/lit/ - Literature

>>16661446
Perennialists are the scum of the earth. the biggest larpers in existence. The worst part is how sure of themselves they are. Unlike normal decent religious people, they don't have crises of faith. They don't experience their own dark nights of the soul. Oh no, they know everything. How? Bad comparative literary analysis!

>>16661449
>Bad comparative literary analysis!
more like through Chad intellectual intuition and metaphysical realization

kys stupid hylic

>>16661446
What book by Guenon deals directly with these core principles of Perennialism and the greater spiritual world?

Some explain The Multiple States of the Being to me RIGHT fucken now and don't dumb it down!!!

>>16661474
Bro, you gotta read through Man and His Becoming and Symbolism of the Cross first, you can’t rush it!

>>16661470
bump for this

>>16661449
I don't understand why atheists want everyone to have doubts and faith crisis. I have read atheists saying that Jesus doubted when he gave himself in sacrifice as an argumento to attack believers who "don't doubt". In reality, all faiths preach against doubts, because they aren't necessarily helpful. If we hadn't doubts and our faith were purer than light, we could move mountains with our prayers as the gospel says.

>>16661499
based

guenonfag is really becoming a master propagandist, isn't he? i mean look at this thread... ... PBUH

>>16661470
His main books which lay out the metaphysics which is at the heart of various spiritual traditions are ‘Man and his Becoming According to the Vedanta’, ‘The Symbolism of the Cross’, and ‘The Multiple States of the Being’, they should be read in the order I just listed them which is also their chronological order. He has another book ‘The Symbols of Sacred Science’, which should be read as the fourth, it’s not a fundamental work of metaphysics like the previous three but moreso a study of various metaphysical symbolism, but it covers a lot of interesting topics related to the previous three books and is worth reading if you read the other three first

>>16661572
>His main books which lay out the metaphysics which is at the heart of various spiritual traditions
do these explain how we know this is real or just explain what the metaphysics are without explaining how he arrived at them being true?

>>16661446
Every tradition says that it is real, the problem is that a perennialist will be too preoccupied with how the paths intermingle to find the way to it.

>>16661585
is it just the intermingling of these paths that they use as the claim that perennialism is true?

>>16661481
BRUHH TELL ME RIGHT FUCKEN NOW OR ELSE I WILL FOREVER BELIEVE IT SAYS NOTHING AND YOU WILL HAVE ETERNALLY CONDEMNED ONE TO DANTE'S INFERNO!!!

>>16661572
I see, thanks bunches anon. But I do want to know, is 'Man and his Becoming According to Vedanta' actually elaborating on Hinduism or is understanding Hinduism prior to reading it not important? Does it offer an interpretation of Hinduism, or does it actually explain what it is? Or does it vary a lot?

>>16661599
Not really, since perennialists generally believe that you should stick to a major tradition, since they all have mechanisms for salvation within them. As a result, perennialists tend to be more comparative than syncretic. Theosophists are more interested in the intermingling of the different traditions.

>>16661446
It's just wishful thinking because they can't cope with the alternative.

>>16661651
> But I do want to know, is 'Man and his Becoming According to Vedanta' actually elaborating on Hinduism or is understanding Hinduism prior to reading it not important?
It does elaborate on Hinduism although you can read it without knowing much about Hinduism and be completely fine, reading Guenon’s first book (intro to hindu doctrines) before it would help but is unnecessary to understand Man and His Becoming.

>Does it offer an interpretation of Hinduism, or does it actually explain what it is? Or does it vary a lot?
It’s basically like a guide through some of the fundamental principles and concepts of the Vedanta school of Hinduism, with these ideas generally coming from the Upanishads. Guenon focuses on and generally follows the interpretation of the Advaita sub-school of Vedanta in the book, although the same concepts which he covers are mostly found in the other Vedanta sub-schools as well. Throughout the book he makes various comparisons and has various footnotes detailing how other traditions like Sufism, Taoism, Hermeticism etc reach similar conclusions as the Upanishads/Vedanta in their metaphysics. The book doesn’t explain much about the other non-Vedanta schools of Hinduism, although it explains enough about Advaita Vedanta that after reading it you can pick up some translations of Shankara’s (the main Advaita philosopher) writings and understand most of what he is talking about without difficulty.

>>16661752
This has been very helpful anon, but I do have one more question left, what's the big problem around Shankara so many have? As someone that knows very little about him, is he an example of more minute differences between various Vedanta schools and people dislike his interpretation or you know what?

>>16661499
People who never second guess themselves are either based or dangerously insane

>>16661768
>what's the big problem around Shankara so many have?
he refuted buddhism so throughly that it became almost entirely erased from the indian subcontinent.

>>16661813
Is there any validity to the claim that he was a crypto-Buddhist, or at least influenced by Buddhism? Are there many other Advaita philosophies that can be considered fairly mainstream along with Shankara?

>>16661446
Through argument from authority, a notorious logical fallacy, namely:
>most religions and cultural manifestations of mankindg (=authority) agree with my metaphysics
>therefore my metaphysics is true
This is why nobody takes perennialists seriously. Beside the poor research into their sources, their points are just platonic metaphysics + argument from authority. If you want to tap into the idea that there is a superior metaphysical order, study Plato or Plotinus, not the incoherent rambling of traditionalists

>>16661499
Yes, but also, not having doubt eventually justifies throwing planes against skyscrapers because people who disagree with you live there.
Imagine if they doubted!

>>16661845
they flew those planes into buildings to refute fukuyama.

>>16661839
I think Heidegger would also be enormously important for the Traditionalist worldview.

>>16661854
listening to grimes’ songs would also

>>16661839
I'm no perennialist and I agree with your advice to study Plato. But your post is completely nonsensical. Guénon repeatedly adverts against individual metaphysical systems, this is his main point against modern philosophy, so your saying ''my metaphysics'' is pure ignorance since there is no ''my'', ''his'', yours'' metaphysics.
The last part of your post is also retarded, Guénon basically never cites Plato or any other platonist in his works, all of them are grounded on Hindu Vendanta mainly, sometimes Samkhya, sometimes Taoism and even scholasticism.

>>16661768
> but I do have one more question left, what's the big problem around Shankara so many have?
Some Buddhists hate him because of the reputation he has as one of Buddhisms most substantive critics (his arguments often get reposted here in debates on /lit/ because many of them are very logical and hard to refute), other people generally are indifferent to him. A few Christian posters seem to not like him similar to how they dont like Guenon because they see it as an alluring thing drawing people away from christianity. Occasionally there will be someone from India who posts here from a different sect who naturally disagrees with him because of their sect following different metaphysics but this seems to only happen once in a blue moon, and I have seen just as many Indian posters who have no problem with him or who like him. And of course there is that one severely neurotic guy who for some reason has a seething hatred for Shankara and who is responsible for all of the images accusing Shankara being Buddhist.

>>16661825
> Is there any validity to the claim that he was a crypto-Buddhist, or at least influenced by Buddhism?
I don’t think so, when people claim that he was they are almost always ignorant of or making omission of the fact that the pre-Buddhist Upanishads contain all the same ideas which they claim are allegedly Buddhist. I am familiar with all the specific ways in which people claim he is Buddhist and can remember without even looking them up where one can find pre-Buddhist Hindu textual sources for all of those doctrines. If you have questions about specifics I answer them. Shankara regarded Buddhism as a heretical doctrine with bad philosophy/logic which needed to be refuted. And the Advaita sect themselves, who are the foremost authority of Advaita, deny this themseves. Karl Potter writes of the allegation in his Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophy: “On the face of it the charge is absurd. Shankara not only shows no self-conscious leanings toward Buddhism he saves some of his choicest disrespectful language for the Buddhists.”

>Are there many other Advaita philosophies that can be considered fairly mainstream along with Shankara?
There is only one Advaita Vedanta, but there are many other non-dualistic or qualified non-dualistic schools and sects of Hinduism with somewhat similar metaphysics like Vishishtadvaita, Shuddadvaita, Kashmir Shaivism, the Naths, Veerashaivism, Sri Vidya etc

>>16661865
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnxbzMx7atI

>>16661944
You've completely answered my questions anon, thank you.

Do you think Mahayana Buddhism is any better than Theravada?

>>16661944
>>16661897

>>16662004
>>16662004
You’re welcome. Yes, I do think so, although I think Mahayana Buddhism is still wrong to deny the Atman, and I disagree totally with the metaphysical conclusions of Nagarjuna and certain other important Mahayana thinkers, among other flaws (although not all of Mahayana denies the Atman). Mahayana generally has a wider range of meditative/contemplative practices then Theravada. While Theravada is not the exact same as the Sarvastivada school of Indian Buddhism it shares much of the same metaphysics and collapses under the same critiques which Shankara made of the latter IMO. But even without buying into Mahayana teachings/metaphysics fully I still agree that many Mahayana schools could still have useful mediation techniques etc which are obviously better then having no spiritual practices whatsoever. And of course some of the various Mahayana Sutras are interesting reads.

>>16661825
I mean to be accused by several Hindu figures that Advaita is just Buddhism 2 Brahman Boogalo, that's quite damning don't you think?

>>16661446
I've been there, I know, stay mad

>>16662099
Do you think there are any unique contributions of Mahayanism?

>>16662125
What Indian figures would that be?

>>16661813
Buddhism died out 200 years before Shankara came along, in fact it started declining as early as 2nd CE mostly as a result of war and politic strife. By then, Hinduism had already absorbed elements of Buddhism to the point where Hinduism filled the role of Buddhism and then some. But they were mostly the ritualistic dvaita of Vaishnavism and mainstream Shaivism, Advaita was mostly fringe at this time or if it even existed at all since there were no distinct text within this school (inb4 the pluarlity of upanishads represented just advaita as they would have you believe by cherry picked verses).

>>16662144
its in that pic related

You can only know it through direct experience. Forget all the intellectual ramblings, comparing traditions, Shankara shills, etc.

All you need is silence.

>>16662164
This. I saw a painting of saint Sebastian once and felt a strong pagan urge encompass my entire being. I pulled down my pants and began to masturbate furiously before the saint.

>>16662170
thanks, very cool

>>16662176
np

>>16662144
You can go to that exact thread in the picture here >>16662125 on the /lit/ archives on warosu to see someone go through and refute line by line all the claims made in that image and point out the numerous mistakes it makes. It’s a perfect example of how these claims don’t actually hold up to scrutiny.

>>/lit/thread/S14649817

> Do you think there are any unique contributions of Mahayanism?
Yes, many, it’s a much larger school than Theravada, and there are all sorts of developments in it which happened in China etc, I just don’t find many of them to be particularly compelling.

>>16662151
> Buddhism died out 200 years before Shankara came along
This is self-serving Buddhist mythology which is just plainly false which Buddhists tell themselves as cope because they can’t force themselves to face the reality that Shankara ended Indian Buddhism. It’s well established that Buddhism was active up until Shankara’s time at least. 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 (e.g. 25% of a major city) even if it had declined somewhat from its height. Buddhism didn’t fully vanish from India until the 12th-13th century. The Buddhist 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. The Buddhist historian Taranatha also recorded that the Hindu Kumarila Bhatta defeated many Buddhists in debates. None of any of this would have taken place if Buddhism had died out two centuries before Shankara.

>>16662125
Interesting

>>16662293
Wasn't Mahayanism an Indian development? I know it spread to China but most of the innovation happened on the subcontinent did not?

>>16662293
>to see someone go through and
You know you don't have to pretend you aren't that person, we know your history.

This is self-serving Buddhist mythology
>Numerous copper plate inscriptions from India as well as Tibetan and Chinese texts suggest that the patronage of Buddhism and Buddhist monasteries in medieval India was interrupted in periods of war and political change, but broadly continued in Hindu kingdoms from the start of the common era through early 2nd millennium CE.[58][59][60] Modern scholarship and recent translations of Tibetan and Sanskrit Buddhist text archives, preserved in Tibetan monasteries, suggest that through much of 1st millennium CE in medieval India (and Tibet as well as other parts of China), Buddhist monks owned property and were actively involved in trade and other economic activity, after joining a Buddhist monastery.[61][62] With the Gupta dynasty (~4th to 6th century), the growth in ritualistic Mahayana Buddhism, mutual influence between Hinduism and Buddhism,[63] the differences between Buddhism and Hinduism blurred, and Vaishnavism, Shaivism and other Hindu traditions became increasingly popular, and Brahmins developed a new relationship with the state.[64] As the system grew, Buddhist monasteries gradually lost control of land revenue. In parallel, the Gupta kings built Buddhist temples such as the one at Kushinagara,[65][66] and monastic universities such as those at Nalanda, as evidenced by records left by three Chinese visitors to India.[67][68][69]

>"Shankara ended Indian Buddhism".......although he never debated with any Buddhist scholar
How can Shankara end Buddhism when he had never debated one? Surely it they were active up until his time there would have been at least 1 of them for him to 'defeat Buddhism'. Isn't that what he did, go around India and debate?

>"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 (Koenraad Elst is a right wing Hindutva activist, known primarily for his support of the Out of India theory and publication of Hindu Nationalist literature.)

>>16662293
>to see someone go through and
You know you don't have to pretend you aren't that person, we know your history.

>This is self-serving Buddhist mythology
>Numerous copper plate inscriptions from India as well as Tibetan and Chinese texts suggest that the patronage of Buddhism and Buddhist monasteries in medieval India was interrupted in periods of war and political change, but broadly continued in Hindu kingdoms from the start of the common era through early 2nd millennium CE.[58][59][60] Modern scholarship and recent translations of Tibetan and Sanskrit Buddhist text archives, preserved in Tibetan monasteries, suggest that through much of 1st millennium CE in medieval India (and Tibet as well as other parts of China), Buddhist monks owned property and were actively involved in trade and other economic activity, after joining a Buddhist monastery.[61][62] With the Gupta dynasty (~4th to 6th century), the growth in ritualistic Mahayana Buddhism, mutual influence between Hinduism and Buddhism,[63] the differences between Buddhism and Hinduism blurred, and Vaishnavism, Shaivism and other Hindu traditions became increasingly popular, and Brahmins developed a new relationship with the state.[64] As the system grew, Buddhist monasteries gradually lost control of land revenue. In parallel, the Gupta kings built Buddhist temples such as the one at Kushinagara,[65][66] and monastic universities such as those at Nalanda, as evidenced by records left by three Chinese visitors to India.[67][68][69]

>"Shankara ended Indian Buddhism".......although he never debated with any Buddhist scholar
How can Shankara end Buddhism when he had never debated one? Surely if they were active up until his time there would have been at least 1 of them for him to 'defeat Buddhism'. Isn't that what he did, go around India and debate?

>"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 (Koenraad Elst is a right wing Hindutva activist, known primarily for his support of the Out of India theory and publication of Hindu Nationalist literature.)

>>16662349
I think that other anons right and you're one weirdo who has a hate boner for that hindu guy and go out of your way to seethe every time a thread mentions him.

>>16662359
Yea I see it now, Buddhism seems to have already plunged before Shankara could have faced them. Actually it is to his advantage, otherwise his cryptobuddhism would've been transparent to the wider population rather than the learned scholars. He definitely dodged a bullet there.

>>16662374
I disagree, the fact that the 'hindu guy' has to hark back and highlight how 'someone refuted you line by line' kinda makes him seem desperate doesn't it? Makes him look like he's the one actually seething at a picture. But we'll agree to disagree I guess.

>>16662359
>>16662405
>>16662151
but how do you buddhists cope with your revolutionary subversive sect being just a regurgitation of vedic shruti and specially upanishads?

>>16662349
> interrupted in periods of war and political change, but broadly continued
your own source says it they despite interruptions in patronage that Buddhism broadly continued

> Modern scholarship and recent translations of Tibetan and Sanskrit Buddhist text archives, preserved in Tibetan monasteries, suggest that through much of 1st millennium CE in medieval India (and Tibet as well as other parts of China), Buddhist monks owned property and were actively involved in trade and other economic activity, after joining a Buddhist monastery.[61][62]
This is not helping your case but undermining it
> How can Shankara end Buddhism when he had never debated one?
How do you know he never debated one? You are asserting that without evidence, all the Sanskrit texts describing his life recount him going around debating people including Buddhists

> There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans"
This is a cope answer which doesn’t explain why Buddhism also vanished quickly from southern and eastern India despite the Muslims taking many more centuries to establish control over those regions or not even doing so fully. There is no reason why the Muslims taking northwest India should cause a domino-like chain reaction which wipes out Buddhism in southern and eastern India, Nalanda was in eastern India

>Akbar
>16th century
yeah, long after it had vanished after Hindus refuted it

>>16661563
im ok with it, not enough people talk about Guenon's work.

op here. why is it that rather than getting an answer to my question, this thread instead gets filled up by a buddhist autistic arguing with hindu spergs?

>>16662476
>your own source says it they despite interruptions in patronage that Buddhism broadly continued
"but broadly continued in Hindu kingdoms from the start of the common era through early 2nd millennium CE" aka pre-shankara

>This is not helping your case but undermining it
I doubt it

>How do you know he never debated one? You are asserting that without evidence, all the Sanskrit texts describing his life recount him going around debating people including Buddhists
He is not recording to have debated any known Buddhist scholar, if such a 'Buddhist defeating' event took place you'd think everyone would have talked about it and transcribed it in detail, rather they wrote about stuff that actually took place like him debating Misra.

>This is a cope answer which doesn’t explain why Buddhism also vanished quickly from southern and eastern India despite the Muslims taking many more centuries to establish control over those regions or not even doing so fully. There is no reason why the Muslims taking northwest India should cause a domino-like chain reaction which wipes out Buddhism in southern and eastern India, Nalanda was in eastern India
It's a historical fact, Dr. Ambedkar wouldn't have not said it if it weren't so

>yeah, long after it had vanished after Hindus refuted it
Koenraad Elst disagrees, and he has quite a bit to say about Shankara too ;)

>>16662661
idk wtf you are debating about, but you seem to be debating in bad faith

>>16662724
not really

>>16662726
you cited a buddhist revivalist and some flemish idiot that believes in the out of india hypothesis (which genetics and linguistics completely refuted).

>>16662736
oh ok gotcha

>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 prac-tices. 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 aban-doned 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.

>>16662765
better :)

>>16661825
It is literally true, that's what makes it so funny

>>16662736
at least he came up with citations, no need to single out writers that happen to hold other views, shoot the argument not the messenger

>>16661449
You have these things because you lack the knowledge and virtue

>>16662776
Its all good, bhai. There are plenty of scholars that have come to the same conclusion anyway.

>>16662661
> t's a historical fact, Dr. Ambedkar wouldn't have not said it if it weren't so
Wow, nice appeal to authority. It’s not like academics each have their own subjective, mutually-contradictory opinions. Why would events in northwest India cause Buddhism to vanish hundreds of miles away in a different region speaking a different language with no Muslims there? It makes no sense

>>16662765
>In the Western Ghats, the last major Buddhist temples were constructed at Ellora in the seventh and eighth centuries CE
You do realize that this refutes your false assertion that Buddhism has vanished from India two centuries before Shankara right? They were constructing major Buddhist temples while he was alive according to the source you just quoted

>>16662785
>Wow, nice appeal to authority. It’s not like academics each have their own subjective, mutually-contradictory opinions
This is so ironic coming from you

>Why would events in northwest India cause Buddhism to vanish hundreds of miles away in a different region speaking a different language with no Muslims there? It makes no sense
well i'm sure what makes sense was some guy arguing polemics against Hindus he disagreed with, which somehow convinced the apparently Buddhist mass to convert to Hinduism. Yea that makes so much sense...

>>16662796
>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

>>16662825
>>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
isn’t that after shankara though? he died in the 800s right?

>>16662825
> by the end of the first millennium ce
Yes, the end of the first millenium CE is about 300-280 years after the life of Shankara, once again you have disproven your original assertion that Buddhism vanished from India centuries before Shankara. That’s twice now that you’ve refuted yourself

>>16662830
Yes, the decline continued up until that point, which makes the assertion that Shankara defeated Buddhism even more absurd because those centers and temples should have not been built if Buddhism was defeated.

>>16662850
see
>>16662859

>>16662830
>he died in the 800s right?
born circa 700 ad and most of the sources have him living only around 32 years

c.700 – c.750 CE: Late 20th-century and early 21st-century scholarship tends to place Shankara's life of 32 years in the first half of the 8th century.[27][28] According to the Indologist and Asian Religions scholar John Koller, there is considerable controversy regarding the dates of Shankara – widely regarded as one of India's greatest thinkers, and "the best recent scholarship argues that he was born in 700 and died in 750 CE".[1]

>>16661499
Your faith can't become pure without passing through the crucible of doubt. Blind faith is nothing more than arrogance and hubris. Seed sown on bad soil. You must be able to give an account for the faith that is in you.

>>16662782
Empty rhetoric from an empty mind.

>itt suburban white boys argue over eastern religions

>>16662956
hey at least one of us isn't posting naked pictures of ourselves

>>16662859
>which makes the assertion that Shankara defeated Buddhism even more absurd because those centers and temples should have not been built if Buddhism was defeated.

In that time texts did not spread all around India instantly, they did not have the printing press in India then, and it took time for new influential ideas and texts to circulate. We can find evidence for the devastation Shankara wrought upon Indian Buddhism from the fact that the Buddhists were very fast to respond to and to try to refute Hindu thinkers who attacked Buddhism at the time, but then when Shankara appears these Buddhist responses suddenly dry up and the Buddhists never refuted any of Shankara’s comprehensive attacks on Buddhism.

Gaudapada around 500 AD attacked Buddhism in his text Mandukya Karika. The Madhyamaka Buddhist thinker Bhaviveka who lived in the 6th century was quick to respond and he attacks Gaudapada in one of his texts (although he mistakenly attributes Bhedabheda ideas to Gaudapada and thus fails to refute anything)

Kumārila Bhaṭṭa who lived around 700 AD was another vociferous critic of Buddhism, who the Buddhist historian Taranatha records defeated many Buddhists in debate. The Buddhist thinkers Shantarakshila and Kamalashila who lived in the 8th century both wrote texts which attempted to refute Kumarila's arguments.

But then, when Shankara came alone in the 8th century and wrote comprehensive refutations of multiple Buddhist schools, the Buddhists were unable to come with any response, nobody even attempted to write a text refuting Shankara’s arguments. They didn’t have what it would have taken (as his arguments are irrefutable) The Buddhists simply couldn’t contend with his brilliance. And after Shankara’s obliteration of Buddhist theory the Buddhists stopped trying to contend with Hindus and their support among dried up among the populace. This was helped by later Vedantins like Ramanuja simply repeating many of Shankara’s arguments against Buddhism in their respective Brahma Sutra commentaries even while disagreeing with Shankara’s metaphysics themselves, thus ensuring that the arguments become well-known.

>>16662961

ATTENTION GNOSTICS, TRADITIONALISTS, THEOSOPHISTS AND PERENNIALISTS

PLEASE TELL US WHY YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU BELIEVE

>>16662962
>In that time texts did not spread around India instantly..it took time for new influential ideas and texts to circulate
Shankara was known to have 'traveled around India debating people'. Surely he would have taken out some 1 of them in the Buddhist concentrated areas no?

>Gaudapada around 500 AD attacked Buddhism in his text Mandukya Karika
He actually appropriates Buddhism and pays homage to the Buddha in chapter 4 of his Karika

>According to Advaita scholar Chandradhar Sharma, 'Gaudapada's Karika bears many doctrinal and terminological similarities with Nagarjuna's Karika and with the works of Asanga and Vasubandhu. Besides, there is the methodological similarity in the employment of the dialectic between Gaudapada and the Madhyamika Buddhists. The fourth chapter of Karika, known as the Alatashantiprakarana, exhibits a strikingly Buddhist tenor and has been a "problem child" of Gaudapada for the interpreters.'
(The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy, pp 144)

>Kumārila Bhaṭṭa who lived around 700 AD was another vociferous critic of Buddhism, who the Buddhist historian Taranatha records defeated many Buddhists in debate. The Buddhist thinkers Shantarakshila and Kamalashila who lived in the 8th century both wrote texts which attempted to refute Kumarila's arguments.
okay? Why did Buddhism continue to exist in certain areas like Nalanda (which he lived in for awhile) if he 'defeated many buddhists'. Also this doesn't remove that fact that Shankara did not debate a single Buddhist and that he 'erased buddhism' like you said earlier. Or are you going to pull the 'but if he defeated buddhists, then surely shankara would have!' that you made in previous threads?

>But when Shankara came alone in the 8th century and wrote comprehensive refutations of multiple Buddhist schools, the Buddhists were unable to come with any response, nobody even attempted to write a text refuting Shankara’s arguments. They didn’t have what it would have taken (as his arguments are irrefutable) The Buddhists simply couldn’t contend with his brilliance.
okay you are just going off on a tangent since you cannot contend with the fact that there are logical holes in your argument that Buddhism ended in 800 CE despite you saying yourself that it continued centuries later in some places. You got BTFO and now you feel the need to avert attention by e-peening Baba Shankara like quora pajeets do on the daily.

>And after Shankara’s obliteration of Buddhist theory the Buddhists stopped trying to contend with Hindus and their support among dried up among the populace. This was helped by later Vedantins like Ramanuja simply repeating many of Shankara’s arguments against Buddhism in their respective Brahma Sutra commentaries even while disagreeing with Shankara’s metaphysics themselves, thus ensuring that the arguments become well-known.
It's funny because Ramanuja (pbuh) was the same guy who coined the word cryptobuddhism (pracchanna-buddha) to describe Shankara.

>>16661920
Does guenon believe that there is a metaphysical order, which is unchangeable in time, on the base of which the world is ordered, and the correspondance to which establishes what is good and what is bad? If yes, this is basic platonism.
I am not saying he quotes or references Plato, by the way, nor is that relevant in any way to my point. What I am saying is that all his philosophy is basically reduceable, in terms of its construction, to Platonic philosophy: it is the exact same system. With the difference that Guenon's is badly articulated, badly researched and based on fallacious arguments, such as recognizing the metaphysical order he's describing in certain religious manifestations as if that added anything to the very needed demonstration that such order exists in the first place. Plato at least spends some time discussing whether and why Forms should exist, and even comes up with a cosmogony in order to explain you why it does not make sense to think about the world without a metaphysical order. Now, Plato is doing philosophy, because he uses arguments, while Guenon is making cheap pastiches of ancient religious texts, which he throughly misreads to the purpose of showing you that a certain order exists. But:
1. Saying that other people in different parts of planet earth claimed through symbolism and religion that x exists is not a proof of its existence, because the fact that a belief is shared by many is not a proof of its truth, much like the fact that many people believed the earth to be at the center of the cosmos is not a proof that the earth is at the center of the cosmos.
2. All his studies on religion are based in poor comparative methods which have been considered universally obsolete by all scholars of history of religion and comparative religions since at least the 1980s.

Guenon is an objectivaly bad and throughly useless read for you because, if you are interested in his conception of the world, many philosophers have done a better job in thinking about it in that metaphysical frame.
If you are interested in his claims about religion, his method, aims, and general claims have all been surpassed by modern studies.

>>16661449
>t. hylic

>>16663179
> If yes, this is basic platonism
The Upanishads talk about the same thing centuries before Plato

>>16662961
did he really do this? i keep seeing people mention it

>>16663107
> He actually appropriates Buddhism and pays homage to the Buddha in chapter 4 of his Karika
Sharma the author you just quoted goes on in that exact same book to say that Gaudapada didn’t take doctrines from Buddhism but that they were already in the Upanishads. Gaudapada does not pay homage to Buddha but criticizes Buddhism in his text and the very last line of his text is a passage emphasizing that Buddha did not teach what Gaudapda is writing about and that Gaudapada’s doctrine is different

> logical holes in your argument that Buddhism ended in 800 CE despite you saying yourself that it continued centuries later in some places.
Shankara ended Indian Buddhism with his comprehensive refutations of it, but it took a while for word to fully get around India, but we can tell this still happened because the Buddhists who formerly replied to any Hindu attacks on the drop of a dime suddenly fell silent and fled from the Indian intra-religous debates with their tail between their legs

>>16662170
based Mishima

>>16663235
If he refuted Buddhism why did all major Hindus immediately call him a Buddhist? Why did major advaitans following Shankara's teaching a few generations after Shankara openly say "this is basically buddhism, the only thing buddhism got wrong was nirvana instead of brahman"?

Why do all academics agree that he integrated buddhism into Vedanta? And that's why he pissed off the real vedantists so much?

>>16663257
> If he refuted Buddhism why did all major Hindus immediately call him a Buddhist?
For two reason

1) Because they were trying to start their own schools and Shankara’s Advaita was their opponent, they had to compete with Advaita for followers and legitimacy, what better way to slander someone than to accuse them of being a heretic? The dueling charges of heresy people hurled at each other which we find in the history of Christianity has countless examples of this.

2) By the time of Ramanuja there were many different followers of Shankara and different sub-schools of Advaita, some of them advancing claims and positions which Shankara himself totally rejected. It is not in fact clear whether Ramanuja ever actually read the works of Shankara, as Ramanuja attributes to Shankara positions which Shankara rejected, it is likely that Ramanuja read the work of an Advaita sub-school person written over a century after Shankara and mistook those views for Shankara’s. For example, Ramanuja in his works acts as though Shankara denied that objects exist as objects, on the level of empirical reality. Shankara never claimed this and in fact disagreed with and attacked this position. The two alternatives then become either that Ramanuja DID read Shankara, but falsely misrepresented him, or that Ramanuja never actually read Shankara and didn’t know his actual views.

An example of this is the text the Yoga Vasistha, which despite being mainly an Advaita text claims at several points that objects don’t exist outside of us perceiving them, Shankara attacked this view as retarded and completely rejected it

> Yoga Vasistha teachings are structured as stories and fables,[5] with a philosophical foundation similar to those found in Advaita Vedanta,[6] is particularly associated with drsti-srsti subschool of Advaita which holds that the "whole world of things is the object of mind".[7]

There are many examples of later, nominally Advaita thinkers centuries after Shankara taking positions which he himself attacked.

>Why did major advaitans following Shankara's teaching a few generations after Shankara openly say "this is basically buddhism, the only thing buddhism got wrong was nirvana instead of brahman"?
False, they never said that. Some of them compare specific doctrines of the two religions, but none of them say “if one thing is changed then it’s the same etc”, and most of these comparisons would be rejected by Buddhists themseves as all of them involve absolutist interpretations of Buddhist doctrines which Buddhists themselves stridently insist are not absolutist.

>Why do all academics agree that he integrated buddhism into Vedanta?
Not all academics agree though, you are being dishonest. The very academic Sharma whom you just cited denies in that book that Shankara took anything from Buddhism.

>>16662886
Blind faith has nothing to do with having or not having doubts, it's more about having or not having reasons to believe.

>>16663179
>If yes, this is basic platonism.
Are you serious here? The things you cited: metaphysical order, which is unchangeable, on the base of which the world is ordered and which establishes what is good and what is bad, are common to any metaphysical/theological tradition.

>What I am saying is that all his philosophy is basically reduceable, in terms of its construction, to Platonic philosophy: it is the exact same system.
There are some clear differences. In ''Man and His Becoming'' Guénon belittles Platonism (wrongly) saying that it is limited to the formless state. Platonism does not posit the same kind of nondualism as Advaita Vedanta and this is clear with the different platonisms of Proclus, Damascius and Plotinus. If there are differences among themselves why would there not be between platonism and Advaita Vedanta (on which Guénon grounds his metaphysics).

>With the difference that Guenon's is badly articulated, badly researched and based on fallacious arguments, such as recognizing the metaphysical order he's describing in certain religious manifestations as if that added anything to the very needed demonstration that such order exists in the first place.
There is nothing particular or original in Guénon, as I have been saying he builds his metaphysical thinking on Vedanta. Elaborate on what you find fallacious and what you say it is needed to be demonstrated, what do you think needs explanation? In what book does he avoid a more complete explanation of what he is talking?

>Plato at least spends some time discussing
You are comparing two very different approaches to metaphysics. This makes absolutely no sense.

>even comes up with a cosmogony
I will keep repeating myself in this post that Guénon draws from Hindu tradition on most of what he exposes. His cosmogony is built upon Smakhya too.

>Plato is doing philosophy, because he uses arguments, while Guenon is making cheap pastiches of ancient religious texts
Again, two wholly different approaches to metaphysics. Guénon's arguments come from comparitive metaphysics.

>which he throughly misreads to the purpose of showing you that a certain order exists.
Well now I am very curious as to how each passage from the Upanishads Guénon employs in his works is misinterpreted by him? I know you will not even reply to this post but let's see how this is the case. Make a single argument please.

>1...
You are really dumb. There is no equivalence between what is believed in an empirical level and what is intuited and reasoned with logic and concepts.The point of Guénon's works is not what you think it is, its method is mainly comparative as I noted, but still, the formal aspects particular to each tradition have correspondences to metaphysical concepts stripped of formal, traditional imageries. Take for instance the symbol of axis mundi. This is a symbol pervasive in many different traditions. What do you think it means? Why are these symbols recorrent?

>>16663179
>>16663830
>2...
Then I wonder why he was a main influence on one of the greatest scholars on comparative religion, namely Eliade.

>surpassed by modern studies
Go on and tell us anything about how this is the case. This progressitic and very materialist mentality is applied to studies on Platonism? Do you think modern scholars on it constructed a better understanding of Plato's works and the other platonists than those ancient platonists themselves?

What is even funnier is that you haven't showed a single founded argumentation. It is all butthurt cope.

>>16661449
Seethe, hylic

butts

bymp

>>16663011
No answer ey? Even for dubs.

bump,

bump

>>16661775
What if it's not mutually exclusive?

>>16661845
>Yes, but also, not having doubt eventually justifies throwing planes against skyscrapers because people who disagree with you live there.
NOOOOO NOT THE HECKIN AMERICANERINOS!!!

>>16661845
True, if the CIA had more doubt, they wouldn't have blown up the trade towers

>>16662441
How do you cope with losing the argument?

Why do you faggots keep arguing about this shit? This whole thread has been repeated ad nauseam for at least a year now, just fuck off already

>>16668511
we just like trolling the guenonschizo, he still thinks we're buddhist and takes this shit seriously

>>16663011
i believe everyone but me is stupid except for people who share my beliefs and tastes.

>>16668583
>I was just trolling
>That’s why I autistically post the same thing in every thread, without fail, night or day
>...I was just pretending to be retarded

>>16668745
Yes

>>16661446
It is known only through supra-rational, supra-individual intuition, the same way your ancient ancestors knew it. It cannot be known by logic or rationalism, since they are forms of lower knowledge. You cannot know high knowledge by lower means. It would be like looking for plastic with an x-ray machine.