/lit/ - Literature

>>16337296
Religion goes to /his/

I would be careful about reading Advaita Vedanta interpretations such as Shankara's as a commentary to the Upanishads, they are extremely reliant on Buddhist philosophy (Shankara is called a "cryptobuddhist" by most Hindus, and most scholars agree). If you want to read the Upanishads, work through them with editions and commentaries that aren't sectarian, or at least read an interpretation that is closer to the original meaning of the Upanishads, rather than Shankara's 9th century AD quasi-buddhism.

some open questions to open minded shakarafags (im a practicing catholic who's open to some neoplatonic / vedantin ideas but skeptical):

> in advaita, how can there be knowledge? if there is no change, like for Parmenides, then how we acquire knowledge (implying a change)?

> like in all monistic systems; Spinoza, Barkeley, etc; how does AV differentiate between God and the world?

> if everyone is just an emenation of the Atman, then how is there any qualtative distinctions between people? We're all the same right?

> how does AV not just fall into solipsism (if all material life we experience is actually just maya)?

bump

>>16337302
> religion
> adviata
> implying av (like the upanishads, shankara, etc) doesn't clearly make metaphysical arguments akin to Schopenhauer, etc.
you're a dope, decent bait. here's your (you)

A challenger approaches

>>16337355
the upanishads are not advaita, advaita is 1500 years later and just buddhism with an extra word added

>It's a "lets project narcissistic Renaissance ideas of originality on to ancient India and have a strawman vs. strawman debate over things we don't believe in" episode

>>16337340
>> in advaita, how can there be knowledge? if there is no change, like for Parmenides, then how we acquire knowledge (implying a change)?
The Supreme Self (Paramātmā) is the enduring absolute reality which provides the eternal ground of being wherein knowledge of limited things can occur. By the unlimited light of the Self's awareness, the minds of multifarious beings gain the capacity for action just as the wind rustles the leaves. This Self as the omniscient and omnipotent Lord of all always effortlessly wields It's own beginningless power to cause the worlds and the beginningless existence of the beings in them for all eternity, without ever changing or truly acting, just as the sun shines without deviating. There is truly no change only in the supreme reality of the Self or God, but the minds of those ignorant beings who are to still subject to the Self's artful power of māyā, they have the subjective experience of being an embodied being experiencing change. We acquire knowledge of change etc through participation in the māyā-world sustained by God.
>> like in all monistic systems; Spinoza, Barkeley, etc; how does AV differentiate between God and the world?
The world is a transient manifestation of God's powers in His own consciousness. The world consists of the insentient elements and the ether etc, which are created and sustained by God's power as a physical plane wherein physical creatures interact, and this physical plane continues existing as a shared realm of experience outside of the individual cognitions of those creatures. However, God's power never actually materializes into physical objects which existing *as objects* floating in the unlimited, luminous space of Awareness, but it just forms the basis which appears to do so to the beings still subject to ignorance. It is out of God's omniscience and omnipotence that his power of māyā causes there to be a shared realm of perception among beings without that power ever actually forming into physical objects. Causality etc and other relations involving limitation and multiplicity are not truly existent or real in the supreme unfettered reality of the Supreme Self, they seem empirically real to us and they appear to structure the continent existence of our universe, but in the supreme reality of God which far transcends the universe none of these events and relations are really taking place, and ignorant beings only experience these relations and interactions in the māyā-world in a ordered manner because of them proceeding from God's power, as in occasionalism.

>>16337972
>> if everyone is just an emanation of the Atman, then how is there any qualitative distinctions between people? We're all the same right?
There is only one conscious undivided Self, which is without any limitations or distinctions. Distinctions, plurality, multiplicity etc and the perception of them in consciousness are caused by that Self's power. Insofar as you are the autonomous indwelling light within the heart which is the foundation and unchanging witness of all variations of thought, sensory perception, the states of waking and dream, etc you are the same presence illuminating all other beings, but things like your power of thought, your ego, your body, etc when you identify with them form the differences from other beings. Qualitative distinctions between people are only real insofar as they characterize the various costumes that the omnipresent Consciousness dons in the cosmic opera that It orchestrates, but that Self, as It truly is blissfully residing within Itself, is unaffected by and not truly characterized by the attributes of these delimitations.
>> how does AV not just fall into solipsism (if all material life we experience is actually just maya)
Because its proponent does not deny that there is a shared realm of contingent existence existing outside of his sensory experience, not does he deny that other people also have conscious experience or that they possess thinking minds differing from the proponent's own mind.

>>16337978
>>16337972
>cryptobuddhist cope