/lit/ - Literature

>>16855507
>but I can't understand Shankara.
Did you try reading him? If you did but still struggled there is a vast array of secondary books and literature which help to explain the meaning of his writings which you can use to aid you.
> What hope do I have of becoming enlightened?
If you can't understand Shankara then not much lol, just kidding I'm a perennialist so you can always get deep into another religions mysticism or another Hindu school instead which talk about similar ideas of union with God, and according to Advaita Vedanta anyway it is true of all souls in existence that if you cultivate purity of heart and have a regular spiritual practice then when you die you'll either a) transmigrate into another birth where you'll have a more brilliant mind which is more suited to subtle metaphysics and spiritual insight or b) instead of transmigrating you'll go to the Brahmaloka, from where you can still attain enlightenment and liberation before its over and you start transmigrating again.

>>16855722
I would be careful about reading Advaita Vedanta interpretations such as Shankara's as a commentary to the Upanishads, they are extremely reliant on Buddhist philosophy (Shankara is called a "cryptobuddhist" by most Hindus, and most scholars agree). If you want to read the Upanishads, work through them with editions and commentaries that aren't sectarian, or at least read an interpretation that is closer to the original meaning of the Upanishads, rather than Shankara's 9th century AD quasi-buddhism.

>>16855722
Any good secondary literature recommendations my friend?

Just listen to ajahn succito

dharmaseed.org/teacher/9/

>>16855786
any of the sources listed here are a good place to start, these are all the leading experts on advaita vedanta

>>16855786
patrick olivelle is a good place to start, his authority on the upanishads is even approved of by our resident /lit/ upanishads expert guenonfriend

>>16855722
Any good secondary literature recommendations my friend?

>>16855786
The majority of these can be found online for free in PDFs etc through the combination of search engines and searching on lib-gen and archive.org

For a short (less then 300 pages) high-quality overview of the different schools of Hindu and non-Hindu philosophy so you'll have more contextual information that you know when reading Shankara
>The Essentials of Indian Philosophy by Hiriyanna

A dense book explaining how all the metaphysics of Advaita ties together by one of the more notable western scholars of Advaita, Eliot Deutsch from the University of Hawaii.
>Advaita Vedanta: a Philosophical Reconstruction by Deutsch

A shorter book which presents a very informative analysis of some of the various principals within Advaita and relates them to other religions, Guenon does a good job here of succinctly explaining the underlying structure of the metaphysics which much else in Advaita is based on.
>Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta by Guenon

A book which compares Buddhism, Advaita, Kashmir Shaivism, the author has an idiosyncratic/alternative view of Buddhism closer to Guenon's which is rejected by most Buddhist scholars and Buddhists, the section on Vedanta is very well-written and lucid though, if you wanted to you could just read that one section and benefit from reading it alone without the other sections on the other sects/schools, although I learned a good deal from reading them too.
>The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy by Sharma

A longer book which especially focuses on how Shankara's writings have a very precise pedagogical value and how at critical points they function so as to clear away the misconceptions of the reader and direct them to intuitive and immediate realization
>Saṃkara’s Advaita Vedanta: A Way of Teaching by Hirst

A book wherein a Jesuit priest who teaches at the Harvard Divinty School gives a comparative theology of Thomism and Advaita, and speaks of the same above topic that Hirst does of the reader engaging with and being changed by their reading of the text (by which he means Shankara's prose commentaries)
>“Theology after Vedanta” by Clooney

>>16855722
>you'll either a) transmigrate into another birth
Can you explain this to me? What exactly is it that transmigrates, or in which sense is that me?
And what is meant by Shankara's statement that the only transmigrant is the Lord?

>>16855729
>>16855851
>>16855865

>Hey, how are you doing? It's nice to meet you.

>What are my hobbies? Well... I.. uh... I like to spend my time constantly lurking an anonymous discussion forum to complain about someone I never met and a philosophy which has no relevance to my life, I've assembled countless images which cherry pick citations out of the range of books on that topic in order to make ridiculous troll images attacking that philosophy. Do I get paid for it? Hahah no... I would like to but no, I do it for free. What do I hope to get out of all the time I invested into spamming low-effort trolling attempts over and over in every single thread related to that topic? Uhh... I dunno, you know it's funny but I don't actually benefit from doing so in any way. Why do I continue to do it? I dunno, I don't have much of a social life or anything better to do, also, my mom said that my psychiatrist said that I'm naturally neurotic and that I have sociopathic tendencies

>>16855933
Thank you, there's so much I've never even heard about.

>>16855972
Imagine wasting the time to type out some shit nobody is even going to read.

>>16855967
It's been 24 hours and none of you ming-mongs have replied to this. All the more embarrassing considering YoU CaN't HaVe Up WiThOuT dOwN mY dUdEz loooooollzzlz lmafaooo :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!1!111! was intended to be the epic GOTCHA retort. Writhing animals.

>>16856029
Sed contra: I read it and was going to respond but then thought to myself
>Imagine wasting the time to type out some shit nobody is even going to read.
desu.
Turns out someone would have likely read it.

>>16856050
I am not an advocate for taking meds, but surely there has to be some way to help you?

>>16855967
>Can you explain this to me? What exactly is it that transmigrates, or in which sense is that me?
The subtle body (which houses within itself the mind/thoughts) of the Jiva transmigrates from birth to birth, but the subtle body and its thoughts/emotions/memory are itself like an insentient object which is illumined by and endowed with activity by the witnessing self, which is you, and which is different from the subtle bodies of creatures.

>And what is meant by Shankara's statement that the only transmigrant is the Lord?
He means that in the sense that there is no other existing sentient entity separate from Brahman which transmigrates, similar to what is implied in this second half of this below verse from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad when it is said "there is no other hearer"
>He who inhabits the organ of generation but is within it, whom the organ does not know, whose body is the organ, and who controls the organ from within, is the Internal Ruler, your own immortal self. He is never seen, but is the Witness; He is never heard, but is the Hearer; He is never thought, but is the Thinker; He is never known, but is the Knower. There is no other witness but Him, no other hearer but Him, no other thinker but Him, no other knower but Him. He is the Internal Ruler, your own immortal self. Everything else but Him is mortal. Thereupon Uddālaka, the son of Aruṇa, kept silent.
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.7.23.

But at the same time this above point is to be understood in connection with the point that the Atman-Brahman is already eternally liberated and that the Jivas superimpose doership, agentship etc onto it and suffer birth, death and transmigration as a result. But underneath all the superimposed layers the underlying consciousness or Atman doesn't really transmigrate. There is no real transmigration going on except in the contigent maya realm which Brahman sustains via His powers, but even inside here there is no autonomous sentient entity which transmigrates but only jivas imagining the infinite consciousness animating them to be something which transmigrates. Consciousness itself doesn't transmigrate but the transmigration of the inert objects/appearances (like subtle bodies) within consciousness is essentially one of the consistent patterns which structure the the succession of appearances within consciousness.

>>16856308
To say that jivas can imagine when they are insentient calls for further clarification though, because they do not have a self-aware mind which does so but all thoughts including ones involving delusion and superimpositon are like changing, inert and insentient objects observed by the self or awareness. Thoughts don't observe themselves but rather they have no awareness, they are as insentient as rocks are and are perceived by an awareness who is separate from them. When there is the complete realization of the Self then the inert Jiva-ignorance bundle that is contingent on and and sustained by the Atman's power stops having the object-occurrences of insentient superimposition-thought/conceptions which superimpose individuality, multiplicity etc onto the Atman, these object-occurrences no longer occurring and being being observed by the Atman observing that Jiva, the Atman simply continues on eternally liberated as it always had been underneath the superimposition of the Jiva's delusion-objects.

That quote of Shankara's which you mentioned is specifically from his commentary on the Brahma Sutra verse 1.1.5, his preamble to which this linked pdf is set at when you open it

https://archive.org/details/BrahmaSutraSankaraBhashyaEnglishTranslationVasudeoMahadeoApte1960/page/n75/mode/2up

>>16856308
>>16856322
Thank you for your response. I still have a long way to go before approaching the Brahma Sutra, but it's a point which I was curious on (and surely must be of concern to any mortal).
If I may ask, have you received any instruction or did you learn all of this yourself?

being honest right here, it can help on the way to understanding, but this to like everything else must be discarded. And you will be willing to discard everything when you will be ready. Even the idea of nirvana or enlightenment. So, my advice, from someone who spent a lot of time searching, just live your life, and it will come to you. Maybe not in this lifetime, or several, thousands, but it will come. Thing is, people search for idea of nirvana, but you cannot know which you cannot fathom with limited mind in which you are residing right now. So why search for it. Ask yourself why do you want it, and it surely wont be that what truth is. You are fooling yourself. All that is mental masturbation leading to nothing. Embrace nothing and then maybe it will lead you to something which you have to found out for yourself. Go out, experience world, fuck around, have fun.

>>16856388
>Thank you for your response. I still have a long way to go before approaching the Brahma Sutra
You're welcome anon, if you intend to read Shankara's bhasya on the Brahma Sutras then in order for you to fully or mostly comprehend it I would recommend that you read all of Shankara's Upanishad commentaries first as well as the remaining primary Upanishads which he didn't comment on, because each Vedantists Brahma Sutra commentary is a vast maze of references to the Upanishads as well as other texts.
>If I may ask, have you received any instruction or did you learn all of this yourself?
I am completely self taught just through reading various books that I ordered online. I am in my mid-late 20's but I intend to continue studying Hindu philosophy throughout my adult life including possibly later on doing so at a higher education level, and I may choose to be initiated at some point in the future into a non-Advaita school of Hinduism (as I don't wish to become a monk, or at least not until age 60-70 at the earliest) but one which still adheres to a non-dualist metaphysics nonetheless.

>>16856645
>read all of Shankara's Upanishad commentaries first
This was my plan. First I wanted to finish Guenon's Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta first. But in order to finish that, and not just "finish" but actually really take it in, I need to get out of a shitty situation in my life first which is draining my concentration and energy.
In the meantime I do japamala and reread the Bhagavad Gita.
>as I don't wish to become a monk, or at least not until age 60-70 at the earliest
Interesting, how come?
I truly wish to become a monk, I suspected this would be the case already many years ago, but I am far from knowing which path I ought to choose, so I am holding off on that. But the only thing in the world that is still of any real concern to me is some worries about my parents.

>>16856719
Not the fellow you're replying to but I'm in the same boat as you my friend. I can't see myself doing anything other than joining a mystic order and living the monastic life but it's very difficult to figure out which path would be the best and who is a valid teacher. I'm a retard and I want to not be a retard but I'm just not sure who can teach me proper.

>>16855865
>between between
fix pls

>>16856751
Good luck, fellow wayfarer!

>>16856719
>Interesting, how come?
I happen to be a romantic person in the sense that I relish spending time with women that I care deeply about and the idea of raising my own family with such a woman excites me. I also have a deep appreciation for ascetism, and it was really reading Shankara's works that made me awaken to how monasticism truly opens the doorway to the infinite so to speak; but at the same time I have the urge to have one last family before striving in grandfatherhood or the next life for monasticism.
>some worries about my parents.
If you really wanted to join any sort of ascetic or other spiritual order in India (or at least to study or be initiated there before joining any temple/community in another country like Nepal, Bali etc) eventually then it would be very helpful and you'll progress faster if you know somewhat the languages of that scripture as well as a modern dialect spoken in that location, as I'm sure you're already aware of. It would presumably take someone a good amount of time to read through a bunch of Indian philosophy and then see if they wanted to become initiated into any those schools which they had studied, and then furthermore also get started on learning the scriptural and/or day-to-day language of that religious order. So, in the time that it would take you to do all this you could use it to also in your free time help to get your parents situated in a safe position which a plan and resources for them to be fine in your possibly permanent absence.

Anyways I hope that it works out for you as well as the other anon and that you guys are able to find what you are looking for. And whenever I see threads on Hindu philosophy I'm happen to help explain if you have further questions later on in your reading.

>>16857430
>eventually then it would be very helpful and you'll progress faster if you know somewhat the languages of that scripture as well as a modern dialect spoken in that location, as I'm sure you're already aware of
I am a (western-born) poojeet, which makes this a little easier, but I am indeed working on it.
>Anyways I hope that it works out for you as well as the other anon and that you guys are able to find what you are looking for. And whenever I see threads on Hindu philosophy I'm happen to help explain if you have further questions later on in your reading.
Thank you, anon, I appreciate it a lot. I hope it works out for you, that you find a nice wife and become a good grihastha!