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16475199 No.16475199 [Reply] [Original]

Why is Advaita Vedanta often noted as superior to buddhism by serious philosophers and metaphysicians? Is there a reason for this?

>> No.16475537

No reason, some autists just like to think that for some reason.

>> No.16475608

It is because Advaita is simply more logical and coherent and doesn’t have all these flimsy doctrines Buddhism has which often collapse when subjected to scrutiny. If an ostensibly spiritual doctrine happens to align with materialism and post-modernism 90+% of the time as Buddhism does and if its adherents often argue in the same ways as those beliefs systems, then that should be a red flag to any intelligent man.

>> No.16475632

inb4 the "I would be careful" guy.

>> No.16475636

>>16475199
>serious philosophers and metaphysicians
Who

>> No.16475681

>>16475199
You fell for a meme.

>> No.16475779
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16475779

>>16475199

It has also been pointed out that the Buddhists give a different analysis of the fact of recognition. They hold that perception reveals the existence of things at the moment of perception, whereas recognition involves the supposition of their existence through a period of past time, and this cannot be apprehended by perception, which is limited to the present moment only. If it is suggested that recognition is due to present perception as associated with the impressions (saṃskāra) of previous experience, then such a recognition of identity would not prove the identity of the self as “I am he”—for in the self-luminous self there cannot be any impressions. The mere consciousness as the flash cannot prove any identity; for that is limited to the present moment and cannot refer to past experience and unite it with the experience of the present moment.

The Buddhists on their side deny the existence of recognition as the perception of identity, and think that it is in reality not one but two concepts—“I” and “that”— and not a separate experience of the identity of the self as persisting through time. To this the Vedāntic reply is that, though there cannot be any impressions in the self as pure consciousness, yet the self as associated with the mind (antaḥkaraṇa) can well have impressions (saṃskāra), and so recognition is possible[19]. But it may be objected that the complex of the self and mind would then be playing the double role of knower and the known; for it is the mind containing the impressions and the self that together play the part of the recognizer, and it is exactly those impressions together with the self that form the content of recognition also— and hence in this view the agent and the object have to be regarded as one.

But in reply to this Vidyāraṇya Muni urges that all systems of philosophy infer the existence of soul as different from the body; and, as such an inference is made by the self, the self is thus both the agent and the object of such inferences. Vidyāraṇya says that it may further be urged that the recognizer is constituted of the self in association with the mind, whereas the recognized entity is constituted of the self as qualified by past and present time[20]. Thus the recognition of self-identity does not strictly involve the fact of the oneness of the agent and its object. If it is urged that, since recognition of identity of self involves two concepts, it also involves two moments, then the assertion that all knowledge is momentary also involves two concepts, for momentariness cannot be regarded as being identical with knowledge. The complexity of a concept does not mean that it is not one but two different concepts occurring at two different moments.

>> No.16475787

>>16475779

If such a maxim is accepted, then the theory that all knowledge is momentary cannot be admitted as one concept, but two concepts occurring at two moments; and hence momentariness cannot be ascribed to knowledge, as is done by the Buddhists. Nor can it be supposed, in accordance with the Prabhākara (Mimansa realist) view, that the existence of the permanent “this self” is admitted merely on the strength of the recognizing notion of “self-identity”; for the self which abides through the past and exists in the present cannot be said to depend on a momentary concept of recognition of self-identity. The notion of self-identity is only a momentary notion, which lasts only at the present time; and hence the real and abiding self cannot owe its reality or existence merely to a psychological notion of the moment.

Again, if it is argued that memory, such as “I had an awareness of a book,” shows that the self wras existing at the past time when the book was perceived, it may be replied that such memory and previous experience may prove the past existence of the self, but it cannot prove that the self that was existing in the past is identical with the self that is now experiencing. The mere existence of self at two moments of time does not prove that the self had persisted through the intervening times. Two notions of two different times cannot serve to explain the idea of recognition, which presupposes the notion of persistence. If it were held that the two notions produce the notion of self-persistence through the notion of recognition, then that would mean that the Buddhist admits that one can recognize himself as “I am he.”

It cannot be said that, since the self itself cannot be perceived, there is no possibility of the perception of the identity of the self through recognition; for, when one remembers “I had an experience,” that very remembrance proves that the self was perceived. Though at the time when one remembers it the self at the time of such memory is felt as the perceiver and not as the object of that self-perception, yet at the time of the previous experience which is now being remembered the self must have been itself the object of the perception.

>> No.16475791

>>16475787

If it is argued that it is only the past awareness that is the object of memory and this awareness, when remembered, expresses the self as its cognizer, then to this it may be replied that since at the time of remembering there is no longer the past awareness, the cognizer on whom this awareness had to rest itself is also absent. It is only when an awareness reveals itself that it also reveals the cognizer on whom it rests; but, if an awareness is remembered, then the awareness which is remembered is only made an object of present awareness which is self-revealed. But the past awareness which is supposed to be remembered is past and lost and, as such, it neither requires a cognizer on which it has to rest nor actually reveals such a cognizer. It is only the self-revealed cognition that also immediately reveals the cognizer with its own revelation.

But, when a cognition is mediated through memory, its cognizer is not manifested with its remembrance[21] So the self which experienced an awareness in the past can be referred to only through the mediation of memory. So, when the Prabhākaras hold that the existence of the self is realized through such a complex notion as “I am he,” it has to be admitted that it is only through the process of recognition (pratyabhijñā) that the persistence of the self is established. The main point that Vidyāraṇya Muni urges in his Vivaraṇa-prameya-saṃgraha is that the fact of recognition or the experience of self-identity cannot be explained by any assumption of two separate concepts, such as the memory of a past cognition or cognizer and the present awareness.

We all feel that our selves are persisting through time and that I who experienced pleasure yesterday and I who am experiencing new pleasures to-day are identical; and the only theory by which this notion of self-persistence or self-identity can be explained is by supposing that the self exists‘and persists through time. The Buddhist attempts at explaining this notion of self-identity by the supposition of the operation of two separate concepts are wholly inadequate, as has already been shown. The perception of self-identity can therefore be explained only on the basis of a permanently existing self.

>> No.16475794

>>16475791

Again, the existence of self is not to be argued merely through the inference that cognition, will and feeling presuppose some entity to which they belong and that it is this entity that is called self; for, if that were the case, then no one would be able to distinguish his own self from that of others. For, if the self is only an entity which has to be presupposed as the possessor of cognition, will, etc., then how does one recognize one’s own cognition of things as differing from that of others? What is it that distinguishes my experience from that of others? My self must be immediately perceived by me in order that I may relate any experience to myself.

So the self must be admitted as being self-manifested in all experience; without admitting the self to be self-luminous in all experience the difference between an experience as being my own and as belonging to others could not be explained. It may be objected by some that the self is not self-luminous by itself, but only because, in self-consciousness, the self is an object of the cognizing operation (saṃvit-karma). But this is hardly valid; for the self is not only cognized as an object of self-consciousness, but also in itself in all cognitional operations.

The self cannot be also regarded as being manifested by ideas or percepts. It is not true that the cognition of the self occurs after the cognition of the book or at any different time from it. For it is true that the cognition of the self and that of the book take place at the same point of time; for the same awareness cannot comprehend two different kinds of objects at the same time. If this was done at different points of time, then that would not explain our experience—“I have known this.”

For such a notion implies a relation between the knower and the known; and, if the knower and the known were grasped in knowledge at two different points of time, there is nothing which could unite them together in the same act of knowledge. It is also wrong to maintain that the self is manifested only as the upholder of ideas; for the self is manifested in the knowing operation itself. So, since the self cannot be regarded as being either the upholder or cognizer of ideas or their object, there is but one way in which it can be considered as self-manifesting or self-revealing (sva-prakāśa). The immediacy of the self is thus its self-revealing and self-manifesting nature. The existence of self is thus proved by the self-luminous nature of the self.

>> No.16475796

>>16475794

The self is the cognizer of the objects only in the sense that under certain conditions of the operation of the mind there is the mind-object contact through a particular sense, and, as the result thereof, these objects appear in consciousness by a strange illusion; so also ideas of the mind, concepts, volitions and emotions appear in consciousness and themselves appear as conscious states, as if consciousness was their natural and normal character, though in reality they are only illusorily imposed upon the consciousness— the self-luminous self.

Ānandabodha Bhattārakācārya, from whom Vidyāraṇya often borrows his arguments, says that the self-luminosity of the self has to be admitted, because it cannot be determined as being manifested by anything else. The self cannot be regarded as being perceived by a mental perception (rnānasa pratyakṣa) ; for that would involve the supposition that the self is the object of its own operation; for cognition is at any rate a function of the self. The functions of cognition belonging to the self cannot affect the self itself[22]. The Vedānta has also to fight against the Prabhākara view which regards cognition as manifesting the object and the self along with itself, as against its own view that it is the self which is identical with knowledge and which is self-manifesting.

Ānandabodha thus objects to the Prabhākara view, that it is the object-cognition which expresses both the self and the not-self, and holds that the self cannot be regarded as an object of awareness. Ānandabodha points out that it may be enunciated as a universal proposition that what is manifested by cognition must necessarily be an object of cognition, and that therefore, if the self is not an object of cognition, it is not manifested by cognition[23]. Therefore the self or the cognizer is not manifested by cognition; for, like cognition, it is self-manifested and immediate without being an object of cognition[24].

>> No.16475801

>>16475636
Schopenhauer, Guenon
>>16475199
Super simple reason, argument from contingency completely undoes Buddhism

>> No.16475802

>>16475796

The self-luminosity of cognition is argued by Ānandabodha. He says that, if it is held that cognition does not manifest itself, though it manifests its objects, it may be replied that, if it were so, then at the time when an object is cognized the cognizer would have doubted if he had any cognition at the time or not. If anyone is asked whether he has seen a certain person or not, he is sure about his own knowledge that he has seen him and never doubts it. It is therefore certain that, when an object is revealed by any cognition, the cognition is itself revealed as well. If it is argued that such a cognition is revealed by some other cognition, then it might require some other cognition and that another and so on ad infinitum.;, and thus there is a vicious infinite. Nor can it be held that there is some other mental cognition (occurring either simultaneously with the awareness of the object or at a later moment) by which the awareness of the awareness of the object is further cognized.

For from the same mind-contact there cannot be two different awarenesses of the type discussed. If at a later moment, then, there is mind-activity, cessation of one mind-contact, and again another mind-activity and the rise of another mind-contact, that would imply many intervening moments, and thus the cognition which is supposed to cognize an awareness of an object would take place at a much later moment, when the awareness which it has to reveal is already passed. It has therefore to be admitted that cognition is itself self-luminous and that, while manifesting other objects, it manifests itself also. The objection raised is that the self or the cognition cannot affect itself by its own functioning (vṛtti) ; the reply is that cognition is like light and has no intervening operation by which it affects itself or its objects.

Just as light removes darkness, helps the operation of the eye and illuminates the object and manifests itself all in one moment without any intervening operation of any other light, so cognition also in one flash manifests itself and its objects, and there is no functioning of it by which it has to affect itself. This cognition cannot be described as being mere momentary flashes, on the ground that, when there is the blue awareness, there is not the yellow awareness; for apart from the blue awareness, the yellow awareness or the white awareness there is also the natural basic awareness or consciousness, which cannot be denied. It would be wrong to say that there are only the particular awarenesses which appear and vanish from moment to moment; for, had there been only a series of particular awarenesses, then there would be nothing by which their differences could be realized.

>> No.16475804

>>16475802

Each awareness in the series would be of a particular and definite character, and, as it passed away, would give place to another, and that again to another, so that there would be no way of distinguishing one awareness from another; for according to the theory under discussion there is no consciousness except the passing awarenesses, and thus there would be no way by which their differences could be noticed; for, even though the object of awareness, such as blue and yellow, differed amongst themselves, that would fail to explain how the difference of a blue awareness and a yellow awareness could be apprehended. So the best would be to admit the self to be of the nature of pure consciousness.

It will appear from the above discussion that the Vedānta had to refute three opponents in establishing its doctrine that the self is of the nature of pure consciousness and that it is permanent and not momentary. The first opponent was the Buddhist, who believed neither in the existence of the self nor in the nature of any pure permanent consciousness. The Buddhist objection that there was no permanent self could be well warded off by the Vedānta by appealing to the verdict of our notion of self-identity—which could not be explained on the Buddhist method by the supposition of two separate notions of a past “that self” and the present “I am.” Nor can consciousness be regarded as being nothing more than a series of passing ideas or particular awarenesses; for on such a theory it would be impossible to explain how we can react upon our mental states and note their differences.

Consciousness has thus to be admitted as permanent. Against the second opponent, the Naiyāyika, the Vedānta urges that the self is not the inferred object to which awarenesses, volitions or feelings belong, but is directly and immediately intuited. For, had it not been so, how could one distinguish his own experiences as his own and as different from those of others? The internalness of my own experiences shows that they are directly intuited as my own, and not merely supposed as belonging to some self who was the possessor of his experiences. For inference cannot reveal the internalness of any cognition or feeling. Against the third opponent, the Mīmāṃsaka, the Vedānta urges that the self-revealing character belongs to the self which is identical with thought—as against the Mīmāṃsā view, that thought as a self-revealing entity revealed the self and the objects as different from it. The identity of the self and thought and the self-revealing character of it are also urged; and it is shown by a variety of dialectical reasoning that such a supposition is the only reasonable alternative that is left to us.

>> No.16475864

>>16475608
>align with materialism and post-modernism 90+% of the time as Buddhism
You just commited retardation, my friend

>> No.16475910

Because Buddhists don't read the Buddhist Scriptures and have retarded dogmas not found anywhere in Buddha's words, or cherry picked, and so taint wtf Buddha actually said.

>> No.16476181

Because original non-sectarian Buddhism is metaphysically poor compare to the Advaita tradition which is metaphysically rich.

>> No.16476203

damn, that thread last night really did a number on you, didn't it?

>> No.16476668

>>16476181
Based.

>> No.16476691

Because it’s a good prep for Christianity

>> No.16477085

>>16475864
you must be new here

>> No.16477099

>>16476691
Wouldn't that be Dvaita Vedanta?

>> No.16477103

Why so many cryptobuddhism (advaita) threads lately

>> No.16477127

>>16477103
t. Madhvacharya

>> No.16477137

>>16477127
I am not a dualist but I agree with Madhva and most other Hindus that Shankara is just a rip off of Buddhism

>> No.16477145

>>16477137
Are you a qualified non-dualist then? Or is there a fourth option?

>> No.16477367
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16477367

>>16477103
Hmmm.... I wonder who could be behind this post

>> No.16477398

>>16477103
>Why are there so many advaita threads lately
because the cat is out of the bag that the Buddhist denial of the self and their general explanations of consciousness don’t make any sense and are easily proven wrong. This trend is just part of the natural adjustment in interest which happens when lots of people realize that one formerly-respectable philosophy is actually much less rigorous and logical than another

>> No.16477477

>>16477398
As a former Buddhist, this is very true. Don’t fall into the Buddhist trap, bros. Realize your true nature as Brahman.

>> No.16477480

>>16477103
The same two or three Pajeets have been spamming Advaita Vedanta threads for the last few years. Some board cultures are actually dominated by a handful of schizos who keep obsessively shitting out the same threads over and over again until they eventually rope or get institutionalized

>> No.16477872

>>16476181
this desu

>> No.16478209

>>16477103
Buddhism is cryptohinduism.

>> No.16478287

>>16477480
It's not Pajeets, it's just Guenonfag. He's some Dutch ESL who LARPs as Hindu. He's where the "retroactive refutation" meme comes from.

>> No.16478395

>>16477477
>>16478209
>>16477398
Irrevocably based.
>>16477480
>>16478287
Cringe. Never post on this board again.

>> No.16478494

It is considered superior because people can truly get into it without becoming Hindus.

Shankara basically thought that knowledge is prior but Buddhism think morality is prior. You have to become a moralfag to be authentically studying Buddhism.

>> No.16478790
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16478790

>>16478287
>He's where the "retroactive refutation" meme comes from.
Holy based.... verily, he is a light unto the board

>> No.16479082
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16479082

reminder guenonfag admitted to being a buddhist

>> No.16479657

>>16479082
I have never denied that I went through a Buddhist phase when I was a teenager, how else could I be so familiar with all of the many flaws in Buddhism and describe them so precisely for all of my /lit/ bros? It is precisely because I studied and practiced Buddhism myself that I can say with certitude that it leads nowhere, that its metaphysics are beset with unresolvable internal contradictions, that it discourages critical thought and inculcates circular thinking, that all the Buddhist schools have no idea what Buddha was actually teaching, that none of their explanations of consciousness actually fit how we experience it, that it is basically just a black hole of confusion and sophistry which lures in nihilists, atheists, materialists, mentally-ill people, NPCs, rootless cosmopolitans etc with the vaguely sinister promise of a sedated extinction which also isn’t an extinction but at the same time it’s also not explained what else continues if the aggregates which constitute living beings go extinct, or why it wouldn’t be an extinction if nothing else continues after formerly existing.

>> No.16480207

>>16477145
I was raised in reform Judaism but never took it seriously. I'm not religious but I find Buddhism interesting insofar as it aligns with science

>> No.16480485

>>16479082
Yeah, this is a good example of Guenonfag's entire problem: he doesn't actually read anything. His first mistake is assuming that in the Buddha's day that the Upanishads were "a thing", and they simply weren't. There was an oral tradition that the Buddha, like all Indians who spoke Sanskrit, would be aware of because they were literally living in it. The earliest verses that would go on to become the Upanishads weren't, they were just a collection of verses put to memory. This demonstrates a key problem that you can see in the Platonists on here as well, in that they don't actually make any effort to understand the time in which these events take place, and they go and think that these philosophies just spring out of the ether whole cloth. It's taking our modern codifications, hermeneutics, and historiography and saying "well, clearly, because WE have these things now, they were aware of it back then" and that's simply not the case.

It also demonstrates his second problem: he's only engaging with Buddhism as this amorphous evil entity that Advaita Vedanta is opposed to for basically no reason (as he's completely detached from the historical context). The entire idea of Buddhism being about annihilating an "egoistic self" is completely antithetical to the entire point of Buddhism. There is no Self to annihilate. The Buddha himself states this basically word for word in like, eight suttas. I'm almost certain I've seen this in a fucking wikipedia article. This is in every Buddhism 101 text on the planet. The only way you can make this mistake (that Buddhists THINK Buddhism is about Self-annihilation; whether it actually is or not is another point) is if you're totally unfamiliar with Buddhism in any real sense.

If Guenonfag was actually ever interested in Buddhism (which seems odd, as apparently his brother is a monk? Or he's just being dishonest), he clearly didn't learn much about it. But then, there's also that Scientific American(?) article where the guy ditches Buddhism because he hates Asian culture and doesn't like reading, so if the problem is that he's just not autistic enough to read mountains and mountains of ancient Asian literature (Buddhism is basically eight literary traditions with a meditation practice attached, after all) , I can't blame him, not everyone is autistic enough for this stuff.

>>16480207
What's your opinion on Spinoza? I find the persistence the Jews of the Netherlands have in maintaining their Spinoza-Free-Zones long after the man's death to be an admirable display of autism.

>> No.16480742

>>16480485
>There is no Self to annihilate. The Buddha himself states this basically word for word in like, eight suttas.
No, he doesn't. He only ever says "X is not the self, "Y is not the self", he never once says "there is no self". The "he implicitly meant to signal that there is no self" take is without any foundation.

>> No.16480909

>>16480742
>What the Buddha Taught
>In the Buddha's Words.
Pick one. Then:
>Red Pine's Heart Sutra

>> No.16480961

>>16480485
the earliest Upanishads were pre buddha by centuries.

you clearly have no idea what you're talking about

>> No.16480987

>>16475801
>Schopenhauer
Where does he actually do this? Didn’t he appreciate Buddhism?
>Guenon
Anon said serious philosophers...

>> No.16481036

>>16475199
>why is (ridiculous provocative opinion)???

Congratulations, it's babby's first weasel liar shit. Now kill yourself for polluting the world with more disgusting subversive Judaism

>> No.16481050

>>16480961
No he’s right, those upanishad mantras were embedded into the Veda samhitas because Hindus didn’t keep a chronology of mantras until much later. They were recited alongside the oldest layers of the Vedic mantras, 19th century indologists recognised this and decided to date them to the Buddha the same way we date the years to Jesus (ie pre-Buddhist or post-Buddhist). Such was the impact of the Buddha to the course of Indian thought.

>> No.16481089

>>16480987
Schopenhauer definitely saw value in Buddhism but only at an ethical level really

>> No.16481090

Friendly reminder that Pali is older than Sanskrit and there is absolutely nothing you poos can do about that.

>> No.16481209

>>16481090
>b-b-b-but muh p-pillar

The Sanskrit Vedas and the Sanskrit language itself clearly predate the life of Buddha as evinced by them being talked about throughout the Pali Canon. So where is the evidence for there being even older Pali predating this Vedic Sanskrit? There isn’t any

>> No.16481226

>>16481209
>no sanskrit writings before pali
>pali is clearly more archaic and less developed than sanskrit

>> No.16481274

>>16481226
>clearly
Retard
Pali words have missing consonants compared to their Sanskrit equivalent, which is a clear sign of innovation/degeneration.
Ex. see the dropped "r" in
atma/atta
praṇa/paṇa
nirvana/nibbana
Compare with French that used to have an "s" like
écouter <- From Middle French escouter, from Old French escouter, from Latin auscultō

>> No.16481285

>>16481274
>atma/atta
Dropped "m" in this case, but all the same

>> No.16481371

>The Sanskrit language is much older than Pali.
Pali is an innovative language, just like Buddhism is an anti-traditional philosophy/religion
>The Pali language is considered to be a composite language having several dialects
Pali is a creole/mutt language, just like Buddhism is a mishmash philosophy/religion
>When comparing the two languages, Pali is considered to be simple.
Pali is the language of the simple-minded, just like Buddhism is the religion of the dim-witted urbanite
>The grammar is also considered to be similar, but Pali has a simplified grammar.
Pali has simplified grammar for brainlets, just like Buddhist teachings are a collection of slogans and repetitive phrases for easy consumption
Read more: Difference Between Sanskrit and Pali | Difference Between http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/culture-miscellaneous/difference-between-sanskrit-and-pali/#ixzz6ZaDeqSXF

>> No.16481446

Why are Hindus so cringe? Is it inferiority complex?

>> No.16481475
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16481475

>>16481371

>> No.16481488
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16481488

>>16481371

>> No.16481523

>>16481226
>>no sanskrit writings before pali

Is your brain so addled that you can't understand that this point automatically becomes moot because Sanskrit texts are already referenced extensively in the very oldest Pali writings, thereby demolishing the claim that Pali predates Sanskrit, as if there wasn't already enough evidence for which has been extensively documented by philologists?

>> No.16481524

>>16481274
>>16481285
>>16481371
>>16481475
>>16481488
>t. samefag

>> No.16481585
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16481585

>>16481524

>> No.16481841

Guenonfag is having a rough time of it lately. I miss the old days when he was full of piss and vinegar. He seems desperate and broken now.

>> No.16481852

Lmao he deleted his post because there weren’t (you)s in it (he was suppose to be one of them quoted).

He really was samefagging..

>> No.16481870

>>16481852
Yea he does this quite often but always fails to properly cover his tracks. You’d think he would be good at it by now.

>> No.16481892

>>16481852
Seriously? Screenshot it please.

Why can't Guenonfag ever post like normal? Why after all this time is he still resorting to obvious samefagging and talking to himself? Is it at least self aware? Every time I think he is, he has another meltdown proving he takes all this completely seriously

>> No.16482034
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16482034

>>16481852
No, it was because I went and took a shower, came out of it and opened /lit/ on my phone, and saw that someone had accused someone of samefagging, I wasnt paying close attention and quickly screencapped and posted it before realizing that I had posted before my shower on my laptop, and hence that the ‘you’ would not show up on my phone, but I was too tired to notice at the time. Then after realizing I made a simple mistake I deleted it and posted the one from my laptop, here is the same pic from my phone I just posted

>> No.16482165

>>16482034
this has got to be the most copiest excuse i've ever seen, even copier than the time you said you were running errands and automatically connected to different cafe wifis because you were responding from different IPs.

>> No.16482183
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16482183

>>16482165
>running errands and automatically connected to different cafe wifis because you were responding from different IPs

>> No.16482259

>>16482034
>Sir I can explain that, you see the story begins with......

>> No.16482367

>>16480485
>The earliest verses that would go on to become the Upanishads weren't, they were just a collection of verses put to memory.
Yes, put to memory for the purpose of.... reciting them to others, which he could have witnessed

>Buddhism ... that Advaita Vedanta is opposed to for basically no reason (as he's completely detached from the historical context).
It is not for "no reason" but because Buddhism has poorly-conceived doctrines which don't stand the test of logic; and this matters to me because I care about discerning what is true from what is false. The reasons why Advaita Vedanta is opposed to Buddhism remain the same regardless of the historical context and era and they remain true today

Do I need to be an 8th century Indian man to understand that the Sautrantika and Sarvastivada schools are wrong for teaching both momentariness and dependent-origination, which completely contradict one another and render each other impossible because of how in order for one link in the chain of dependent origination to have any sort of causal interaction with or affect upon the next link it necessarily has to be non-momentary? Do I need to be an 9th century Indian man to understand that Vasubandhu is wrong for claiming that there is not a real plurality of objects but only a plurality of mental-impressions seeming to be external, because if objects don't exist than impressions of those objects cannot arise to begin with, and in any case Vasubandhu is unable to explain how the individual stores these impressions due to the momentariness of the Alayavijnana preventing it from acting as the substratum of them?

Do I need to be a 10th century Indian to understand that Nagarjuna's doctrine of sunyata is unsubstantiated because he lacks a master argument for sunyata being true, and only indirectly argues for it by attacking individual examples of things having svabhava, and that refuting a limited series of particular claims about svabhava doesn't prove the general truth of sunyata any more than it does Santa Claus or any other fanciful hypothesis? Do I need to be an 11th century Indian to understand that Nagarjuna's makes a mistake in his attempted refutation of the self through the strategy of claiming that actually there is no fundamental difference between a substratrum and its qualities, and that therefore there is no need to posit the self as the unifying substratum of individual ideations, because in the context of explaining who is aware of those ideations Nagarjuna's elimination of the self leaves only the momentary thoughts able to perceive each other in a stream, but this is contradicted by our immediate experience and it also results in an infinite regress which makes knowledge of anything impossible because in order to read Nagarjuna's writings, there has to be a cognition of one of its pages, but without a self that thought must be witnessed by another thought to be perceived, and that thought by another and so on ad infinitum?

>> No.16482382

>>16482165
How is it even an excuse? It's just a statement of what happened, I have nothing to excuse. If I went through all the trouble to create a fake screenshot to disprove screenfagging allegations why the hell would I take a screenshot on my phone, and then port that onto my PC for further editing instead of just making a fake PC screenshot?

>> No.16482431

>>16481371
BASED

>> No.16482457

>>16481371
Doesn't Mahayana Buddhism use Sanskrit instead of Pali? So what's the problem?

>> No.16482729
File: 111 KB, 1027x1280, 44F67334-AD27-4B01-915F-4E77F6BBBA65.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16482729

t. every Buddhist on /lit/

>> No.16482807

Nice bait post, but in all seriousness why do anons seriously consider advaita superior when it is laughed out of the room by serious hindus and Buddhists alike?

>> No.16483009

>>16482382
you've been outed AGAIN lol, keep coping pajeet

>> No.16483055

>>16475199
Anyone have any books on similarities between advaita and quantum theory?

>> No.16483077

>>16482367
>Do I need to be a 10th century Indian to understand that Nagarjuna's doctrine of sunyata is unsubstantiated
no you just need to actually read him

>> No.16483081

>>16483077
checked and based

>> No.16483084
File: 1.05 MB, 1216x816, 1587343555079.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16483084

>>16482729

>> No.16483088
File: 205 KB, 1266x1300, 8639758E-07E6-4501-899A-5171F0752B45.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16483088

NOOOO THE ATMAN ISNT REAL NOOOOOOO WHAT ABOUT MY VOIDIRINO NOOOOOOO AHHHHHHHHh

>> No.16483096

>>16483077
This. To this day he still hasn't read him and just repeats talking points from a section of a book he also didn't read fully. The dude is a wikipedia artist.

>> No.16483099
File: 36 KB, 650x659, 1581982645477.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16483099

>>16483088
>NOOOO THE ATMAN ISNT REAL

>> No.16483112
File: 647 KB, 1020x756, 1593523807755.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16483112

>hey guys, what if like, sunyata is actually just brahman all along?

>> No.16483141

>>16480207
>Buddhism interesting insofar as it aligns with science
Why can westerners just not help projecting their materialist heresy onto everything? This is why we shit on Buddhism, because it's vague and sectarian nature makes it too easy for lazy moderns to find philosophical trash like epicureanism, process philosophy, cognitive science etc. in it

>> No.16483193

>>16483112
I mean like... yes, also i'm brahman

>> No.16483194
File: 13 KB, 350x350, 97A18F8B-B740-467D-AC62-C6B59727200F.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16483194

AAAAHHHHAHHHha IM VOOOOOOOIDING AAAAAAAAAAA

>> No.16483246

>>16482807
>when it is laughed out of the room by serious hindus and Buddhists alike?
Hipsters on /lit/ are not serious hindus and buddhists.

>> No.16483271

>>16483246
it was shit on by other teachers and died out..
ironically for your post, it only is considered important by western writers, living on as a hipster hindu movement.

>> No.16483323

>>16483271
So you truly have no idea what you're talking about.

>> No.16483347

>>16483323
Sorry, I don’t know a lot about hinduism (I’m a Buddhist) but that’s just what I hear. Most of Advaita has already been refuted by Buddhist scholars and monks.

>> No.16483443

>>16481090
lose some weight, Ken

>> No.16483610

>>16483347
>Most of Advaita has already been refuted by Buddhist scholars and monks
not really, the majority of buddhists don't even care about advaita, in fact when it was communicated with the tibetans they were indifferent since they just saw buddhism in it. Most of the refutations actually come from other Hindus.

>> No.16483691

>>16483077
> It is interesting to note that despite the fact that arguing for the non-existence of svabhāva and the establishment of the theory of universal emptiness is the central concern of Nāgārjuna’s philosophy we do not find a “master argument” to accomplish this (see Siderits 2000: 228 and 2003: 147). Of course we do find systematic lists of the core Madhyamaka arguments, in particular in the later scholastic developments of this school but none of them is regarded as the single argument that settles the matter once and for all.

>> No.16483726

>>16483691
>>16483096

>> No.16483738
File: 351 KB, 974x502, 17173D8D-B207-44B9-9260-46B32B213747.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16483738

>>16483347
> but that’s just what I hear. Most of Advaita has already been refuted by Buddhist scholars and monks.
Are you deliberately lying or just making things up? Shankara extensively refuted Yogachara and Sarvastivada doctrines in his writings and has a few arguments against Madhyamaka as well. No Buddhist thinker ever penned any text defending against Shankara’s attacks despite Shankara being rightfully regarded as one of the primary architects of Buddhisms decline in India. Out of the history of all Buddhism, I am aware of only one text which attempts to refute Advaita, which is one of Bhaviveka’s compendiums, but here in this text he confuses between the views of Advaita and Bhedebheda Vedanta and directs his attacks against an amalgamation of their views which didn’t exist as an actual school in real life, thus he completely fails to refute anything. Buddhist drones just pretend that Buddhism refuted Advaita when the historical record shows the opposite, that Shankara correctly and lucidly pointed out many internal contradictions in Buddhism, and the Buddhists were never able to a) refute those charges or b) provide a refutation of Advaita itself

>> No.16483755

>>16483726
>If I reply to every post pointing out the flaws in the philosophy of Madhyamaka by telling people to read their texts then I can help keep up the illusion that they have any value by constantly giving myself an excuse so I dont have to engage with the very real points people make about Madhyamaka being illogical

>> No.16483787

>>16483738
Buddhism absolutely BTFO for being the nihilistic, life-denying “religion” that it is. >>16483610
Advaita has never been refuted.

>> No.16483792

>>16483738
>the virgin buddha has a wife and son
>the chad adi shankara was celibate and died a virgin
cringe attempt at a meme...

>> No.16483813

>>16483055
There is a book called “Non-Dual Perspectives on Quantum Physics” by Tomaj Javadtash

>> No.16483821

>>16483792
It's an edit, the original has the Virgin Thomas Aquinas. The depiction of Shankara is also from 20th century paintings of him, he would in truth have been much darker than the light-skinned Buddha.

>>16483738
It's widely held by scholars, both Hindu and Western (Buddhists never gave a shit about Shankara), that Shankara never actually interacted with a Buddhist or read anything by them. Buddhism had all but vanished from India almost 200 years before he was born, and was never very popular in India to begin with, so it's sort of understandable. What's not understandable is your lack of basic knowledge on this topic.

So, no, he didn't. You've had this pointed out to you before. The fact that you aren't aware of this demonstrates a critical lack of understanding on your part.

>> No.16483841

>>16483755
It’s funny because nobody else does this on /lit/. If you attack the ideas of Plato, people who are familiar with them will defend them, if you attack the ideas of Kant, people who are familiar with them will defend them, if you attack the ideas of Advaita, people who are familiar with them will defend them. But with Nagarjuna? Oh no, instead you get NPCddhists trying to gaslight you whenever you talk about holes in his philosophy, pretending that these critiques are not valid when there are many articles and books published on them and even academics who defend Madhyamaka acknowledge that these arguments against it are serious. That person is clearly unintelligent and unable to think quickly on their feet.

>> No.16483847

>smart people say one thing
>other smart people say the opposite

And here I am stupid and in the middle of this confrontation. Do I acquire knowledge to identify with one group better or do I just give up and walk the middle way of doctrinal renounciation

>> No.16483850

>>16483141
>wtf?! why are these two intellectual endeavors that just look at reality coming to similar conclusions?!
Have you considered it's because the reality outside your head is more real than the fantasies inside your head?

>>16482367
Yeah, the whole "The Buddha was just copying ideas from the Upanishads" thing is a huge red flag that you have no idea what you're talking about. This alone displays such a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic concepts that I have to ask why you even do this shit. You namedrop all of these schools and thinkers. You say "Nagarjuna", as if just uttering his name is some word of power, but you're totally unaware of what he's even trying to DO with the MMK that it makes it pointless. You could take the far easier position of attacking his goal from the point of view of a Western Philosopher, in which yes, Nagarjuna's entire endeavor does fail. But you have no idea what Nagarjuna was doing, as you haven't read anything by him, or by Shankara, or any other thinker.

You just collect terms like Yugioh cards. Uh oh, he played NAGARJUNA, I better play THE BRHADARNYAKA UPANISHAD!

Like, look at this shit
> this is contradicted by our immediate experience and it also results in an infinite regress
Jesus christ you don't get the basics of Hindu thought OR Buddhist thought lmfao.

>> No.16483871

>>16483841
No, your problem, as you've been told many times, is that you aren't actually reading anything, you're just looking for cards to pull in an argument. You post >>16483691, but because you think this is a dunk at all, it demonstrates that you haven't read Nagarjuna. Every English translation goes over exactly what Nagarjuna is doing, and why. In other texts, Nagarjuna literally says what he's doing and why.

No shit Nagarjuna doesn't assert a "master thesis" attempting to describe reality from the ground up, the idea that that is conducive to the cessation of suffering or even necessary for it is the entire fucking point he's arguing against.

In the time it took you to go to https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/ and frantically search for something you could use in an argument, you could have go on libgen, downloaded the Siderits translation of the Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way, and actually read what Nagarjuna has to say on what he's doing and why.

Also, given that you're ESL, I'm not sure you even understand what the "gaslighting" you're so obsessed with actually means.

>> No.16483874

>>16483847
>smart people
i dont think so

>> No.16483900

>>16483055
>>16483813
>mixing western rationalism with intellectual works of tertiary sources of commentaries

>> No.16483912

This thread completely turned me away from Buddhism.

>> No.16483923

>>16483912
same but Advaita

>> No.16483931

>>16483923
based

>> No.16483934

>>16483821
> Buddhism had all but vanished from India almost 200 years before he was born
No it hadn’t, stop lying. Less than a century before Shankara you still had major Indian Buddhist thinkers like Dharmakirti being alive and active, and there were also Indian Buddhist thinkers who were contemporaries of Shankara’s like Santariksita. In the 7th century, only one century before Shankara the Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang wrote that in the city of Varanasi there were around 3,000 Buddhists compared to 10,000 non-Buddhists, which shows it was still an active sect even if it had declined somewhat from its height. Buddhism didn’t fully vanish from India until the 12th-13th century. Nalanda university was active until the 12-13th century, and from the 8th century to the 12th century Nalanda was still reciving royal patronage from the Pala Empire
> Shankara), that Shankara never actually interacted with a Buddhist or read anything by them.
Another obvious lie, Shankara quotes lines from Dharmakirti when attacking them and no scholar disputes that the descriptions of Sarvastivada and Yogachara Buddhism which he gives in his Sutra Bhasya before attacking them are indeed correct descriptions of the views of those school. Every Sanskrit text describing Shankara’s life recounts him traveling around and defeating Buddhists in debates, there is little reason to think that this didn’t happen.

>> No.16483946

>>16483934
Based

>> No.16483967

>>16483850
> Like, look at this shit
> this is contradicted by our immediate experience and it also results in an infinite regress
>Jesus christ you don't get the basics of Hindu thought OR Buddhist thought
No, my criticism is correct and you are just coping like NPCddhists always do when you point out the contradictions in their sophistry, which is why you are unable to explain why my refutation of Nagarjuna isn’t correct

>> No.16483970

>refuted
>refuted
>refuted
I'm curious what do people on /lit/ think this word means? How can a religious doctrine be "refuted"?

>> No.16483972

>>16483934
>a couple of indian thinkers and a few thousand adherents = alive and well
buddhism was gone mate, get over it.
>Shankara quotes lines from Dharmakirti when attacking them and no scholar disputes that the descriptions of Sarvastivada and Yogachara Buddhism which he gives in his Sutra Bhasya before attacking them are indeed correct descriptions of the views of those school
quoting them doesn't mean he actually interacted with them
>Every Sanskrit text describing Shankara’s life recounts him traveling around and defeating Buddhists in debates, there is little reason to think that this didn’t happen.
of course hindu texts would say that he went around 'defeating' them, there is no evidence outside of dogmatic hearsay that he debated with buddhists much less 'defeat' them

>> No.16483977
File: 20 KB, 540x507, 1584051500565.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16483977

>>16483850
>You just collect terms like Yugioh cards. Uh oh, he played NAGARJUNA, I better play THE BRHADARNYAKA UPANISHAD!

>> No.16483988

Does Advaita Vedanta say the world is a-okay because we were secretly part of Brahman all along (i.e. gets lost in Christian-tier double think)? Something that I really appreciate about Buddhism is that it flat out admits this world is evil and that we need to escape from it somehow, sort of like Gnosticism.

>> No.16483999

>>16483912
>>16483923
There's something off about all the Vedanta vs Buddhism threads. My pet theory is that the people who feel the need to viciously internet-debate for one or the other are 1. obviously converts and have purely book-knowledge, and 2. primarily interested in political implications of the given religion and how it meshes with one's own trad posturing

>> No.16484006

>>16483970
Hindus are quite autistic when it comes to their sectarian dogma, it is not enough that people simply believe things but that they must 'stand the test of logic'. This is why they like to play word games and fiddle with 'arguments' incessantly, this is supported by the fact that hindus constantly bring up how 'my guy debated your guy and he won, haha'. Childish really.

>> No.16484028
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16484028

>>16484006
Yeah it is basically saying "well, I take it on good authority that you are wrong." Very engaging debate.

>> No.16484030

>>16483999
well 2 is a given, advaita is really only a thing here because of guenonfag, a known 2016 election tourist promoting NRx bullshit and Bannonism-Duginism. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the same guy who starts land/moldbug threads since they seem to pop up whenever he comes back to tradpost.

>> No.16484104
File: 8 KB, 249x249, 1573527667180.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16484104

>>16481371

>> No.16484108

>>16483912
Based

>> No.16484129

>>16483923
same shit, different words

>> No.16484131
File: 312 KB, 960x540, 1588355813404.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16484131

>>16484129

>> No.16484133

>>16484131
Absolutely and unironically based

>> No.16484155
File: 1.26 MB, 1199x1500, 1595691135337.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16484155

>>16475199

The Chad Advaitin:
>yeah bro you're like Atman and like Atman is Brahman and like everything is Brahman bro so you're like yourself experiencing yourself bro cuz everything is Brahman bro

The Virgin NPCddhist:
>n-nooo not my heckin feelerinos o god i am soofering aaaaarrrrhgghhhh must not desire must not attach i am nothing i dont exist nothing exists that is why gautama preached liberation because nothing can get totally liberated liberation does not in any way imply something being liberated from something nothingness is totally non conceptual nothingness a thing

>> No.16484163

>>16484131
Explain this to me like I'm not autistic.

>> No.16484169
File: 75 KB, 645x770, 1588640417036.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16484169

>yeah bro you're like Atman and like Atman is Brahman and like everything is Brahman bro so you're like yourself experiencing yourself bro cuz everything is Brahman bro

>> No.16484186

>>16484155
Irrevocably based.

>> No.16484194

>>16483988
More or less. This is part of why Advaita Vedanta is considered nihilistic by Hindus and Buddhists, as you can neither say "this is objectively bad" or "this objectively prevents the attaining of nirvana and is therefore objectively bad" in any real sense. This sort of "God approves all things, even child rape" is something that Western theologians have been contorting themselves around since Christianity came about. Hell, even the Pagan philosophers were doing it too.

It's worth noting, however, that Buddhism does NOT say that the world is evil. Rather, it just is, and dukkha (pain, suffering, impermanence) is part of that. That stuff being bad is a value judgement that we make. So, you could describe the world as "evil", but someone else wouldn't be wrong to disagree. Nirvana is so much better than samsara, however, that ultimately, "Getting out" of samsara is the end goal that should be undertaken.


>>16483999
>>16484006
>>16484030
My Buddhist bias obviously shows above, but you can find discussion by Buddhists on here about meditation, ethics, morality, how to live, etc. I have never seen anyone do that with Advaita Vedanta. It only really exists as this intellectual posture you take to argue with Buddhists on the internet, and be enlightened by your own intelligence for agreeing with.

The only exceptions that I've see here were that guy who was advertising those Transcendental Meditation courses, and that dude who took the course and leaked all of their stuff.

>> No.16484199
File: 243 KB, 492x1080, 1572232682853.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16484199

>>16484163

>> No.16484225

>>16484155
cringe

>> No.16484237

>>16483787
>Advaita
cope for simpleminded.

>nihilistic, life-denying “religion”
based

>> No.16484265

>>16483988
Basically, Advaita is reals over feels and concerned more about metaphysical truth than “waaaa my ego is suffering”

>> No.16484269

>>16484131
Based
>>16484155
Based too

The real winners of the advaita x buddhist debates are we lurkers

>> No.16484286

>>16484265
>metaphysical truth than “waaaa my ego is suffering”
sounds more like it doesn't take the problem of suffering very seriously (reminds me of certain other religions...)

>> No.16484306

>>16484265
Remind me where Vedanta does not have as an explicit goal release from personal worldly existence

>> No.16484308

>>16484286
You are the last man.

>> No.16484313

>>16484306
It does, but buddhists don’t like that way.

>> No.16484326

>>16484313
Yet the post reduces Buddhism to wanting to escape from suffering while dressing up Vedanta as being some sort of pure metaphysical inquiry, as if religion/soteriology and philosophy in India were not joined at the hip.

>> No.16484339

>>16484194
>That stuff being bad is a value judgement that we make. So, you could describe the world as "evil", but someone else wouldn't be wrong to disagree.
Yeah, I was speaking loosely (and from what I understand of Gnosticism it doesn't technically consider the demiurge to be evil, either, but just confused/deluded).

However I think that part of what the Buddha is getting at with the Four Noble Truths is that the bad part of suffering that is spiritually important is prior to the ideas of good/bad; i.e. the "badness" of suffering isn't a value judgment made about it (whether correct or not), but instead is imminent in the experience of suffering itself. Otherwise if suffering was only "bad" in the value judgment sense, then in fact it wouldn't matter at all whether we suffered or not (since it would be a purely metaphysical issue detached from human consciousness).

>> No.16484340

>>16484326
It’s the pure (not saying you can’t do other practices as well, but this is the main one) self-inquiry that releases one from suffering. Once they recognize their true nature there is no suffering to feel. Buddhism is more concerned with getting rid of the suffering as soon as possible, even if it costs them the truth.

>> No.16484348

>>16484339
huh?

>> No.16484363

>>16484348
you can disagree, but I'm sort of worried if my post genuinely confused you.

>> No.16484399

>>16484340
This is another problem with these threads by the way, that Vedanta is a single school of Hinduism and it is then set up against the entirety of Buddhism. I have no idea which sectarian Buddhism you are talking about. I have to assume, maybe, you are thinking of a protestantized Pali Canon-only version, where the Buddha recuses himself from telling people what metaphysics to believe in because it would not be conducive to their liberation (which I think is correct, by the way, that the average listener has no use for the answers to such questions and may not be ready to hear them). Later Buddhist texts pick up on some of these questions and try to answer, e.g. those related to vijnanavada, prajnaparamita, madhyamaka, etc. So if you are comparing Vedanta to a sort of popular, mass, generic Buddhism, then yes, the goal is to end suffering, but we could just as well compare a more metaphysical Buddhism to people mumbling Hare Krishna and doing bhakti and say that Hinduism has not metaphysics as a priority.

>> No.16484438

>>16484163
>be Buddha
>teach anti-Hindu stuff
>they get mad and lose followers
>'w-wait we won't do the Hindu stuff anymore, please come back!'
>no one buys its, gets outclassed by Buddhism for hundreds of years
>one thinker by the name of Nagarjuna (pbuh) becomes quite important to the development of the largest sect of Buddhism, Mahayana
>centuries later Buddhists get rolled by Muslims
>they flee east, Hindus still shitting somewhere in the forest
>local pajeet is born, goes by the name Adi Shankara
>learns Advaita from his Guru, who happens to sound a *little* bit like a Mahayanist in a certain section of his book
>Shankara turns out to be a religious prodigy (so the advaitins say)
>he goes around the country and 'defeats' his foes in debate (so the advaitins say)
>he becomes a household name and the face of Advaita (again so the advaitins say) and dies a virgin at the age of 32
>later Hindu figures and scholars take a look at Advaita and see what the big deal is
>well it looks a lot like Buddhism
>in fact it sounds a lot like Buddhism
>could it possible be.....
>DING DING DING it's actually just Buddhism, specifically the Madhyamika of Nagarjuna (pbuh), with Hindu substitutions: jagatmitya instead of asatkalpa, svapna instead of samskara, Brahman instead of Sunyata, two truths doctrine instead of......two truths doctrine
>they collectively agree that Advaita is just Buddhism in disguise of Hinduism ie crypto-buddhism (pracchanabauddha)
>Advaitins insist that they in fact were the 'original' Buddhists or more specifically Advaita held those ideas first
>the evidence for this? a few verses from a few texts out of 108 texts that *may* have predated the Buddha according linguistic analysis by some scholars
>to date, evidence of Advaita as a standalone school prior to Shankara and his guru have either been lost to history or....they just don't exist

>> No.16484504

>>16484438
holy based....

>> No.16484537

>>16484363
That wasn't me, that's just the bot.

>>16484339
I think you're spot on. Dukkha fundamentally feels bad in a visceral sense, it's not bad in a metaphysical sense. You can never really run into a "evil feels good" scenario, because even if you do evil and and it makes you feel good, you'll still get hit by the dukkha, which won't. The fact that we experience dukkha the way we do is actually really important, because humans (and, given Buddhism's support of a multi-verse, what I could call "basically-humans" in other universes) are in a position to actually suffer, to be forced to suffer, and be able to grow from it.

>> No.16484576

>>16475199
When will we stop seeing this religious shit on /lit/. Go to /his/ if you want humanities

>> No.16484689

>>16484576
This is philosophy

>> No.16484803

>>16484576
I like it. You go away.

>> No.16484855

>>16483972
Not him but I didn't read him as implying verbal discussion. It was obvious to me he was talking of Shankara refuting knowing their ideas and correctly refuting them on paper.

>> No.16484901

>>16484399
Even the Hare Krishnas have complex, deep metaphysicians they reference.
I don't think it's true because I think none of that eastern stuff is worth regular old western philosophy, but still, it's pretty interesting.

>> No.16484913

>>16484537
>You can never really run into a "evil feels good" scenario, because even if you do evil and and it makes you feel good, you'll still get hit by the dukkha, which won't.
kek All religions are just people telling themselves the same old 'justice will triumph' cope story, isn't it? Pretty disappointing.

>> No.16484939
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16484939

>>16484913
>all people throughout all times have an a priori concept of "justice" built into them even if it manifests under many different names
>all instinctively seek to understand the world in its essential Truth as morally Good or else it wouldn't be the truth

This proves religion is onto something more than it proves the opposite. Why would we have such innate ideas with such consistency if we were just machines evolved to eat and fuck?

>> No.16484988
File: 133 KB, 800x427, E166CE05-5477-455C-90CF-9579B9670241.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16484988

>>16483970
>How can a religious doctrine be "refuted"?
Because they also make metaphysical and philosophical claims about consciousness, causation, existence etc which can be rationally analyzed and shown to be false through an examination of what the consequences of these positions are and if they hold up, or by noting existing counter-examples which disqualify the claim from being true and so on. So, while Buddhism makes unfalsifiable metaphysical claims, like all religions do, such as when it teaches rebirth, these cannot be falsified, because we are unable to verify if rebirth is true.

However, when a Buddhist philosopher such as Nagarjuna makes the claim that we don’t have permanent selves and that there is no abiding witnessing self to unify all thoughts and perceptions, and that there is instead only a nexus of sensory and mental events; we can rationally analyze it and see if it is supported by reasoning and experience. If something is contradicted by our experience and also violates logic then that is a nearly foolproof method for indicating the falsehood of a claim.

If we consider the above claim of Nagarjuna it has the following implication: given that we are conscious and have awareness of thoughts, perceptions etc, there must necessarily be a locus of sentience within the person for the apprehension of those thoughts and perceptions to take place. If those mental events are not witnessed by an abiding awareness or self who is different from them, then the only alternative explanation left for how we can become aware of that mental activity is to say that those mental activities such as individual thoughts collectively generate the false illusion of the continuity of consciousness which we all experience and which allows us to recognize changes; this is the position that Nagarjuna commits himself to by his denial of any unifying self

>> No.16485025
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16485025

>>16484988
This position has absurd implications which thus reveal it to be false. In order for me to write and post this message under such a scheme, I first would have to look at my computer and have the cognition “this is my computer and I am going to write something”. Aside from the self denied by Nagarjuna, there are two potential explanations for how this cognition can be apprehended. The first is that these individual thoughts could be self-revealing or self-illuminating, each being a flash of awareness, this is the position that later Yogacharin Buddhists like Dharmakirti take. However, this is highly illogical, and Shankara already explained why this is wrong in his criticisms of Yogachara doctrine. And this potential explanation isn’t even available to Nagarjuna anyways as a solution because it involves a reflexive relationship such as the eye seeing itself or the fire burning itself, and Nagarjuna himself rules out these types of relationships as untenable in MMK verse 3.2. So, if the thoughts and sensory perceptions don’t apprehend themselves, then they must be witnessed by each subsequent thought or ideation. The mental ideation not directly manifesting itself in awareness, but being witnessed by the next mental ideation which takes note of the previous one, the stream of consciousness then being a too-fast-to-notice stream of mental ideations arising, witnessing the previous, falling away, and then that next ideation doing the same in turn.

To go back to the example of my computer, this results in the situation that I can never obtain knowledge of my computer and make this post, because the first apprehension of it is without sentience and must be witnessed by the next ideation for it to appear in my consciousness; but that second ideation is also not conscious and requires another ideation to perceive it; this results in a infinite loop of mental ideations which never results in an actual cognizing of any knowledge such as knowledge of my computer, because this virtual but non-apprehended just gets passed along like an infinite game of telephone without ever having the chance to appear in conciousness, since there is no end or based sentience which the ideationa lead to, and to which they can finally be manifested. Hence, from examining the absurd implications of Nagarjunas position on consciousness, and from the fact it is contradicted by our self-evident knowledge of things, we can establish that his position on consciousness is incorrect, that his reasoning is wrong and that Nagarjuna misunderstood how consciousness and mental activity works

>> No.16485026

>>16484576
:(

>> No.16485030

>>16484939
No, they don't actually agree on the content of what is just. On some things they do, some they don't. You can explain it in many ways (historical, psychological, biological) that build upon things we know are true. For exemple, belief morality seems necessary for humans to thrive and reproduce and expand ; so it's generalized throughout history, true or not. On the other hand, moral properties or moral laws are a weird thing the existence of which I've never seen being properly argued.
Also no, not all people throughout time "seek to understand the world in its essential Truth as morally Good". Not at all. Most people have a tough, pragmatic view of life ("life's a bitch, there's no reward for it but you still have to be good to people"), even most superficially religious people. It's really dedicated religious folks who tend to think the way you describe. I think that's because it's a cope, it as all the caracteristics of a cope : something you imagine to be true to make everything fair and good in the end, and ignore your concrete situation. Been observed since Jean Meslier at least.

>> No.16485032
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16485032

>>16484988
>mental activities such as individual thoughts collectively generate the false illusion of the continuity of consciousness which we all experience and which allows us to recognize changes; this is the position that Nagarjuna commits himself to by his denial of any unifying self
Absolutely based. We are not other than that which is. Nirvana is within Samsara.

>> No.16485053

>>16483970
revelation can't be refuted but arguments purely from reason can, so many buddhist/advaita doctrines can hypothetically be refuted since both of them deny the ultimate authority of revelation.

buddhism did that from the start, advaita brought late buddhist skeptical epistemology into vedanta. which obviously clashes with its status as a revealed religion, which is why to this day hindus see it as nihilistic. tldr if you believe in the divinity of the revelation, you can't be refuted, but buddhists and their advaita followers deny revelation as ever being a final authority

guenonfag is literally autistic and has no theory of mind, so he thinks that when he sees something as untrue, it means everybody has to agree. no joke this is a common trait in severe autists, they are lacking the ability to think of you as a separate person with separate views on a topic. in his mind it's compelling to just keep repeating 'but i'm right though? how can he keep disagreeing if i'm right? i'm RIGHT, look at my thoughts on it, they're right, and i'm right about being right!' that's why conversation with him is hell and he's been repeating the same shit forever

>> No.16485062

>>16484988
>>16485025
This reads like a cogent, clearly formulated argument against Nagarjuna's theory of consciousness. Can we now at least get a good debate out of it, with a proper, just as clear and argued answer by some Sunyata guy?

>> No.16485080

>>16485062
I agree, whoever wrote
>>16484988
>>16485025
is clearly very learned on the topic and I think he deserves a fair discussion. It always seems to me like the buddhists are the ones being unfair in these threads, despite their constant whining about how persecuted they are and their copes about how "Advaita is descended from Buddhism." Every time a detailed refutation of their ideas is posted like this they mysteriously vanish or resort to ad hominem attacks.

>> No.16485101

>>16484988
>>16485025
Based, I don't want to be a Buddhist anymore bros

>> No.16485129
File: 1.85 MB, 820x4720, zoro_doubt_remover.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16485129

>>16475199
Mardanfarrox refuted nondualism, monism, and monotheism in the Doubt Remover. Dualism is absolute. Good and evil exist as qualitative dimensions or substances, and they collide and conflict, thereby producing this world of endless battle. The Gathas and Bundashihn also make this clear.
When I read a happy and nourishing book like Moomins without separation, I am transported to another world that is naturally closer to the celestial heavens. Likewise, when I read the horror and depressing stories of say Ligotti, I am pulled down to hell. These worlds are real, and they do not blur. This indicates a dualistic structure underlying reality rather than a monist one. Moreover, actually creating artwork of the extremes can help one understand the irrevocable separation between heaven and hell, which is the basis of reality.
There is no oneness in humanity. Many people are reminiscent of daevas whose minds/spirits (mainyu) embody malevolence or deceit (angra), and they are undeniably plummeting into the House of Lies. Likewise, many are like yazatas, whose minds/spirits embody truth, order, and righteousness, the sacred spirit/mentality of Spenta Mainyu. To reach heaven, one must be purified by embodying Spenta Mainyu. Purification involves humata, hukhta, and hvarshta. To rid the world of impurities is also to reach Ahura Mazda's House of Wisdom. The same fate does not await all after death, and it is a quest for purification much like a paladin.

>> No.16485143

>>16485129
cope

>> No.16485159
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16485159

>>16485143
Stupid daeva.

>> No.16485163

>>16485159
cringe

> Mardanfarrox refuted nondualism
Do you realize how retarded you sound?

>> No.16485170

>>16485163
This whole thread is people claiming their guy has refuted the others. At least he provided arguments and a big quote, you can answer either or stop tardposting.

>> No.16485174

>>16485163
Go become one with the sewer, you daeva. Go ahead and spew your druj and corrupting the innocent youth. To you, the sewer and resplendent garden are one and the same.

>> No.16485281

>>16484913
That's not what that means. Like, at all. Dukkha is a fundamental condition of existence. Even if you rape someone and experience pure bliss, that bliss will end. That's dukkha. Even if you commit murder and get away with it, you'll still get old. That's dukkha. No matter what, you will die. That's dukkha. When bad people inevitably get caught and get tortured to death, that's dukkha also. So, it's not a cope, everything has an expiration date, but rebirth also is, so it's not a cope, because there's nothing to cope with unless you stretch the meaning of "cope" away from LMFAO SEETHE DILATE COPE CHUD INCEL to just meaning "exist".

>> No.16485324

>>16485030
>I think that's because it's a cope, it as all the caracteristics of a cope
For most religious ideas, I completely agree. Especially anything from Protestantism or Islam. But do you really think Buddhism is a cope in the same way? Buddhism (and probably Advaita too, I'm guessing) says life is a bitch and you need to do a ton of hard work in order to make anything better. This is the opposite of the "everything is fine" school of thought.
Or, do you just think that any kind of moral system at all is a cope, even if it doesn't promise you an easy solution? Is egoism a cope too then? (after all, it's just as metaphysical as anything being discussed in this thread).

>> No.16485375

>>16485062
Both posts ignore the most essential point Nagarjuna has, that there are conventional truths and absolute truths. So the argument made here against Nagarjuna is taking the self (or consciousness) and the computer and the whatever else to be absolute and necessary when they are no more than conceptual fictions, relative, dependently originated. By a skeptical method we can tear any of these down as given; that is the methodology of madhyamaka which has been accepted as orthodox, the non-syllogistic wherein none of the opponent's terms can be agreed to since they are not absolute. If we want to think more deeply about this, the madhyamika and the vedantin are both absolutists but arrive there differently. For the latter everything is really brahman but veiled in illusion. For the former, everything is empty of a essence which would serve to make it wholly independent of anything else and also perceived as illusion.

>> No.16485427
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16485427

>>16484988
>>16485025
>if there is no Self, then why do I feel that there is?
That's part of the "ignorance". From simple empiricism, we can see that this sense-of-Self is only yet another process dependent upon other things. Certain meditative states can produce an altered sense-of-Self, as can drugs or mental disorders. If you take psychedelic drugs and suddenly feel that your chair is part of you, that doesn't mean that the chair is part of you, it just means that a certain feeling is arising. But if we can say "oh, well, under THESE conditions we can distrust the senses" then why can't we distrust them in others? If the sense-of-Self can be removed, or altered AT ALL, then we've just demonstrated that it is impermanent, and can be changed, and as such, is only conventionally-real. The fact that you can take DMT and experience the machine elves or whatever as if they were real, but stop interacting with you when the drugs have left your system, is a demonstration of consciousness's malleable nature. To posit otherwise raises the question of how this unchanging permanent thing can interact with the world AT ALL. The fact that you can actually sit down, meditate, and observe your own thoughts as they arise and break them apart and observe the pieces is a demonstration that yes, your consciousness can be broken apart, and analyzed. If that is the case, then it is only conventionally-real, as it can change, and be broken apart.

Which, as a whole, is the point of Nagarjuna's entire work: to demonstrate that all things are only conventionally-real. The MMK is, as a whole, a demonstration that the idea of the word "cat" having some special existence such that it is more real than actual cats that hunt mice is ultimately faulty. This isn't to say that language is worthless, only that we must remember its limitations. Of course, a Western Philosopher can find a gaping hole in this in that he never turns around and says what the ultimate-reality REALLY is, because he's not trying to. He doesn't need to. The work is therapeutic, aiming to dissolve ignorance by demonstrating the impermanence of phenomena.

A Western Philosopher could retort that ah, perhaps Nagarjuna is right, there are no "nouns", but we can better describe reality with something akin to David Bohm's process language, wherein we view things as functions and streams and the like rather than discrete objects, but that's a different goal from what Nagarjuna is getting at.

>> No.16485437

>>16485080
>Every time a detailed refutation of their ideas is posted like this they mysteriously vanish or resort to ad hominem attacks.
As much as I appreciate him writing out two long-ish posts like that, they don't actually present any argument for the existence of a transcendent ego that David Hume's critique doesn't already handle. And, even if you aren't satisfied with that, there's still the Buddha's own argument: "if this my 'self', then how can it suffer without my permission? why call it a 'self' in the first place?"
Once you draw out what this argument is really saying, it becomes clear why Buddhism is on a higher level than Hinduism philosophically (though Advaita Vedanta certainly seems vastly superior to most forms of popular Mahayana--I'm simply comparing the best of one tradition with the best of the other)

>> No.16485539

>>16484988
Based

>> No.16485564

>>16484988
Why does the Bhakti movement throws away all the philosophical foundations laid out by the Upanishads in favor of lol just sing Hare Krishna, regress to basic bitch (mono)theism, write new fake&gay “Upanishads” and “Vedas”, retcon Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu and generally dumbs down Hinduism?

>> No.16485592

>>16485564
>Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu
Don't forget he's a saint in Catholicism too.

>> No.16485762
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16485762

Guenonfag...

>> No.16485818

>>16485427
It's interesting that we tend to turn this into nihilism because we assume every work must be aiming at a better system.

The big revelation of how interesting buddhism is only happened for me when I realized how much of it is aimed at phenomenological and ascetic praxis. That has a deconstructive aspect like Nagarjuna's, and probably the real Buddha's, and it also has all kinds of fascinating, often controversial and experimental positive elements like communicating with other spheres and potentially entities. It's anything but nihilistic, although I know there are nihilistic interpretations since it's such a huge tradition obviously. But there's also everything else, from tantric and even vedanta sounding interpretations.

It's interesting how even in the west when we do negative, deconstructive philosophy we turn it into a sort of system by assuming that its consequences are final, aka systematic. We try to derive certain knowledge from the knowledge that none of our knowledge so far has been certain, therefore the nature of reality is somehow such that it CAN'T be. But that is a knowledge claim, and an old paradox. Even when Derrida sorts try to be anti idealist, they still end up idealizing their method.

I'm not a Buddhist but huge respect for the tradition once I learned more about it. I keep finding things like exploratory depth psychology in its early history, attempts to do mystical praxis and then describe and typologize what one saw, all sorts of shit like this, amazingly early on in its history too.

God only knows what the Buddha saw and really said. And what he didn't say.

>> No.16485829

>>16475199
>flimsy doctrines Buddhism
what crack are you on?

>> No.16485884

>>16485818
>when I realized how much of it is aimed at phenomenological and ascetic praxis
Yes, especially in Theravada. Husserl himself studied the Pali Canon.

>> No.16485968

>>16475199
>anatman is always mistranslated
And this willful misunderstanding is the basis for it. It is not No Self, it is Otherness

https://youtu.be/l0Xey55_OgU?t=316
https://youtu.be/FEnb2cFWKBs
https://youtu.be/52QOc7De0GU
https://youtu.be/bOMgzn2Vrc0
https://youtu.be/j-Fjk4Ch8KY?t=14

>> No.16485975

Wow this turned into a pretty good thread

>> No.16486027

Could I get a brief rundown on how Advaita Vedanta is different from Hinduism? And does it have actual religion practice or is it just an accepted stance in a pluralistic religion? I get that Advaita differs from Buddhism on the reality of things and the reality of Atman, among other foci

>> No.16486055

>>16485818
I think part of the problem is because we Westerners are raised in this environment where we tap into this tradition of Philosophy, starting with the fucking Pre-Socratics but really solidifying with Plato, where the end goal is to perfectly describe reality from the ground up and work from there. But this goal is grounded in, and indeed utterly dependent upon, the idea that we can ever be an objective observer just floating outside of the thing that we're observing. I think this is part of what makes Advaita Vedanta appealing to Westerners over other Monistic Hindu traditions, or over Hindu dualist schools, because it really easily maps onto two independently arising traditions of Spinozism and Neo-Platonism, and as such we can just totally sidestep all of the Oriental therapeutic mystical mumbo jumbo and just say "ah, yes, everything is made of GOD, therefore...".

But in India, and in China in a similar yet distinct manner, that's not the case AT ALL. Perfectly describing reality is only a side consequence, which is why you end up with the Buddha teaching like eight different systems of mental phenomena all of which draw from a slightly different idea of what a "physical ground is", but oh btw that's just a placeholder it's not ultimately-real. Philosophy in India strikes me very much as being about understanding the mind, rather than the world. In China, it seems to focus more on this idea of finding the "way(s)" to live in harmony with the world, and understanding the world, and the mind, are only really important in as much as they are needed to figure out how to do that. I think this is why Taoism and Confucianism are sort of acknowledged as being wise in the West, and are sometimes even quoted, but that's all it's left at and the actual "changing your life" aspect is completely ignored. I unironically find Marie Kondo's book a really applied example of this East Asian outlook to what intellectual activity should entail.

>> No.16486074

>>16475199
I just have to say, Guenonfag might be the poster in /lit/ history. The guy will autistically defend his positions to such an extent I will have actually learned more by the end of his posts. Even though I disagree with him in some instances just on a metaphysical basis, I have to say he is easily the most dedicated poster on this forum and I appreciate him. to anyone saying samefag check the poster count

>> No.16486078

>>16486055
Thanks for your post anon.
>Marie Kondo's book a really applied example of this East Asian outlook to what intellectual activity should entail.
Could you elaborate on this? Does she seem more to represent the Buddhist or the Hindu/Vedantist outlook?

>> No.16486099

>>16486027
>Could I get a brief rundown on how Advaita Vedanta is different from Hinduism?
It isn't different. Advaita is a philosophical and ascetic school. Making a difference between Advaita and Hinduism would be like making a distinction between Neoplatonism and Greek polytheism.

>> No.16486145

>>16486099
>Neoplatonism and Greek polytheism
Wait. Sorry for the tangent, but *did* Plotinus and Proclus et al ever even mention the Greek pantheon?

>> No.16486158

>>16485437
It’s not a positive argument for a transcendental ego, it is just showing that any explanation of consciousness which denies the witnessing self inevitably ends up refuting itself because of the serious contradictions contained therein

>> No.16486177

>>16486078
Neither, she's coming at it from the Shinto angle. She's an incredible devout Shintoist.

think that the Japanese, either through Siniphication or through their own nature, are also interested in this idea of finding the "way(s) to live". The native Japanese grounding for this is quite different from the Chinese grounding, however, but the goal is the same. The world is full of spirits, the kami. But, there is no clean "divine demographic" like there is in Indo-European religion, where the Aesir, Vanir, Elves, Dwarves, and Jotunn are all different "races". There's a spirit of war, and there's also a spirit of a single bullet. There's a spirit of cooking rice, and there's also a spirit of a single bowl of rice.

Marie Kondo, and all Shintoists, are thus interested in living with these spirits. So, to live a disordered life with clutter (Marie Kondo made a living as a "decluttering consultant") is a great insult to the spirits of the land, your house, and your literal stuff. She recommends folding your socks in half and stacking them up rather than balling them up within each other, as balling them up stretches the elastic, which offends the spirits. For what it's worth, I now do this, and my socks last much longer. I do not have a funeral for an object before I throw it away, as she suggests, however.

So, there's obvious material benefits to this sort of thing, and it's REALLY easy for us Westerners to just take a materialistic outlook and euhemerize this ("saying that clearcutting offends the spirits is just a way to HOODWINK the RUBES into practicing SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY to have a steady supply of lumber!"), but the absolute earnestness that this is done with makes me feel that they simply consider harmony to be a moral good in and of itself. The material bonuses of harmony and the maluses of disharmony are just the carrot and the stick.

The Japanese take a sort of ooga-booga stance on this as, y'know, grains of rice have spirits and all that, so it's sort of just Divine Command Theory from a zillion divines, but I see this in China too. Confucius is ultimately interested in the same thing (harmony), he's just coming at it from the angle of the state and family rather than spirits and nature. Laozi does this LITERALLY with nature, but Marie Kondo makes it really simple and applied for dumb Westerners who don't hold birthdays for their cars.

>> No.16486254
File: 14 KB, 435x338, FE1B78DF-5D32-41CD-9717-F3C31ED6EE47.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16486254

>>16485975
Dumbtards be like:
>hurr durr not anudda guenonfag bread how dare u talk about relizhun
>threads are consistently high level

>> No.16486261

>>16486177
Shintoism and Buddhism were forcibly divorced by the Japanese government in the 19th century for political-ideological reasons; prior to that there was a syncretism analogous to what you see in Tibet with Bön. That said, regardless of its genealogy as an idea, the pantheism of there kami 'spirits' in what we would consider in-anima-te objects would not be all that objectionable to Buddhism in abstract, and wasn't in Japanese context (look up 'honji suijaku,' which is a kind of interpretatio graeci).

>> No.16486279

>>16486027
"Vedanta" means "after the Vedas". Essentially, after the Vedas was agreed upon, the Hindus started discussing the implications. Advaita means "Non-duality", so Advaita Vedanta is literally "the non-duality school of the post-Vedic tradition". Advaita Vedanta's claim that "everything is God" lines up well as just "Hindu Neo-Platonism/Spinozism", but the other traditions, such as dvaita advaita (literaly "dual non-duality") and Achintya Bheda Abheda ("there is no difference between dualism and non-dualism"), Vishishtadvaita ("qualified non-dualism"), Dvaita Vedanta ("dualistic post-vedic tradition"), and Shuddhadvaita ("purely non-dual").

They're all concerned with man's relation to God, and as you can see, only two of them make things nice and clean for us.

So, as >>16486099 said, think of this as "Stoicism, Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Epicureanism, and Cynicism". All of them worship Zeus, but they disagree about the nature of Zeus.

>> No.16486285

>>16486254
I am of the opinion that guenonfag is karmically descended from someone who was repeatedly btfo by Buddhists and so carries this immense psychic hangup with him

>> No.16486287

>>16486145
Yes. Not that it would change anything if they didn't, since they were concerned with first principles rather than religion as such.

>> No.16486319

>>16486261
I'm not disagreeing with anything you've said, but I think it's still worth making a distinction between Buddhism and Shinto when discussing individual practices, albeit with totally acknowledged fuzzy borders. Not doing so leads to the idea that native Japanese ideas could have come from Buddhism, or that Buddhist ideas came from Japan. I've never seen anything like this ("giving funerals to your socks") come out of China, or anywhere else really.

So, yes, I was incorrect, she should properly be more understood as a "Japanese Buddhist", or some really large autistic term precisely defining the Buddhist-Shinto relationship. I totally agree that the terminology is poor in this regard. However, the source of "sock funerals" is Japan, not Buddhism, which is sort of the point I'm getting at.

>> No.16486332

>>16486158
>which denies the witnessing self inevitably ends up refuting itself
yeah, but nobody (sane) ever denied there was a "witnessing self". many have denied that this "witnessing self" is a real Self, however.
and also
>transcendental ego
this doesn't qualify as a Self either, in Buddhism.

>> No.16486400

>>16486319
Even with that there is a syncretic thing happening since in Japan, funerals are largely conducted by Buddhist priests. So in practice she wants to give Buddhist rites to a Shinto entity.

>> No.16486418

>>16486177
>a disordered life with clutter ... is a great insult to the spirits of the land
>She recommends folding your socks in half and stacking them up rather than balling them up within each other, as balling them up stretches the elastic, which offends the spirits.
>I do not have a funeral for an object before I throw it away, as she suggests, however
>Marie Kondo makes it really simple and applied for dumb Westerners who don't hold birthdays for their cars.
fucking kek. it's actually funnier than I assumed it would be.

>> No.16486703

I'd appreciate some sort of reading list for Advaita Vedanta. A chart, or good youtube links would also suffice.

>> No.16486837

>>16486055
>Philosophy in India strikes me very much as being about understanding the mind, rather than the world.
I would say that's a western misunderstanding, in Hinduism there isn't the same distinction between mind, body, and cosmos. The individual has multiple mental constituents, multiple bodies (one physical, multiple spiritual) and those mental constituents and bodies map onto the cosmos. You have a physical body that corresponds to the mundane physical world, but you also have multiple spiritual bodies that are physical in some sense (the western division of physical and spiritual doesn't apply) and they correspond to different heavenly realms. Hindus also believe in an ultimate, true self, behind all the physical, spiritual-physical, and mental stuff. One of the main debates in Hindu theology is whether there is just one true self behind every individual or if there are many true selves, and if that true self is also God.

In one Hindu view, these physical-mental constituents are fundamentally different from the true self which is God; the individual soul, mind, and body only appear when that true self gets entangled with the physical-mental stuff. Another view is that the physical-mental stuff is ultimately not real and only the true self really exists, so you are not your individual soul, mind, or body at all, but actually the self which is God. Other Hindu schools don't believe in a single, unified true self, but instead believe that each individual has their own separate true self, which is not equated with God. Even in this latter view, the individual self is revealed by stripping away the physical, spiritual-physical, and mental stuff accreted around it.

>> No.16486876

>>16486074
Used to want to believe this too but he lies alot. He distorts his sources and even lies about what anons said in past threads to make himself look good.

There were far better traditionalistposters who he partly ran off because every thread had to be all about him and his latest obsession. I know at least two of them who openly said they left because of him.

However he has immunized /lit/ to his style of rabid shitposting to defend his guru at all costs. Silver lining I guess.

>> No.16487249

>>16486876
t. the autistic “I would be careful about reading Shankara” spammer

>> No.16487687

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).

>> No.16487702

>>16486703
For youtube I recommend the videos of Swami Sarvpriyananda. He has many good videos explaining various aspects of Vedanta. Here is an example below

https://youtube.com/watch?v=89OsBaixqnM

For a reading list, Shankara’s works are indispensable to understanding Advaita. The main concern would just be making sure you are sufficiently prepared before reading them, in terms of understanding all the Sanskrit philosophical terminology used which Shankara presumes that his reader already understands. You can acquire this by first reading a book or two on Advaita, or one which has a general overview of Hindu philosophy.

Some good books which you could read first include

The Essentials of Indian Philosophy by Hiriyanna
Advaita Vedanta: a Philosophical Reconstruction by Deutsch
Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta by Guenon
Saṃkara’s Advaita Vedanta: A Way of Teaching by Hirst
The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy by Sharma
if you are coming from a Christian background I would especially recommend “Theology after Vedanta” by Clooney

Once you feel ready, it is best to start with the 2-part compilation of 8 of Shankara’s Upanishad commentaries translated by Gambhirananda, they are online here below if you are curious to check them out

https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf
https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-vol2.pdf

After the 8 Upanishads, then you’d want to read Shankara’s commentaries on the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads in that order, and then after all his Upanishad commentaries you can read his commentaries on the Bhagavad-Gita or Brahma Sutras in either order. His non-commentary works are good but nowhere near as essential as his commentaries, and you’ll probably understand and appreciate them better if you read them only after reading many of his Upanishad commentaries. Madhavananda has a good translation of the Brihadaranyaka commentary and Gambhirananda’s translation are good for all the rest.

>> No.16487731

>>16487687
why is shankara called a crypto-buddhist so often and by so many people? a thousand years of being called a crypto-buddhist? everyone who read shankara even in his own time and immediately after he died was already calling him crypto-buddhist? i don't understand how can this happen. please explain

>> No.16487739

>>16487702
Based, thank you I will start reading some of these tonight!

>> No.16487743
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16487743

>>16487731

>> No.16487788
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16487788

>>16487743
Its a big conspiracy by b*ddhists who have managed to control all opinion on advaita for 150 years. They even manage to get prominent advaitans to agree that advaita is an adaptation of Madhyamaka!

>> No.16487797

>>16487702
Thanks :)

>> No.16487857

>>16483972
>>a couple of indian thinkers and a few thousand adherents = alive and well
The thousands of adherents was only in one city, now you are completely moving the goalposts after I disproved your false statement that Buddhism had “all but vanished from india”

>of course hindu texts would say that he went around 'defeating' them
Well, the Buddhist historian Taranatha himself admitted that Indians Buddhists were getting BTFO by the Mimansa philospher Kumārila Bhaṭṭa in debates only a few decades before Shankara came onto the scene

> Some believe that this contributed to the decline of Buddhism in India,[5] because his lifetime coincides with the period in which Buddhism began to decline.[1] Indeed, his dialectical success against Buddhists is confirmed by Buddhist historian Taranatha, who reports that Kumārila defeated disciples of Buddhapalkita, Bhavya, Dharmadasa, Dignaga and others.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumārila_Bhaṭṭa

And Shankara himself defeated Kumarila’s main disciple Mandana Misra in a debate and then famously made Mandana Misra into one of his own important disciples, so if Shankara defeated the disciple of someone who is admitted by Buddhists themselves to have defeated them in debates, then that would imply that Shankara was certainly capable of defeating Buddhists himself

>> No.16487873

>>16487857
>wikipedia citations
>to defend believing hagiographical accounts about a man
>accounts that also say he could fly and shoot lasers from his eyes

You've been doing this for YEARS

You at least used to skim pdfs of books. What happened man

>> No.16487885

Silence and solitude are pretty important in the Dharmic practices. You can benefit from them.

>> No.16487931

>>16484988
>this is the position that Nagarjuna commits himself to
His whole point is that he has no position to put forth. Seriously just read him, why post long walls of text to get at nothing substantial thinking you have everyone fooled.

>> No.16488121

>>16487873
So are you disputing that Taranatha wrote that about Buddhists losing debates to Hindus? If Buddhist historians recorded Buddhists losing multiple debates to a Hindu philosopher in 700, it’s completely irrational to declare that the same could never happen only 20 or 30 years later with Shankara.

>> No.16488146

read christianity and don't waste your time with this chink shit.

>> No.16488176

>>16487931
> His whole point is that he has no position to put forth.
The obvious implication of the post was that he committed himself to it implicitly, as he denied the other explanations for how cognition/consciousness works. If he did not commit himself to any position whatsoever even implicitly about consciousness then he would be unable to marshall any arguments for consciousness being empty.
Saying that really there is no fundamental difference between a substratum and the qualities inhering in it, and therefor that there is no need to infer the self as the unifier or substratum of cognitions (Nagarjuna indeed makes this argument) is to implicitly commit oneself to a certain position about consciousness. And regardless of how Nagarjuna describes his own motives and what he is doing, the point of the post about Nagarjuna’s understanding of consciousness being incoherent remains true all the same.

>> No.16488186

>>16488146
I'd choose chinks over jews any day.

>> No.16488211
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16488211

>>16488186
>jews
found the pol youngster

>> No.16488255

>>16487687
Oh no no no!

Boom

Daaaaaamn

How will Advaitins ever, if ever recover from this?

>> No.16488307

>>16488211
Cringe
>>16488186
Based
>>16488176
Cringe
>>16488146
Based
>>16488121
Cringe
>>16487885
Based
>>16487873
Cringe
>>16487857
Based
>>16487797
Cringe
>>16487788
Based
>>16487743
Cringe
>>16487739
Based
>>16487731
Crying
>>16487702
Based
>>16487687
Cringe
>>16487249
Based
>>16486876
Cringe
>>16486837
Based

>> No.16488323

>>16487857
>The thousands of adherents was only in one city, now you are completely moving the goalposts after I disproved your false statement that Buddhism had “all but vanished from india”
you don't even know what 'moving goalposts' means lol, scholars accept that Buddhism's golden age was long gone and it pretty much evaporated by the time of shankara

>"There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans" -B. R. Ambedkar, "The decline and fall of Buddhism," Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. III, Government of Maharashtra. 1987, p. 229-30

>When you consider that the establishment of Islam in the entire area from Iran to Ningxia and from Kazakhstan to Malaysia, including India, was followed by the complete disappearance of living Buddhism in each of these regions, you may wonder what Prof. Thapar’s definition of "dialogue" could be. Even Moghul Emperor Akbar, who invited representatives of many religions to his court for discussion, did not invite any Buddhist representative simply because Buddhism did not exist in India at that time. -Koenraad Elst (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism.

>The decline of Buddhism in India was not a singular event, with a singular cause; it was a centuries-long process that unfolded in a patchwork. seeds of Buddhism’s decline began in the mid-first millennium ce, when the sangha began withdrawing into their monasteries and divorcing them-selves from day-to-day interactions with the laity. Into this spiritual void stepped Hindu and Jain sects, who revamped their ritual practices and religious architecture to more closely resemble traditional Buddhist practices. In the South and West of India, Hindu and Jain sects increasingly earned the support of the political and economic elite. In the Western Ghats, the last major Buddhist temples were constructed at Ellora in the seventh and eighth centuries CE. Across South India, the sangha abandoned Buddhist sites, many of which were later reoccupied by Hindus and Jains. While some small Buddhist centers still persisted in South and West India in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for the most part, both monastic and lay Buddhism had been eclipsed and replaced by Hinduism and Jainism by the end of the first millennium ce. -Lars Fogelin, An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism, Oxford University Press, p. 218.

It is interesting how you constantly set up Buddhism as this religious giant in medieval India in order to peddle the myth that 'Shankara converted them away' just like quora pajeets incessantly do

>Well, this guy debated with that guy, but that guy got defeated by this guy so logically this guy 'could' have defeated the previous guy even though I said he actually did
lmao and you were the guy calling other people liars...

>> No.16488347

>>16488323
>quora pajeets

this is the best description of guenonfag i've seen so far

>> No.16488351
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16488351

>>16488211
>they're just a bunch of chinks... Read the Tor-... I mean Bible instead of that nonsense!
>HOW DARE YOU CALL RABBI YESHOUA BAR-JOSEPH AND HIS RELIGION JEWISH?!

>> No.16488355

>>16488176
Ironically, Nagarjuna actually addresses the point you're making now, directly, in both the MMK and the another text he wrote, the Vigrahavyāvartanī ("The Refutation of Objections").

>Ch. 22
>11. “It is empty” is not to be said, nor “It is non-empty,”
>nor that it is both, nor that it is neither; [“empty”] is said
> only for the sake of instruction.

Bhaviveka, a commentator, describes this as someone who desires silence to tell someone who is talking to be quiet. Earlier in the text, Nagarjuna explicitly explains that Emptiness is ultimately a pedagogical tool, and that indeed, Emptiness is Empty, as all things are.

You should read Nagarjuna before having an opinion on him, you'd stop getting things wrong all the time if you just bit the bullet and did it already. The MMK isn't long. I have to imagine you're sick of constantly being retroactively refuted, but even worse, constantly being PRE-EMPTIVELY REFUTATED.

>> No.16488386
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16488386

>>16488355
>actual correct usage of "preemptively refuted"
>used against Guenonfag

What just happened

>> No.16488443

>>16488355
Bhaviveka is also the same person who, when receiving knowledge of Advaita, had no problem overlapping it with Buddhism.
>Bhāviveka’s portrayal of Vedānta is particularly intriguing, if somewhat difficult to pin down....In the Madhyamakahrdayakārikā, Bhāviveka redefines Vedāntic concepts in order to show how they might fit into the conceptual universe of Madhyamaka Buddhism. In chapter 4, a Hīnayāna interlocutor accuses the Mahāyāna Buddhist of being a crypto-Vedāntin, paralleling later Vedāntins who accuse the Advaita Vedānta of crypto-Buddhism. This may be the earliest acknowledgment in a Sanskrit text of the similarity between the two schools. According to the Hīnayāna opponent, “the Mahāyāna is not doxography because it is not included in the Sūtrāntas, etc., or because it is a teaching of another path [than the Buddha’s], similar to the Vedānta system.” Bhāviveka responds to this opponent by conceding the similarity, but then he traces this similarity to the Buddha’s influence: “Everything that has been well said in the Vedānta was spoken by the Buddha.” Again, at the end of his rather scathing critique of the Vedānta doctrine in chapter 8 of the Madhyamakahrdayakārikā, Bhāviveka remarks: “Accepting that this splendid teaching of the Buddha is free from fault, the Vedāntins, full of desire, have claimed it as their own.” But what in the pre–Śankara Vedānta of the sixth century does Bhāviveka see as overlapping with Madhyamaka Buddhism? In spite of their many differences, he observes that they appear to share the doctrine of non-origination (ajātivāda), which states that nothing really ever comes into or passes out of existence. Nāgārjuna attempts to prove in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā that causality is only a conventional truth and cannot be part of the ultimate nature of things. Something similar appears in the Māndūkyakārikā of Gaudapāda (6th century CE). For Gaudapāda, non- origination means that all that is originated must be ultimately unreal (mithyā), since real things do not change. As a proto-Advaitin, Gaudapāda concludes that the only reality is the absolute and beginningless self (ātman) described in the Upanisads. This is certainly too much for Bhāviveka to concede. Instead of re-reading Mādhyamika denials of causation in terms of an Upanisadic ultimate self, as Gaudapāda does, Bhāviveka turns the tables in rereading the self not as an absolute entity but as the abstract concept of non- origination: Non-origination is the nature (svabhāva) of beings. Because it is not produced and does not perish, it is also called the “self” (ātman). . . . If it is just this sort of self that you [the Vedāntin] mean, then that [concept of self] is proper and without error, because of the many common properties it shares, such as its name. (Nicholson, 2010)

This is in stark contrast to Adi Shankara who arrogantly disparages Buddhism as he plagiarizes chunks of its thought. The discrepancy in behavior is also apparent in his adherents.

>> No.16488480

>>16488443
>Bhaviveka demonstrates that when Advaita Vedanta is subjected to even the slightest bit of scrutiny the easily refuted and incoherent doctrines of Shankara fall apart, revealing the truth of Buddhism
You're not doing a good job of arguing against that whole "Advaita Vedanta is just crypto-buddhism" thing.

>> No.16488538

>>16488307
>cringe
>based
"cringe" :)

>> No.16488543

>>16488443
>Bhāviveka responds to this opponent by conceding the similarity, but then he traces this similarity to the Buddha’s influence
lel even by the time of Bhaviveka everyone already knew Advaitins were just crypto-Buddhists.

>> No.16488583

>>16488323
> scholars accept that Buddhism's golden age was long gone
That doesn’t matter, Shankara doesn’t need to have attacked it *while it was during it’s golden age* in order to have been a major contributor to its eventual vanishing.
>muh muslims
that answer doesn’t explain why it also vanished from southern India despite the Muslims taking many centuries to reach it and the Muslims never fully controlled it.
>muh royalty supported other religions instead
if your spiritual order, philosophical school or religion cannot continue without the financial support of the wealthy, and if it dies out after these funds are cut off, then the problem is with your spiritual order etc and not those wealthy people.

Southern India was for centuries and centuries a peaceful place with harmonious inter-religion relations, an area about the size of France was never controlled by Muslims or only briefly for a century. If Buddhists really had such good insight into the truth of things and superior debating skills, then they should have been able to win over converts in this non-muslim region, or at the very least continue as a significant minority religion up to the present day.

>> No.16488896
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16488896

>>16485375
> So the argument made here against Nagarjuna is taking the self (or consciousness) and the computer and the whatever else to be absolute and necessary when they are no more than conceptual fictions, relative, dependently originated.
Okay, but if Nagarjuna can’t even explain how consciousness works without it leading to contradictory and absurd consequences such as making knowledge of anything impossible (thus the undeniable fact of us having knowledge of things invalidating his understanding of consciousness) then that discredits everything he writes about it and his attempts to deny the self

>>16485427
>sense-of-Self is only yet another process dependent upon other things.
senses of things such as a sense of self, or a sense of fear or joy are perceived by you, if you perceive something, you cannot be that very thing, for that is a reflexive relationship which Nagarjuna says is impossible, awareness must of necessity be different from that which it perceives, or otherwise fire can burn itself and light illuminate itself and then Madhyamaka will contradict and thus invalidate itself

>Certain meditative states can produce an altered sense-of-Self, as can drugs or mental disorders.
the alterations of senses and thoughts due to mediation, drugs, mental illness and physical injury to the brain are all perceived by sentience, and that sentience must of necessity be different from the things which sentience apprehends in order for Madhyamaka to be internally consistent

> If the sense-of-Self can be removed, or altered AT ALL, then we've just demonstrated that it is impermanent, and can be changed, and as such, is only conventionally-real.
your are confusing normal egoistic awareness with the more subtle and basic primordial awareness which permeates every moment, but regardless, see above, alterations and changes are only discernible by a thread of sentience, and those alternations in things which are different from the sentience which apprehends them provides us with no meaningful informational about that very sentience, and if you dispute otherwise then a cardinal axiom of Madhyamaka is invalidated and the school becomes inconsistent

>The fact that you can actually sit down, meditate, and observe your own thoughts as they arise and break them apart and observe the pieces is a demonstration that yes, your consciousness can be broken apart, and analyzed.
Consciousness cannot be broken down and analyzable into its constituents for the very reason that the very mental act of breaking down and analyzing of thoughts are themselves mere insentient thoughts about that idea (for Madhyamaka cannot admit that thoughts are self-aware) which are observed by consciousness, so what you are talking about is not actually breaking down consciousness into its parts and analyzing them but is just thinking. In order to analyze itself the subject must become its own object which Nagarjuna says is impossible.

>> No.16488998

>>16485564
Because for some people, that's the only type of spirituality that really works for them

>> No.16489023

>>16486332
>yeah, but nobody (sane) ever denied there was a "witnessing self".
I assumed that you understood I meant the unchanging witnessing awareness which is the self, it is this awareness which almost every Buddhist school denies the existence of

>> No.16489074

>>16488583
>That doesn’t matter bro Shankara still did his part
that is your opinion, its fine just don't be dishonest in the face of facts and come up with bizarre excuses when called out on a lie
>that answer doesn’t explain why it also vanished from southern India despite the Muslims taking many centuries to reach it and the Muslims never fully controlled it.
It didn't entirely, it was slower than the Hindustan region's decline. They fled southward and continued to exist in slow stagnation, Tamil kings were known to donate to these monasteries but it wasnt enough against the growing Dvaitic Bhakti of Shaivism and Vasihnava.
>if your spiritual order, philosophical school or religion cannot continue without the financial support of the wealthy, and if it dies out after these funds are cut off, then the problem is with your spiritual order etc and not those wealthy people.
Yes that is how religion usually works, advaita vanished from upanishadic india the moment it started getting patronage from emperors. It had to be revived later on when Hindus started refunding it. It is ironic that Advaita is only relevant today because the upper elite of Hindu politics has financially supported its existence since its posture material next to western spirituality.

>If Buddhists really had such good insight into the truth of things and superior debating skills, then they should have been able to win over converts in this non-muslim region, or at the very least continue as a significant minority religion up to the present day.
See this is the thing, you picture Buddhism as some sort of autism in the style of Advaita that only exists to 'debate', winning pointless arguments and big dicking over converts. It isn't, Buddhists have better things to do than quibble with low hanging fruit. Get over yourself.

>> No.16489086

>>16489074
>the moment Buddhism started getting patronage from emperors*
forgive my typo

>> No.16489135

>>16489074
>Yes that is how religion usually works, advaita vanished from upanishadic india the moment it started getting patronage from emperors.
No it didn't, there were Advaita temples established throughout the medieval and early-modern era which have continued and been active up to the present day, and there are large lists with huge numbers of different Advaita thinkers from all around India, you can find them in every century from Shankara up to the present, people from every region of India still composing Advaita texts in Sanskrit in the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th centuries and so on up to the present day, where even now you still have sannyasin composing texts in Sanskrit in Advaita temples which are many hundreds of years old. Most of these people still have not even been translated and there are vast amounts of their Sanskrit texts just sitting around untranslated

>> No.16489152

>>16489074
>See this is the thing, you picture Buddhism as some sort of autism in the style of Advaita that only exists to 'debate', winning pointless arguments and big dicking over converts.

Please stop acting as if Buddhism was not THE most proselytizing Indian religion and did not go around disrespecting the prevalent religious and cultural norms of the society around them (i.e. caste, the Vedas, the Brahmins) while also composing many texts attacking the views of all the other philosophies and religions existing around them. It's really dishonest.

>> No.16489182

>>16489135
Yes they continued to exist due to Brahmanical Hindu patronage from the state, did you really think it was because of Shankara's concert hall performances in rhetoric? Previous threads you proclaimed that Advaita existed during the upanishadic age. If this is true, then they went defunct when Buddhism became favored only to be revived after the spotlight was removed from Buddhism.

I mean if Advaita was as legit as you say, why didn't it topple Buddhism all those years?

>> No.16489225

>>16489152
Proselytism isn't a thing among Buddhists and most Hindus, you should know this by now. Buddha himself advised against this. Simply pointing things out isn't the same as engaging in formals debates in order to sound 'internally consistent about metaphysical truths'.

>> No.16489304

>>16489182
>Yes they continued to exist due to Brahmanical Hindu patronage from the state
But you just said that "advaita vanished from upanishadic india" in this post >>16489074 and now you are contradicting yourself, so which one is it?

>Previous threads you proclaimed that Advaita existed during the upanishadic age. If this is true, then they went defunct when Buddhism became favored only to be revived after the spotlight was removed from Buddhism.
Yes, it existed the Upanishadic age, there was a slow consolidation and growth of it over the centuries from the secretive doctrine of the Vedic seers around the 8th-7th century BC , to something that more and more people were increasingly aware of, until it eventually become a distinct and identifiable religious sect existing all around India, with people often being aware of it and knowing a general outline of its doctrines without even being a member. As time proceeds this from this early pre-Buddhist stage it slowly begins to manifest itself more and more in Hindu culture in many forms such as passages talking about the Supreme Self or the souls identify with God appearing in the Epics like the Mahabharata, popular compilations of mythology like the Puranas, and even in some of the Dharmasastra texts dealing with various societal regulations.

>> No.16489320
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16489320

>>16489225
>Proselytism isn't a thing among Buddhists
did you forget about how they sent missionaries all across the worlds largest continent?

>> No.16489368

>>16489182
>why didn't it topple Buddhism all those years?
it did, that's why there are practically no Buddhists left in India except this weird version created by some random Indian in the 20th century

>According to the 2011 census, Buddhists make up 0.7% of India's population, or 8.4 million individuals. Traditional Buddhists are less than 13% and Navayana Buddhists (Converted, Ambedkarite or Neo-Buddhists) comprise more than 87% of the Indian Buddhist community according to the 2011 Census of India.[8][9][10][11]
>Navayana (Devanagari: नवयान, IAST: Navayāna) means "new vehicle" and refers to the re-interpretation of Buddhism by B. R. Ambedkar.[1][2] Ambedkar was born in a Dalit (untouchable) family during the colonial era of India, studied abroad, became a Dalit leader, and announced in 1935 his intent to convert from Hinduism to Buddhism.[3] Thereafter Ambedkar studied texts of Buddhism, found several of its core beliefs and doctrines such as Four Noble Truths and "non-self" as flawed and pessimistic, then re-interpreted these into what he called "new vehicle" of Buddhism.[4]

>> No.16489429

How do Buddhists suffer if one has to first perceive suffering to experience it? And since the subject and object are not the same, how can a Buddhist suffer at all? Isn’t pain an object? I think all suffering comes from the mistake of identifying with the ego.

>> No.16489464

>>16489368
Ambedkar is not some random Indian but one of the founding fathers of modern India. His reformed Buddhism has very little to do with Buddhism, but in my opinion is a crypto way of keeping his people loyal to an "Indian" religion since Christians make a lot of inroads with Dalits. Also the rest of India's Buddhists are Tibetans, whether in Ladakh or the disapora. So outside of 20th century developments, largely gone from India.

>> No.16489469

>>16489304
>>16489368
>But you just said that "advaita vanished from upanishadic india" in this post and now you are contradicting yourself, so which one is it?
Yes they vanished for a period when Buddhism overtook it and was revived when later emperors funded it 'coincidentally' around the time Buddhists fled (10th-12th century). Was this too difficult for you?

>Yes, it existed the Upanishadic age, there was a slow consolidation and growth of it over the centuries from the secretive doctrine of the Vedic seers around the 8th-7th century BC , to something that more and more people were increasingly aware of, until it eventually become a distinct and identifiable religious sect existing all around India, with people often being aware of it and knowing a general outline of its doctrines without even being a member. As time proceeds this from this early pre-Buddhist stage it slowly begins to manifest itself more and more in Hindu culture in many forms such as passages talking about the Supreme Self or the souls identify with God appearing in the Epics like the Mahabharata, popular compilations of mythology like the Puranas, and even in some of the Dharmasastra texts dealing with various societal regulations.
There wasn't a slow ascension to the spotlight because there wasn't any distinct Advaita literature all those years outside of the upanishads (which were not all advaitic in nature). This all seems like a cope, why would the vedic rishis suddenly be all secretive and go underground? weren't they supposed to be hot shit?

>it did
You didn't understand, let me rephrase: Why didn't Advaita, being there supposedly since the beginning, topple Buddhism during its golden years of 500 BC - 200 CE?

>> No.16489478

>>16489464
>Ambedkar is not some random Indian but one of the founding fathers of modern India.
You are right, I did not look that closely into him but had only glanced at the page of Navayana once or twice

>> No.16489480

>>16489320
Yeah that post is too funny to believe. The first Buddhist emperor of ancient India, Ashoka, sent missionaries to the Hellenistic kingdoms.

>> No.16489494

>>16489429
>How do Buddhists suffer if one has to first perceive suffering to experience it?
That is exactly how one suffers, through ignorance arising from perception, contact, feeling, etc. based on phenomena

>> No.16489510

>>16489320
>>16489480
>Buddhism does not have an accepted or strong proselytism tradition with the Buddha having taught his followers to respect other religions and the clergy.[21] Emperor Ashoka, however, sent royal missionaries to various kingdoms and sent his son and daughter as missionaries to Sri Lanka following his conversion to Buddhism. Aggressive proselytizing is discouraged in the major Buddhist schools and Buddhists do not engage in the practice of proselytisation.[21]

>> No.16489518

>>16489494
So would they agree that the “true self” doesn’t suffer? Are their differences with Advaita just over what exactly the true self is and if it exists?

>> No.16489519

>>16489510
This

It seems like Advaita is really the only one stooping to the Abrahamic level of apologetic autism.

>> No.16489591

>>16489510
It's simply not true. I don't know who wrote that Wikipedia article. It is so obviously wrong I don't even know where to start. But if we wanted to start somewhere, it would be in the endless series of episodes in the Sutta Pitaka expressly directed against non-Buddhist schools and teachers, tirthikas, etc. Later Indian Mahayana writers continued this veritable tradition of shitting on other people, which was preserved by Tibetan madhyamaka doxographers in their monasteries and by Xuanzang in the Cheng Weishi Lun. And of course, that we really on Chinese and Tibetan archives to get us some of these Sanskrit texts tells us how much Buddhists proselytized.

>> No.16489611

>>16489518
Yes if you want to skip all the metaphysics by 150 IQ pajeets being filtered through shitposts from 100 IQ mutts, there is some unconditioned absolute which is not affected by the arising and passing away of phenomena.

>> No.16489619

>>16489591
>Ashoka sent Buddhist missionaries to spread the dharma throughout Asia and beyond (see "The Third Buddhist Council: Pataliputra II"). "One benefits in this world and gains great merit in the next by giving the gift of the dharma," Ashoka declared. But he also said: "Growth in essentials can be done in different ways, but all of them have as their root restraint in speech, that is, not praising one's own religion, or condemning the religion of others without good cause. And if there is cause for criticism, it should be done in a mild way. But it is better to honor other religions for this reason. By so doing, one's own religion benefits, and so do other religions, while doing otherwise harms one's own religion and the religions of others. Whoever praises his own religion, due to excessive devotion, and condemns others with the thought "Let me glorify my own religion," only harms his own religion. Therefore contact (between religions) is good. One should listen to and respect the doctrines professed by others. " [translation by the Venerable S. Dhammika]

>> No.16489628

>>16489611
those pajeets are still not able to explain why that unconditioned absolute even exists in the first place

>> No.16489645

>>16489619
>guy ruling a multi-ethnic, polyglot, religiously diverse empire preaches tolerance, more at eleven

>> No.16489653

>>16489469
>Yes they vanished for a period when Buddhism overtook it
Buddhism never "overtook" it, there was a slow and steady growth in it from the era of the first Upanishads down to Shankara and after. The emergence of texts like the primary Upanishads from the 8th-4th century is one stage, the emergence of the Gita and the Brahma Sutras another, Gaudapada another stage etc, it is the linear development of an increasingly public and textual component of a tradition largely communicated verbally and in secret on a person to person basis.
>There wasn't a slow ascension to the spotlight because there wasn't any distinct Advaita literature all those years outside of the upanishads (which were not all advaitic in nature).
There are many many texts which Indologists know of or have seen references to, but of which there are no surviving copies. This amount of non-surviving texts which Indologists are aware of is likely less than the amount of non-surviving Hindu texts which we are not even aware of. An yes the Upanishads are indeed Advaitic, which is why Shankara was the only Vedanists to write a comprehensive set of Upanishad commentaries aside from Madhva who engaged in cope tactics like switching the letters around on words in the Upanishads to make them mean different things

>Madhva’s attempts to locate his controversial views in the canonical Vedanta texts often proved difficult. He is perhaps most famous for his idiosyncratic rendering of the Chandogya Upanisad’s statement tat tvam asi or “you (the atman) are that (brahman).” By carrying over the ‘a’ from the preceding word, Madhva rendered the phrase atat tvam asi or “you are not that.”

https://iep.utm.edu/madhva/

>This all seems like a cope, why would the vedic rishis suddenly be all secretive and go underground? weren't they supposed to be hot shit?
Because unlike the egalitarian, moralizing, proselytizing faggotry of Buddhism, for the longest time they actually consistently followed the principle that you are not supposed to reveal the doctrines to people who a) don't have the necessary capabilities to understand them and b) who are not sannyasin, this inhibited their rate of growth compared to the other more open schools, but in the end it was fine as they still were able to establish themselves comfortably in India

>> No.16489657

>>16489628
Because it can.
t. Being

>> No.16489665
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16489665

>>16489628
How do you explain something supra-rational that lacks any phenomenal evidence beyond well-written allegories, allusions, and metaphors? These are religions you know

>> No.16489684

>>16489628
Have you not already learned from the endless atheist vs non-atheist debates on /lit/ that something which is eternal, unconditioned, autonomous and self-sufficient does not itself need a reason to exist? "reasons for why things exist" are just causes spoken of differently, and something which is uncaused like God by definition does not need a cause, or in other words a reason for itself

>> No.16489685

>>16489653
>Because unlike the egalitarian, moralizing, proselytizing faggotry of Buddhism, for the longest time they actually consistently followed the principle that you are not supposed to reveal the doctrines to people who a) don't have the necessary capabilities to understand them and b) who are not sannyasin, this inhibited their rate of growth compared to the other more open schools, but in the end it was fine as they still were able to establish themselves comfortably in India
Weird, that seems to have been the approach taken by madhyamikas in alleging the Buddha's silence on metaphysics was a skillful means of guarding an absolutist esoteric truth, ie sunyata=nirvana=samsara. And this is the very same school of Buddhism which seems to be genealogically tangled with advaita vedanta.

>> No.16489741

>>16489653
>Buddhism never "overtook" it, there was a slow and steady growth in it from the era of the first Upanishads down to Shankara and after. The emergence of texts like the primary Upanishads from the 8th-4th century is one stage, the emergence of the Gita and the Brahma Sutras another, Gaudapada another stage etc, it is the linear development of an increasingly public and textual component of a tradition largely communicated verbally and in secret on a person to person basis.
Shraman doctrine dominated india during the axial period, Hindus were literally squirming to compete with it and you're saying they were going public while being secret or some bullshit. Keep coping.

>There are many many texts which Indologists know of or have seen references to, but of which there are no surviving copies.
point proven

>An yes the Upanishads are indeed Advaitic
not all of them
>While some Upanishads have been deemed 'monistic', others, including the Katha Upanishad, are dualistic.[92] The Maitri is one of the Upanishads that inclines more toward dualism, thus grounding classical Samkhya and Yoga schools of Hinduism, in contrast to the non-dualistic Upanishads at the foundation of its Vedanta school.[93] They contain a plurality of ideas.[94][note 11]

>Because unlike the egalitarian, moralizing, proselytizing faggotry of Buddhism, for the longest time they actually consistently followed the principle that you are not supposed to reveal the doctrines to people who a) don't have the necessary capabilities to understand them and b) who are not sannyasin, this inhibited their rate of growth compared to the other more open schools, but in the end it was fine as they still were able to establish themselves comfortably in India
A more accurate explanation is that they were afraid of the BVDDHIST BULL

>> No.16489752

>>16489741
based

>> No.16489764

>>16489665
if you cannot explain it then it doesn't stand the test of logic and is therefore internally incoherent, advaita has no answers

>> No.16489776

>>16489764
Yeah I'm aware religious doctrines defy logic once they hit their axioms. You can read Shankara or Nagarjuna/Chandrakirti and see what you think.

>> No.16489782

>>16489619
>Venerable S. Dhammika
That guy doesn't seem very enlightened since one of the first stages of enlightenment is the rejection of other teachers than the Buddha.

>> No.16489798
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16489798

>>16489741
>Shraman doctrine dominated india during the axial period, Hindus were literally squirming to compete with it

Everything you think you know about the Sramanics is actually the product of the wild imagination of the Orientalists, the word itself comes from the Vedas, which is the tradition where the Sramanics originated from

>Patrick Olivelle, a professor of Indology and known for his translations of major ancient Sanskrit works, states in his 1993 study that contrary to some representations, the original Śramaṇa tradition was a part of the Vedic one.[35] He writes,

>Sramana in that context obviously means a person who is in the habit of performing srama. Far from separating these seers from the vedic ritual tradition, therefore, śramaṇa places them right at the center of that tradition. Those who see them [Sramana seers] as non-Brahmanical, anti-Brahmanical, or even non-Aryan precursors of later sectarian ascetics are drawing conclusions that far outstrip the available evidence.
>—Patrick Olivelle, The Ashrama System[36]

>According to Olivelle, and other scholars such as Edward Crangle, the concept of Śramaṇa exists in the early Brahmanical literature.[24][25] The term is used in an adjectival sense for sages who lived a special way of life that the Vedic culture considered extraordinary. However, Vedic literature does not provide details of that life.[37] The term did not imply any opposition to either Brahmins or householders. In all likelihood states Olivelle, during the Vedic era, neither did the Śramaṇa concept refer to an identifiable class, nor to ascetic groups as it does in later Indian literature.[38] Additionally, in the early texts, some pre-dating 3rd-century BCE ruler Ashoka, the Brahmana and Śramaṇa are neither distinct nor opposed. The distinction, according to Olivelle, in later Indian literature "may have been a later semantic development possibly influenced by the appropriation of the latter term [Sramana] by Buddhism and Jainism".[22]

>> No.16489806

>>16489764
>if you cannot explain it then it doesn't stand the test of logic
See >>16489684, you are simply asking for the cause of an uncaused thing, it's a fallacious question. You are either unintelligent, confused or are deliberately using sophism.

>> No.16489808

>>16489798
>which is the tradition where the Sramanics originated from
cringe

>According to Bronkhorst, the sramana culture arose in "greater Magadha," which was Indo-European, but not Vedic. In this culture, Kshatriyas were placed higher than Brahmins, and it rejected Vedic authority and rituals.[41][42]
>Pande attributes the origin of Buddhism, not entirely to the Buddha, but to a "great religious ferment" towards the end of the Vedic period when the Brahmanic and Sramanic traditions intermingled.[34]
>Randall Collins states that "the basic cultural framework for lay society which eventually became Hinduism" was laid down by Buddhism.[57][note 9]

>> No.16489810

>>16489764
The explanation is self-evident. If you try to see your own eye without a mirror you will soon realize that it is impossible.

>> No.16489817

>>16489764
This

I'd also add that Hindus can't eve explain why maya itself exists, let alone Brahman which exists 'just coz'.

>> No.16489841

>>16489806
uncaused things are a spook

>> No.16489852

>>16489841
>causation is a spook
fixed

>> No.16489854

>>16489852
Nagarjuna (pbuh) agrees

>> No.16489862

>it's another "guenonfag isn't familiar with any writings on this topic and has only read 1970s neovedantists writing in english" episode

he hasn't even FUCKING READ NAGARJUNA despite claiming he BTFOs him constantly

>> No.16489873
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16489873

>>16489741
>,including the Katha Upanishad, are dualistic.[92]
Wrong, The Katha Upanishad states that Purusha is the pure immortal Brahman in verse 2.1.8. and then shortly afterwards states in verse 2.3.17. that this Purusha is also the inner Self dwelling in the hearts of men

He, the Purusha, who remains awake while the sense−organs are asleep, shaping one
lovely form after another, that indeed is the Pure, that is Brahman and that alone is called
the Immortal.
- Katha Upanishad 2.1.8.

The Purusha, not larger than a thumb, the inner Self, always dwells in the hearts of men.
- Katha Upanishad 2.3.17.

>The Maitri is one of the Upanishads that inclines more toward dualism
Wrong, verse 7 of the Seventh Prapatraka of the Maitri Upanishad states that the Self within the heart is the highest lord and supreme master of all, i.e. Brahman

And he is indeed the Self, smaller (than small) within the heart, kindled like fire, endowed with all
forms. Of him is all this food, within him all creatures are woven. That Self is free from sin, free from old
age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, imagining nothing but what it ought to imagine, and
desiring nothing but what it ought to desire. He is the highest lord; he is the supreme master of all
beings, the guardian of all beings, a boundary keeping all things apart in their right places. He the Self,
the lord, is indeed Sambhu, Bhava, Rudra, Pragapati, the creator of all, Hiranyagarbha, the true, breath,
the swan, the ruler, the eternal, Vishnu, Narayana. And he who abides in the fire, and he who abides in
the heart, and he who abides in the sun, they are one and the same. To thee who art this, endowed with
all forms, settled in the true ether, be adoration!

- Maitri Upanishad 7.7

>> No.16489886

>>16489873
Based. Buddhism is an impotent half-truth.

>> No.16489900
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16489900

>>16489862
>he hasn't even FUCKING READ NAGARJUNA despite claiming he BTFOs him constantly

I am able to effortlessly BTFO Nagarjuna irreparably in posts like these >>16484988 >>16485025 >>16488896 and countless others without even reading him because Shankara's writings possess such a transformative power that anyone who earnestly studies them with patience learns to detect sophistry from miles away

>> No.16489962

>>16489900
>because Shankara's writings possess such a transformative power
But you've clearly never read those either, only summaries.

>> No.16489969
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16489969

How feasible is it to synthesize Nietzsche’s ethics with Advaita’s metaphysics?

>> No.16489979

>>16489969
Advaita is pretty much amoral so you can synthesize whatever ethics you want with it.

>> No.16490065

>>16489979
Based. My main problem with Buddhism is its reddit-tier morality.

>> No.16490097

>>16489873
>cherrypicks a few verses

"Shankara cautioned against cherrypicking a phrase or verse out of context from Vedic literature, and remarks in the opening chapter of his Brahmasutra-Bhasya that the Anvaya (theme or purport) of any treatise can only be correctly understood if one attends to the Samanvayat Tatparya Linga, that is six characteristics of the text under consideration: (1) the common in Upakrama (introductory statement) and Upasamhara (conclusions); (2) Abhyasa (message repeated); (3) Apurvata (unique proposition or novelty); (4) Phala (fruit or result derived); (5) Arthavada (explained meaning, praised point) and (6) Yukti (verifiable reasoning)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara

>BTFO by his own idol

>> No.16490101

>>16490097
>Shankara cautioned against cherrypicking a phrase or verse out of context from Vedic literature
well clearly guenonfag is guilty of that

>> No.16490472

>>16485129
hey it's Zurbanon

>> No.16490963

>>16489023
>unchanging
but this is exactly what it is not

>> No.16491006

>>16490963
>subject and object cannot be the same
>I perceive my body, so I cannot be the body (changing)
>I perceive my mind, so I cannot be the mind (changing)
>I cannot perceive the perceiver, so it cannot be made into an object
>objects change, the Self does not
>in deep sleep objects disappear, I do not
>in death the ego disappears, I do not
If you perceive some kind of change in yourself, it was never truly you. You are the light that illuminates all change.

>> No.16491015

>>16491006
>You are the light that illuminates all change.
Why call it a 'self'?

>> No.16491027

>>16491015
Because it is the subject that perceives all objects. It is the only thing that’s real.

>> No.16491034

>>16491027
>the subject that perceives all objects
But is it 'mine'? If it's not mine, then why consider it myself?

>> No.16491043

>>16491034
If you’re asking if you can perceive it (and thereby make it an object), no. It is you. Realizing this is the point of Advaita. You can also call it no-thing if you want to be a Buddhist, but Advaita is far more life-affirming in its terminology.

>> No.16491059

>>16491043
Advaita is stuck at the meditation mind, buddhism talks about what happens after people see that the mind in mediation is conditioned.

>> No.16491064

>>16489628
>why that unconditioned absolute even exists in the first place
What do you call why? Is it some purpose? you really think a unconditioned state has a purpose? WTF.

>> No.16491074

>>16491043
>If you’re asking if you can perceive it (and thereby make it an object), no.
So, 'it' cannot even be perceived? Are you really saying that I'm supposed to consider something that I've never even seen before to be 'myself'?
>It is you.
Who gets to judge this?
>Advaita is far more life-affirming in its terminology.
>terminology
Are you willing to admit that this is nothing more than an issue of terminology, then? Will you admit that what your school is calling a 'self' can just as easily be called 'not-self' by someone else?

>> No.16491078

>>16488896
Ironically, Nagarjuna actually dunks on this exact argument you're making, more or less word for word.

>> No.16491098

>>16491074
>So, 'it' cannot even be perceived?
You can’t perceive your eyes directly, right? Do you think when you go into a dark room that your eyes disappear and then re-emerge?
>Who gets to judge this?
I
>Will you admit that what your school is calling a 'self' can just as easily be called 'not-self' by someone else?
No, but I will admit that it can be called no-thing due to the fact that it can never be made into an object. If you can’t take Being as a self-evident truth, then be a Buddhist.

>> No.16491131

>>16491098
>If you can’t take Being as a self-evident truth, then be a Buddhist.
I don't deny that phenomena exist. Neither do Buddhists (after all, dukkha certainly "exists" enough to make liberation from it an urgent goal). The problem here is something else. It's like the "problem of evil" in theism; i.e. if God is all-powerful and all-loving, then why doesn't he help a toddler drowning in a lake? If he can help, but simply chooses not to, then
>Why call that a God?
In a similar way, Buddhists are asking
>Why call that a 'Self'?
Because the 'self' that you've been describing frankly doesn't seem anything like a self at all: (1) it can't be observed, (2) it can't be controlled, (3) it doesn't have a personality, (4) it doesn't have any memory, etc..

>> No.16491181

>>16491131
>it can’t be observed
You can’t observe the observer.
>it doesn’t have a personality
Do you think you are your personality?
>it doesn’t have any memory
Do you think you are your memory?

The main problem I see here is that Buddhists can’t imagine being anything other than their ego. Are you denying the existence of it or are you just saying that you (the ego) don’t identify it?

>> No.16491284

>>16491078
Then you should be able to explain why it’s wrong, although I doubt that you can or will

>> No.16491304

>>16491059
Wrong, Buddhists don’t understand that the mind’s thoughts and its objects are not consciousness

>> No.16491410
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16491410

>>16491304
Indeed. It’s sad that they will never recognize themselves as God and the word as a play, the actors of said play being God himself. All that remains for them is suffering.

>> No.16491615

>>16491078
No he didn’t. Otherwise you would have posted his “dunking” already instead of waiting 8 hours to reply “a-a-actually h-he refuted this... trust me..”

>> No.16491625

>>16491410
> All that remains for them is suffering.
sometimes, it seems like they wouldn’t have it any other way even if they could

>> No.16491635

>>16491615
was it because it took you 8 hours to make a few sentences to reply to him? lol

>> No.16491639

>>16491635
what?

>> No.16491878

>>16491284
>>16491615
Another anon already posted it, see >>16485427. Consciousness is composite, ergo it is Empty. We can demonstrate this empirically, so when you say that you can't you're simply wrong, but we can also do so philosophically. You say that you can't break consciousness down, but then you broke consciousness down into parts when said "oh, well, there's actually a SECRET consciousness, the subtle basic primordial awareness". You're just creating an infinite regress, as each consciousness will be broken down into parts and a REAL SECRET consciousness, but that real secret consciousness is also made of parts but oh there's a kernel of the REALLY REAL secret consciousness, but that's made of parts so we instead find the REALLY REALLY REAL secret consciousness and... ad infinitum.

You want me to post four chapters from a book (lol) so you can go line by line and take words out of context in order to ignore any points being made, and I'm just not going to do that. Consciousness is composite, ergo Empty. There you go. Want more? Go read Nagarjuna.

You've, once again, demonstrated the incoherence of your position, as you've generated an infinite regress exactly as Nagarjuna says you would. It's almost like you haven't read Nagarjuna, and as such are holding onto views that he demonstrates as incoherent. Maybe you should read Nagarjuna, then!

>> No.16491959

>>16491878
Not him, but how can you say that consciousness is made of parts when you can’t make consciousness an object (something that can be broken into parts)? Are you conflating the mind with consciousness?

>> No.16491998

>>16475199
https://discord.gg/VSx7vqJ

>> No.16492177
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16492177

>>16491878
> Consciousness is composite
No it is not, I just explained why it is not, you, me and everyone else are completely unable to break down consciousness and analyze it into it’s constituents, because there is a fundamental difference between thoughts or mental ideations and the sentience which apprehends them, (if you dispute otherwise than you are forced to hold that either a) ideations are self-apprehending which Nagarjuna says is impossible, or that b) ideations apprehend one another which results in the aforementioned regress which makes having knowledge of anything impossible). Consciousness observes one’s own mind thinking about consciousness and attempting to break it down. The subject cannot become its own object as Nagarjuna himself insists.
>ergo it is Empty.
there is no reasoning you offered which you could then say “apropos of this, it is empty”, but you just restated as an unsubstantiated assertion something which I already explained is impossible
>We can demonstrate this empirically
No we can’t, and Nagarjuna’s metaphysics don’t allow him to do this without it resulting in major internal contradictions
>You say that you can't break consciousness down, but then you broke consciousness down into parts when said "oh, well, there's actually a SECRET consciousness, the subtle basic primordial awareness".
That’s not breaking down consciousness into it’s parts, that is just stating what our consciousness is. There is no consciousness aside from this basic awareness, the other things which people call consciousness like eye-conciousness is just insentient perceptions being witnessed by consciousness. To define or describe something is not to separate it into multiple parts. Fire is by nature combustion, this does not separate fire into “the part of combustion” and “the part of non-combustion”

Shankara already provided a refutation of the argument that saying ideations are apprehended by sentience leads to an infinite regress, I posted this in another thread already, your sophistry was unable to explain why his reasoning was wrong then, and you are unable to do so even now

>> No.16492185

>>16492177
>consciousness isn't composite
>oh but we can take it apart to make an infinite regress to keep digging down and find the ACTUAL consciousness
Do you actually read what you type, or are you just in an Aboriginal Dream Time fugue state, where you wake up at various points of the day with people telling you that you did various things that you have no knowledge of?

>> No.16492186
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16492186

>>16492177

Shankara: And that other entity which reveals consciousness (ideations) is the self—the intelligence (sentience) which is different from that consciousness (ideation).

Objection (by the sophist Buddhist): But that would lead to a regressus in infinitum.

Reply (by Shankara): No; it has only been stated on logical grounds that because consciousness (ideation) is an object revealed by something, the latter must be distinct from that consciousness (ideation). Obviously there cannot be any infallible ground for inferring that the self literally reveals the consciousness (ideation) in question, or that, as the witness, it requires another agency to reveal it. Therefore there is no question of a regressus in infinitum.

Objection (by the sophist Buddhist): If consciousness (ideation) is revealed by something else, some means of revelation is required, and this would again lead to a regressus in infinitum.

Reply (by Shankara): No, for there is no such restriction; it is not a universal rule. We cannot lay down an absolute condition that whenever something is revealed by another, there must be some means of revelation besides the two—that which reveals and that which is revealed, for we observe diversity of conditions. For instance, a jar is perceived by something different from itself, viz. the self; here light such as that of a lamp, which is other than the perceiving subject and the perceived object, is a means. The light of the lamp etc. is neither a part of the jar nor of the eye, But though the lamp, like the jar, is perceived by the eye, the latter does not require any external means corresponding to the light, over and above the lamp (which is the object). Hence we can never lay down the rule that wherever a thing is perceived by something else, there must be some means besides the two. Therefore, if consciousness (ideation) is admitted to be revealed by a subject different from it, the charge of a regressus in infinitum, either through the means or through the perceiving subject (the self), is altogether untenable. Hence it is proved that there is another light, viz. the light of the self, which is different from consciousness (ideation).

- Shankara, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad commentary 4.3.7.

>You're just creating an infinite regress, as each consciousness will be broken down into parts
No I didn’t, I have not once said that there is another consciousness in addition to this consciousness. There is no way that what I am saying results in an infinite regress. Insentient things (i.e. things which lack self-awareness) like thoughts, memories and sensory data are apprehended by consciousness, and that is how it works, there is no other consciousness or explanation needed.

>Consciousness is composite, ergo Empty. There you go.
You are only restating without justification here what I already explained is wrong, I would ask if you completely lack self-awareness but you are a Buddhist after all.

>> No.16492195

>>16492185
> oh but we can take it apart to make an infinite regress to keep digging down
This argument was BTFO by Shankara right here >>16492186

>> No.16492233

>>16491181
>Buddhists can’t imagine being anything other than their ego
It's more like Buddhists don't think the concept of personal identity makes much sense to begin with.
>You can’t observe the observer.
So, why call it a 'self' then? Shouldn't a self at least be something familiar, by definition? You're picking some arbitrary thing (which, conveniently, can't be observed or verified to exist) to act as your so-called 'self', but it seems like it would have been easier and more honest to just say "I don't like myself. I wish I was something universal and unchanging instead."

>> No.16492277

new thread
>>16492275

>> No.16492297

>>16492233
>So, why call it a 'self' then?
Because it is you.
>Shouldn't a self at least be something familiar, by definition?
It’s the thing you’re most familiar with. Everything else is unreal.
>You're picking some arbitrary thing (which, conveniently, can't be observed or verified to exist) to act as your so-called 'self', but it seems like it would have been easier and more honest to just say "I don't like myself. I wish I was something universal and unchanging instead."
You’re like an eye in a world without reflections telling itself that it isn’t an eye because it can’t see itself.