in themselves but rather the logic that Nagarjuna uses in an attempt to prove them. Advaita accepts to varying degrees a few of those axioms but doesn't try to prove them using the logic Nagarjuna does and is thus not harmed whatsoever by Robinson's refutation of Nagarjuna's logic.

>(2) To exist means to be arisen; hence existence is synonymous with manifestation, and there is no unmanifested existence.
Advaita does not accept this and unlike Nagarjuna actually consistently holds to the position that the real never can change or arise and hence that the unmanifested and unarisen Absolute is truly the only real and the only thing that actually exists; and that conversely if something has arisen or become manifest then by default it cannot be ultimately real

>>14711228
>(3) A real thing would have to be an utterly simple individual which contains no diversity. If it had diversity, it would have extension and therefore would not be indivisible and real.
Advaita accepts that if something has parts then it can be subject to modification and division, which would mean that it is not eternal and hence not absolutely real, however Advaita holds that the real can still have extension and says that the real i.e. Brahman is without parts and multiplicity while having infinite extension in the sense that Brahman is infinite

>(4) The perception of arising and ceasing is illusory (MK 21.11, 17.31-33, 7.34).
>(6) The Buddhas teach truly that two truths or levels of being are to be distinguished, the mundane-conventional (lokasamvrti) and the absolute (paramdrtha) (MK 24.8).
Advaita accepts on the strength of the Upanishads which talk about these ideas that the perception of arising is illusory and that there is both an absolute reality and conventional appearences, but as mentioned they don't claim to prove those things according to their opponents own logic and are thus unharmed by Robinson's refutation of Nagarjuna's logic on these points. The first point also differs between them in that Advaita says that all illusions are false appearances of the real i.e. Brahman while Nagarjuna does not admit any existent reality with its own true self-nature that the illusions are appearences of or which the illusions have as their basis. Advaita points out that illusions cannot be caused by or have as their basis emptiness or nothingness, but only ever arise where there is an existent basis for them, Advaita says that the appearance of illusions itself proves that there is an existent reality as their basis and that if there wasn't they wouldn't be experienced at all. As far as I'm aware neither Nagarjuna nor any other Buddhist thinker has ever provided any serious answer to this and it remains a persistent hole in Buddhist theory.

>>14710575
it's a well known fact that greeks learned from the indian buddhists
they're not rivals though cause they don't pretend to be different

>>14710707
Wrong, the earliest Upanishads predate both Buddhism and all Greek philosophy

>>14711538
It seems like the gymnosophists ("naked sages") were sramanas, so very probably Buddhist and affiliated movements. It's highly possible that Greeks and sramanas had some strong intellectual exchange without necessarily saying one influenced the other. What is certain is that advaita just ripped off Buddhism completely.

>>14710217
>>14710282
>philosophy midwits think they have a chance to stand between two giants
don't embarrass yourself greeks

>>14711724
>What is certain is that advaita just ripped off Buddhism completely.
t. seething Nagarjuna fanboy who can't handle that his icon was refuted

>>14711753
You were refuted though.

>>14711761
Where? There are not any arguments against Advaita left in the thread which weren't debunked

>>14711864
Yes there are, you were decisively debunked and refuted. You had no answers to anything so you simply repeated claims that were already refuted.

>>14711873
That's wrong, everything was decisively answered. You'll have to substantiate your claims for your post to be anything but cope

>>14711909
You're the one that's wrong. You got refuted and debunked, then repeated your refuted claims. Cope harder.

>>14711917
The absence of specific arguments in your post shows that it's just cope. Nagarjuna was decisively refuted by Robinson and as your own citation here >>14710513 admits Robinson's logic that he uses to debunk Nagarjuna is affirmed by modern scholars like Siderits and Huntington. It's the inescapable conclusion of this thread that Advaita is irrefutable and that Madhyamaka has been irreversibly refuted for all time.

>>14712027
When I said "cope harder" I didn't actually mean it. Please, stop coping and post something that hasn't already been refuted.

>>14712031
t. coping coper

>>14712098
I'm serious. Your Advaita shit was refuted and debunked several times. Do you have anything new to say that wasn't refuted?

Is samsara or its cause eternal in Madhyamaka or is it non-eternal? If samsara is non-eternal then at some point it will end on its own and the Buddhist path becomes completely unnecessary. If samsara or its cause is eternal then sunyata is false because not everything is without a permanent existence/nature.

How would Madhyamikas respond to this? Is this not a major contradiction in Madhyamaka that raises questions about whether sunyata is the truth?

>>14712108
you say that and yet you are unable to cite any argument that wasn't already retroactively refuted, how amusing

>>14712161
I'm just fucking with you bro. I just wanted to see how long you would go back and forth with another poster saying literally nothing other than "no ur refuted" "nuh uh ur refuted." Turns out, probably forever. You really like that "refuted" thing. Your mental illness is chilling.

>>14712181
Calling someone mentally ill and other personal attacks are just more non-arguments and cope and they have been refuted.

>>14712229
Actually it's you who has been refuted.

>>14712234
Nice projection you refuted coper

>>14712632
You've been refuted numerous times! Stop coping!

>>14712802
>t. more cope by someone who couldn't accept that they were refuted

>>14713016
You have already been refuted bro, coping about it wont help you