/lit/ - Literature

>>17200536
>wtf is getting reincarnated
Niggas

>>17200536
Nothing that can be called "you" in any way, shape or form. The reincarnation meme was basically tacked on by later religious forms of Buddhism. It makes no sense when considered in context of the original doctrine.

This has always been a problem in Buddhism, and the response depends on the Buddhist tradition. But as I grasp it, there is a distinction between the self (which is not real) and Vijñāna (a personal entity or consciousness). I think of Vijñāna as a superficial self with nothing underneath, but I don't know that much about the subject

>>17200536
Fucking loling at all the Westerners thinking studying Eastern religion is going to bring them any sort of clarity or peace. Christianity didn’t work so they figure they should try the other one now, not even taking into consideration that Eastern countries are even more fucked than Western countries. None of the religious thinking worked guys, in fact it just made things even worse because now you are chasing something you will never get. Why not just take acid and trip out in the park by some hobos?

>>17200536
My understanding was that reincarnation was really just manifestations of your influence on the world through karma. So the butterfly effect could lead to new life being created that wouldn't have been without your influence

>>17200536
Gautama Buddha never spoke of reincarnation as a process where your "soul" is born again and again in different people/animals.

Mahayana teaches that all are empty, all are interconnected, all are interdependent. When you are alive, you are in a constant state of change. When you die, you again go through changes. Like waves that arise and dissipate, you rise and fall. There is no "you," but since all are interconnected and interdependent, nothing you do in this life is "wasted." Every thought you have, every action you take, it affects the next wave that comes after your wave. That is rebirth, that is reincarnation.

>>17200677
>Mahayana teaches that all are empty, all are interconnected, all are interdependent.
sounds like some gay tranny bullshit

>>17200536
Are we gonna have this thread every day?

>>17200619
>thinking studying Eastern religion is going to bring them any sort of clarity or peace.
But it really did.

>>17200536
That's the thing, Buddhism doesn't make any sense, Hindus have called them out for it, Taoists have, Tantrists have, they just don't listen.
>>17200555
t. hasn't read in the Pali Canon where people who kill Buddhist monks get hellish rebirths
>This has always been a problem in Buddhism
activates my almonds huh
>>17200619
>Why not just take acid and trip out in the park by some hobos?
grasping the essential truths of metaphysics is superior to psychedelics in that the former is undecaying

>>17200677
>When you are alive, you are in a constant state of change. When you die, you again go through changes. Like waves that arise and dissipate, you rise and fall. There is no "you
But this is meaningless because if a different entity is bound than the one who seeks liberation than the whole endeavor is pointless for the one seeking it. As a great man once said

"Lastly, the Buddhistic assumption that the extinction of that consciousness is the highest end of human life, is untenable, for there is no recipient of results. For a person who has got a thorn stuck into him, the relief of the pain caused by it is the result (he seeks); but if he dies, we do not find any recipient of the resulting cessation of pain. Similarly I if consciousness is altogether extinct and there is nobody to reap that benefit, to talk of it as the highest end of human life is meaningless. If that very entity or self, designated by the word 'person' -Consciousness, according to you-whose well-being is meant, is extinct, for whose sake will the highest end be? But those who believe in a self different from consciousness and witnessing many objects, will find it easy to explain all phenomena such as the remembrance of things previously seen and the contact and cessation of pain-the impurity, for instance, being ascribed to contact with extraneous things, and the purification to dissociation from them."

>>17201839

>>17201839

>>17201839
Start with What the Buddha Taught, and then read the Heart Sutra.

>>17200536
The superrational truth of this doctrine cannot be grasped by the thinking mind. Meditayt for awhile and things will start to make sense.

>>17201873
All these images attributing certain posting styles to specific people (e.g. "guenonfag" here, "bumpfag" on /tg/, and so forth) reek strongly of schizophrenic apophenia. I do genuinely believe that too much anonymous posting irritates and exacerbates untenable modes of thought, and, indeed, awakens schizophrenic potential in latents.

>>17201926
You'd be right if it weren't an objective fact that there is a very autistic Dutchman who really, REALLY doesn't like Buddhism who spent two years straight spamming the board.

Just because you're a paranoid schizophrenic doesn't mean that the Glowies aren't actually legitimately after you.

>>17201946
>You'd be right if it weren't an objective fact
Not him, but those two are not mutually exclusive, so it makes no sense grammatically for you to write "you'd be right if it weren't"

>>17201918
This is the greatest filter and I don't mean it ironically or in a demeaning sense

>>17201918
>>17201974
people may not be able to FULLY understand buddhism with a thinking, dualistic mind but they can certainly understand the answers to most questions that come up on /lit/. it's just that most questions that come up on /lit/ are asked by larpers who have strong incentives not to understand it. that's the biggest filter.

>>17201946
Kek, there are certainly some real anonymous characters among us, but that makes it all the more important not to paint demons in the shadows.

>>17200536
I feel like mahayana might make more sense in this field. Especially with it's concepts of buddha nature and sunyata.

>>17200536
>dude just leave your desires behind bro...except the desire to be free of desires and end the cycle...uh just...just DONT FUCKING THINK ABOUT IT TOO MUCH YOU FUCKING SHEEP!

>>17202221
>buddha nature and sunyata.
They're not a substitute for the concept of soul

>>17200536
Psycho-physical aggregates

>>17202261
>except the desire to be free of desires and end the cycle
You leave those behind too once you go far enough down the path.

Most Buddhist schools of thought are rigorously sceptic and would argue the self has no inherent existence, that it is a construction imposed on top of phenomena, sensations, experience etc. and dependent on those to exist. You probably already know this but don't think about it this way usually; try to come up with a definition of your self and you will find all sorts of dependent explanations and antinomies. Are you your body, your mind, both, neither, some assemblage of character traits, a historical person with a name and biography, some Oedipal chimera of mommy and daddy, a locus of experiences? There are more complex explanations given in canonical literature which imply a sort of atomism, and in the later Mahayana sutras ,which basically retort that even the particles have parts, so there are in fact no ultimate building blocks either and these are equally as illusionary as selves. Strictly speaking there is no reincarnation of a soul into a new body as per Greek metempsychosis or other Indian doctrines. The common metaphor for Buddhism is the flame, in that life is fire and (karmic) actions leading to birth are fuel. A fire not put out will feed itself by burning through what it contacts; it is attracted to fuel and so prolongs itself. But fire, like the water in a flowing river, is in flux as it burns through fuel. When people talk of a river they assume a permanent geographic feature because that is relevant to the needs of navigation. Just so viewing of a fire as a fire and not the burning of ever newer fuel is appropriate to describing a process in covenient shorthand. A self is a species of this coventional view.

>>17202554
When i saw the pic i almost skipped reading your post because id assumed itd be a trollpost.

>>17200536
will niggers be reincarnated?

>>17202554
>try to come up with a definition of your self
the unchanging sentience in which everything else takes place

>>17202866
>i am my soul

>>17203009

>>17201918
>>17201974
>>17202261
>>17202352
>bro stop thinking
The absolute state. Has there ever been a more memetic doctrine?

>>17202866
>the unchanging sentience in which everything else takes place
So you are taking the self to be a mental container where other things take place? In that case your self is quite metaphorically empty of essence, being there only to be filled with other things. Doesn't seem very permanent.

>>17203102
>stop thinking... uncontrollably
Fixed.

>>17200536
Certain sects believe this is the recycling of matter, that we exist in a later form.
A corpse is reincarnated as dirt, the dirt as a tree, the tree eaten by a beaver, etc.

>>17203226
>In that case your self is quite metaphorically empty of essence
Wrong, it’s luminous in nature but also transparent

>>17203348
What exactly is this supposed to mean? I asked this once before and got given a seven post essay about the hermeneutics of some upanishad.

So let's get down to basics: can this "luminous" self be seen?

>>17203348
>its a container you fill with things
>no it's not empty it's a self-lit light that things pass through
So it's also permeable, which again doesn't sound very permanent or essential. If your essence is not to have an essence, you might just be empty. Now, of course, I already know who is on the other line here, he's being piloted by Brahman, who has turned himself into a lunar lander and sent himself down to the surface of his body to explore what he doesn't know he is, because, he forgot he was himself. But I digress

>>17203348
Isn't it also dark and opaque in nature

>>17203469
Yes. It's also mauve, with hints of lemon.

>>17203488
put da lime in da coconut

even if reincarnation is real, it essentially nullifies all that "you" are when you die anyway. to me it seems pretty similar to an atheist's perspective of death, in the sense that you just stop existing altogether. unless you buy into the hypnosis-induced past life flashback bullshit

>>17203393
You know what's funny, there are Buddhist schools that do allow for you to identify with a super duper cosmic body that defies description and encompasses all reality as a vehicle for achieving nirvana, but that still is not a personal, essential self, in fact far from it, because to have reached this state one would have necessarily abandoned any sort of gymnastics insisting they had a self that continuously reincarnated, and was both their own and unchanging, that it was self illuminating or contained all reality, etc. And moreover this cosmic body, is, stop me if you've heard this one, empty! Because of course, if we were to try to give it an essence it would be limited. It is in fact permanently empty according to this interpretation.

>>17203393
> What exactly is this supposed to mean?
That the Self’s luminosity is what reveals other things, and that it is also transparent, which is what allows things to appear within or be projected upon it like a crystal ball that seems to take on the color of the cloth placed behind it

>So let's get down to basics: can this "luminous" self be seen?
It is always self-known and self-manifesting, what you are experiencing right now in terms of the sense of being a body amidst the world around you is superimposed onto the underlying basis of immediate and self-revealing knowing

>>17203446
> So it's also permeable
acting as a basis for things to be superimposed upon it doesn’t make something permeable, the object which is the basis in the analogy is not permeated by anything, not least of all by the superimposition

>>17200536
Uh..oh....please, delete this right now.

>>17203102
The ultimate goal can not be understood dualistically, as a thing you describe, but it can be experienced. It is like explaining what God is vs experiencing divine presence.

>>17203564
>acting as a basis for things to be superimposed upon it doesn’t make something permeable
So they just hover and never touch? If there is no contact between the self and these other things how are we even aware of either? Sounds like something constructed for expediency.

>>17203564
So then why do I not perceive everything as this single luminous self?

I think certain Mahayana schools fill in the atman with other things, like the Buddha nature or buddhdhatu, the dharmakaya, the tathagathagarbha, rigpa, etc. Theravada has the "luminous mind" I think. Buddhists say they don't have a self but the doctrines are full of selves.

the subtle body/soul is the illusory thing that reincarnates/transmigrates. but believing that you are either of those things is false identification of the self. if you’re smart enough to ask that question you might as well move on to advaita Vedanta, as you can see by this thread there are too many retarded Buddhists that will just drag you down

>>17203690
Yes we should all become comso-thomists and pilpul the sacred texts until they give us answers we like as opposed to answers which enlighten.

ENTER

>>17203690
>just become crypto-buddhists bro
cringe...

>>17203689
No they aren't, they just say that we're full of stuff. That stuff is composite and can be broken up. Dharmakaya, tathagathagarbha, these things are far closer to the monism of the Pre-Socratics. "Everything is made up of Buddha" doesn't conflict with anatman if Buddha is a substance, not a person or a consciousness.

>>17203719

perhaps YOU should, if you’re so inclined. but find me an enlightened person first

>>17203689
ITT we were discussing a personal self and whether it could be shown to exist independently (Buddhism says no) and you know who rolled in with his Evangelion pilot-body self doctrine; many non-Abrahamic religions do have some sort of cosmic ultimate reality they posit but that would not prove that the selfhood I feel now is other than contingency.

>>17203588
>bro just let it flow, it isn't an object of propositional acts (or acts at all)
Glorification of passivity (and extravagant claims about it). I don't know whether it's worse than the nihilist variant.

>>17200536
A new form. You don't need an unchanging self for rebirth to make sense.

believing in no self is like playing a video game, and your player character immediately vanishes at the moment of enlightenment

>>17203755
I think our local indologists would agree we need to find that ourselves, especially given we live in an age where the dharma, however you define it, is diminishing, and people must wait for the next Vishnu or Maitreya. What I don't buy is that Advaita Vedanta is completionist of Madhyamaka in the way guenonfag seems to; he is basically reading it as if it were the Hinduist Islam to Buddhist Judeo-Christianity. It's why he constantly says x or y is refuted, as if that meant anything in metaphysics, where stuff comes and goes every few generations. That may have worked in India for an audience alive for the decline of Buddhism who were susceptible to brahminical revanchism and 'return to tradition' posting vis a vis the Upanishads, but it does not apply to me and I am not reading the texts through that sort of lens. (It also didn't work in Asia ex-India, where Hindu neoorthodoxy was not relevant).

>>17203846
>muh vidya
cringe analogy

>>17203611
>So they just hover and never touch?
Yes, in the same way that space is not burnt by fire

B.S. I, 2, 8
Just because Brahman has some relationship with the hearts of all beings, it does not follow that Brahman experiences happiness and sorrow like the embodied souls; for there is a difference. There is forsooth a difference between the embodied soul and the supreme God. The one is an agent, an experiencer (of happiness and sorrow), a source of merit, demerit etc., and possessed of happiness and sorrow, while the other is just the opposite, being possessed of such qualities as freedom from sin and so on. Because of this distinction between the two, the one has experiences, but not the other. If from the mere fact of proximity, and without any reference to the intrinsic nature of things, a causal relation with some effect is postulated, then space, for instance, can as well become burnt, (it being connected with fire).

> >>17203647
> So then why do I not perceive everything as this single luminous self?
According to Advaita Vedanta it is because of the Supreme Lord Brahman’s power of maya making the jivas live a beginningless existence of spiritual ignorance

>>17203853

what I’m trying to say is that Vedanta is a safer bet due to the rigorous backing behind it, not as someone who pretends to be an academic or a scholar. even reading from a Vedanta master that was illiterate like a Ramana Maharishi would be better for most people. the fact is, all of the pop Buddhism and idiotic ideologies that come from it are a death trap

>>17203864

prove me wrong

>>17203910
If I wanted sublime monism where God doesn't touch me on the doll, I would be a Platonist, wherein the One offshores creation to one of his manifestations, the Demiurgic Zeus. At least they can explain how I come into contact with things.

>>17201926
>he still seethes about those pics to this day
lol

>>17203910
So there was never a time before ignorance, and there will never be a time after ignorance? Brahman just carved chunks of himself up to be ignorant for eternity?

>>17203913
I agree that pop Buddhism is terrible but we could say as much about the pop-Hinduism of hippies or of televangelistic MTD Christianity. It's not an argument against the doctrines. Being a prickly denizen of these boards I prefer my doctrines skewer people who try to study them.

>>17203913
>Vedanta is a safer bet due to the rigorous backing behind it
>stay away from Vedanta academics and scholars

>>17203948
Brahman literally makes no sense when it is subject to logical scrutiny. The holes in Advaitin logical is so large and glaring, I'm shocked any one still follows it to this day.

>thread about buddhist no self and rebirth
>oh btw let me tell you about Hinduism and Advaita

>>17203978
what do you expect from dogmatic schizos? the thread itself is already low quality even without the lone proselytizing white Hindu

>>17203978
A tale as old as time.
What do you think happened to Buddhism in India?

>>17204004
The smart ones emigrated out of India to spread Buddhism. Similar thing happens today.

>>17204004
let me guess, it has to do with some pajeet in a saffron scarf

>>17203950

yeah, agreed. i still think filling in conceptual gaps like the OP question is important enough to merit a casual study of Vedanta, or Platonism, or anything else. otherwise you run the risk of dealing with Buddhists that can’t perform 1 + 1 = 2

>>17203952

at this point I’m just going to assume that you can’t read

>>17203913
>Ramana Maharish
LMAO so these are the giants of modern Advaitism? As if that cannot get anymore embarrassing...

>>17203948
>Brahman just carved chunks of himself up to be ignorant for eternity?
Brahman is partless and completely unaffected by maya/avidya

>>17203961
Shankara completely demolished Buddhism

>>17204043
>...by plagiarizing it

>>17204034
>we're Brahman
>we're also not effected by his radiation that causes ignorance
So who is affected by maya, if it is not the self, nor the Self, nor me, nor the radiator?

>>17204043
I called it lol

>>17202554
Can there be experience or phenomena without something to experience them? If anything it sounds like being of things is more real than your personal being and that's what I call cringe.

>>17204043
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.

>>17204055

your little psychophysical self is maya. light from the sun gets filtered by the atmosphere, but we don’t say that the light is the filter

>>17204043
Ah yes the Champion of the Pokemon League who beat the Elite Four of Buddhism. To this day he is studied in former Buddhist countries like Tibet and Japan as a master metaphysician.

>>17200536
>wtf is getting reincarnated?
That isn't too difficult to explain since they do not even believe there is a abiding self from one moment to the next, but there is a stream. Where Buddhism really loses out is when they try to explain who/what gets liberated.

>>17204081
Based

>>17203226
It has to contain all forms of things to be able to experience them as they occur. It contains everything and is divine in that sense.

>>17204050
not only did he rip based MADHYAMVKA, he didn't even debate a single Buddhist despite 'going around the subcontinent'. He's a weakling...

>>17204087
So now I am literal ignorance incarnate; my personal eternal self is ignorance incarnate, which keeps me away from the cosmic eternal self, which is the light body of Brahma? I think it was a lot easier being conditioned as opposed to god rendering me as a punished mode of himself.

>>17203933
guenonfag is such a snake, is there any character he hasn't played? and then whined at others for actually being that thing

>>17204034
So then we ignorant human beings are not made up of Brahman? If Brahman is not composite, then how can there be anything of Brahman that is not ignorant? The entirety of Brahman would be ignorant, as Brahman is internally uniform.

Secondly, if ignorance is eternal, never beginning and never ceasing, what's the point of Advaita Vedanta?

>>17204106

there is no “personal unchanging self”, and the goal for you (?) is to remove some or all of the primordial ignorance. i wouldn’t feel bad about it

>>17201839
>Taoists have
I know this is late to the party, and this retard is getting dunked on by other anons, but it's worth pointing out that the entire Chinese intellectual tradition rejects the idea of atman as on its face absurd. The Taoist critique of Buddhism has absolutely nothing to do with Taoism, like all religions, secretly being Advaita Vedanta.

I'm still unsure how you can defend this position, or the idea that the Buddha stole his ideas from Shankara, as Shankara died in 800AD.

>>17204091
You can't be liberated with a personal self dependent upon conditions experienced. If you are still experiencing everything personally you are not liberated. Think about this—so long as there is a (You) it is subject to all the things which cause feelings of pleasure, pain, neither, both, etc. If anything it is necessary that the self ceases for liberation to occur. Reincarnation and rebirth are the opposite of this, they are what happens when you are attached to a self. That there is no-self is an elaboration on this teaching. Foolish people should not leap at it from the wikipedia landing page on the core beliefs of Buddhism because they have no context for it, will misunderstand it, and become clingy towards selfhood.

>>17204055
>So who is affected by maya, if it is not the self,
the jivas are, who are images of the self

B.S. II, 3, 50
And that individual soul is to be considered a mere appearance of the highest Self, like the reflection of the sun in the water; it is neither directly that (i.e. the highest Self), nor a different thing. Hence just as, when one reflected image of the sun trembles, another reflected image does not on that account tremble also; so, when one soul is connected with actions and results of actions, another soul is not on that account connected likewise. There is therefore no confusion of actions and results. And as that 'appearance' is the effect of Nescience, it follows that the saṃsāra which is based on it (the appearance) is also the effect of Nescience, so that from the removal of the latter there results the cognition of the soul being in reality nothing but Brahman.

because the premise is wrong.

>>17204178
And what are the jivas? If a collection of jivas without Brahman are identical to a collection of jivas with Brahman, how can you be sure that you have any Brahman at all?

>>17204159
So we are back to no-self as Buddhism understands it. The cosmic self identification with Brahman is theology, which Buddhism regards as an inferior vehicle, one which only reaches heavenly abode.

>>17204178
I could pull the same simile from a Buddhist sutra except it would refer to the moon and śūnyāta instead of the sun and Brahman. This does not establish I have a permanent personal self, it is an argument for apophatic absolutism as filtered through Vedic theology.

>>17204147
>So then we ignorant human beings are not made up of Brahman?
You are not a human being, you are the Brahman in whose sentience the jivas sense of being a human being is appearing
>If Brahman is not composite, then how can there be anything of Brahman that is not ignorant?
Because Brahman is not ignorant, only the images of Him sustained by His omnipotent power are
>The entirety of Brahman would be ignorant, as Brahman is internally uniform.
The jivas exist at a lower, contingent ontological level of existence than Brahman in His partless unicity.
>Secondly, if ignorance is eternal, never beginning and never ceasing, what's the point of Advaita Vedanta?
It is ceasing, when one attains spiritual liberation or moksha

>>17200623
This is how most most Mahayana Buddhists see karma (including my own school being Vietnamese Thien)

>>17204233
>You are not a human being, you are the Brahman
>I am also Brahman
>that means I am you, and you are me
>woooooh stop thinking and just meditate on Brahman

>>17204233
But how can I be the Brahman if Brahman cannot be carved up? You say that Brahman cannot be carved up, and it's just these jivas that are doing the actual stuff, but then what is the point of Brahman of the Jivas do everything? If the Jivas are ignorant and a human can exist without Brahman, then where is the Brahman?

>>17204177
Yes yes I know all the psychoanalyzing and naive empiricism of Buddhism that you're describing. At least the Advaitins solve this with the non-personal substrate Awareness.

Whenever a Buddhist gets pushed a little on some of the basic doctrines, this is always the sort of response you get though. You do you.

>>17204207

lol, try again. it has nothing to do with some distinction between theology and ontology. you still have a “permanent” psychophysical self, a mind that has an identity that tries to establish continuity between moments. you can’t get away from brahman acting as an impersonal substrate of the world. imagine if you applied that ridiculous logic to materialism. when people die their corpses don’t stop existing, neither do people that claim to be enlightened. whatever psychophysical identifications that get removed as a result of enlightenment, sleeping, death, are a result of that false identification being removed, not that there was nobody ever there

>>17204306
>the Advaitins solve
If this thread is any indication, Advaita Vedanta solves nothing, and Shankara's thought is nothing but an incoherent mess that doubles back on itself. Perhaps this is why it was never taken seriously in India, and only ever gained a following among Crowleyites and Theosophists engaging in Orientalism?

>>17204315
>you still have a “permanent” psychophysical self,
So we have Brahman, which everyone has a piece of, but also not really because Brahman is indivisible, but we also have the jivas, which can act autonomously from Brahman because Brahman doesn't actually do anything, and now we have this.

So, where is the atman? Where is the permanent Self? Every time you unveil something, you say "oh, but not really, the REAL Self is over here!".

>>17204319
It solves what liberation is, it solves what gets liberated, and it solves why anyone would want to be liberated.

>>17204328

unfortunately, this is why Buddhists are dumb. got too hot under the robe and didn’t bother to actually read the post. you’d be better off reading about dualism in the heraclitean sense than entrenching yourself further in something so ridiculous

>>17204306
I don't know that they solve it by introducing unaware awareness as the real self. To me that's as bad as reflexively having views about no-self without understanding the context.

>>17204348
By not doing so after introducing a complicated mess.

It strikes me that Shankara desperately wants to steal Sunyata from the Buddha, but also wants to have individual discrete eternal things, AND an omnipresent thing that actually does stuff, and he sort of just bungles this.

Guenonfag has really been getting annihilated lately.

>>17204351
So then why are you here? You retards have spent ages spamming /lit/ with this garbage incoherent """""""""""""""""philosophy""""""""""""", and when you're actually given a chance to explain it, you just get angry and throw a fit when people start asking questions.

If you don't want people actually paying attention to this joke of a philosophy, why bring it up at all? Why not just not say anything, smug in the knowledge that YOU have it all figured out, but also safe from the devilish Buddhists who will destroy your peace of mind by asking simple questions like "what is Brahman"?

>d-did you just question Brahman?

>>17204315
>you still have a “permanent” psychophysical self
Why would it be permanent? I'm obviously not permanent. I am aware of birth and death. If the self is now psychophysical it has two essences is all the worse, contingent upon my corporeality
>a mind that has an identity that tries to establish continuity between moments.
Yes it tries to create duration, which is false and illusionary. And just as all those objects were grasped falsely and reified so too was this process made into an existent self, another illusion of the same character
>you can’t get away from brahman acting as an impersonal substrate of the world.
I can because I am a-vedic. I don't believe God spoke Sanskrit to some scribe somewhere who was also God
>when people die their corpses don’t stop existing
You call it a corpse because you are human. That's food to everything else, and to people who didn't know the person it is literally just a body, they don't know whose and soon no one living will either
>not that there was nobody ever there
Why are you so privileged over everything else as a special prototype Evangelion that Brahman piloted and all the others were just fake?

>>17204367
>wants to have individual discrete eternal things, AND an omnipresent thing that actually does stuff
As guenonfag would say, this was retroactively refuted, in fact these are some of the things Madhyamaka opposes, to which the response being "that can't be right" is the equivalent of trying to rationalize God through reason post-Kant. It means you are just throwing out the antinomies and recursing to some unassailable scripture.

>>17204433
And that's sort of the problem. Shankara can't say
>well Brahman is a substance
because then he's an actual literal atheist and rejects the personhood of Brahman. He also can't say
>well there aren't individual discrete things
on pain of rejecting Vedic orthodoxy, and he can't say
>well it's literally just Sunyata but I'm autistic
because then he's just a Buddhist.

So he's trapped in this three-way autistic shitfest that makes nobody happy (evidently, as Hindu philosophy goes on to be hundreds of thinkers explaining why Shankara is wrong).

This comes up every time we have these threads: there's a reason that nobody inside of or outside of India took Shankara seriously.

>>17204389

trust me, nobody takes you seriously enough to think of you as “the devil”. i think you’re trying to play the guenonfag game of questioning in bad faith, but it doesn’t really work because you don’t even understand the analogies that you’re using. if you can’t understand the sunlight and filter analogy in context, you have bigger problems on your hands than someone being mean to you on the internet


>>17204426

they really get dumber as the thread progresses. vedanta is reducible to removal of false identification, you’re retarded because you fail to realize the basic fact than an “illusion” is created from something that actually exists

>>17204461
>the something that actually exists is god's cosmic body, and I am just his gut bateria too ignorant to realize it
Truly I am the retard here. See, if there is something 'real' to describe here, it would not be a body, let alone god's body, and I would not be a modality of god which is ignorant of god because god's goding gods god into goding that god is notgod. No matter how much scripture you quote it is just theology.

>>17204456
Have never heard anyone outside of /lit/ respond to Buddhism with a defense of cosmic indo-thomism. It's such a specific debate too.

>>17204328
I am certain someone could make an 'problem of evil' type formulation regarding the illogical nature of Brahman.

>>17204518
I remember a relatively recent thread linking to some website that did this, breaking down the paradoxes of nondualism in an interesting way. Guenonfag may have killed the thread by posting 83 posts in a row retroactively refuting the whole thing.

I also remember a while before that, that one Kashmir Shaivism guy got into it with Guenonfag over the Brahman unity/illusion paradox, and his posts were very interesting.

Anyone know how to find either of these in the archives? The second guy used lots of technical sanskrit terms.

We may have selves, we may just be experiencing life through God’s eyes, we may be reincarnated, we may go to heaven or hell, we may eventually attain perfect union with God, or maybe some of us will only reach the second heaven, or the third. Maybe all will go to heaven, maybe not. Maybe there only exists a constant attaining unto perfection, so that we are never perfect, and yet always becoming closer. Maybe it is all without order, and we are only here to experience creation.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

>>17200536
Atman = Pneuma (spirit), not Psyche (soul). Your soul has no unchanging spirit.

>>17204588
>Fear God
cringe

>>17204588
literal NPC

>>17204270
>But how can I be the Brahman if Brahman cannot be carved up?
In your present status as ignorant you are the jiva, the underlying basis is partless, undivided, and uncorrupted by the maya It wields
>You say that Brahman cannot be carved up, and it's just these jivas that are doing the actual stuff,
yes
>but then what is the point of Brahman of the Jivas do everything?
Brahman has no point precisely because points or reasons for things are causes spoken of differently and Brahman is the uncaused author of time, space, causation etc. Brahman simply is there providing illumination like the sun
>If the Jivas are ignorant and a human can exist without Brahman, then where is the Brahman?
the human being (one form of jivas) cannot exist without Brahman, for he is their indwelling sentience as well as the string on which everything is strung like beads

>>17204588>>17204635

Yes stick to jewism

>>17204315
>you still have a “permanent” psychophysical self, a mind that has an identity that tries to establish continuity between moments
Only from ignorance of the truth

>>17204857
>Deny yourself and follow me
>I and the Father are one
>all in all
you don’t know what you’re criticizing

>>17204091>>17200536
>>17200591

>Where Buddhism really loses out is when they try to explain who/what gets liberated.
From your seethe, You can't even understand suffering is conditioned, and there is no need for a self to remove the condition of suffering.
Poos like you are right to stick to Advaita Vedanta >>17204348
>>17204306

>>17200536
The thing is that Gautama Buddha, although having used the term "Anatta" ("no-self"), was in consonance with the Mahavakyas.
Gautama Buddha never discussed about Brahman or anything like that, mainly because of the lack of necessity for it in his teachings, but it doesn't mean Sakyamuni himself didn't believe in It. The thing is that, if Atman ("higher self") and Brahman ("Absolute") are both identical, being the multiplicity Maya ("illusion"), then "everyone's Atman" (if that could even be said) would be one in itself, in Brahman. If everything merges in Brahman, then it doesn't make a difference in its multiplicity: the plain realizing of that is part of what we could call "Nirvana", since it also liberates purely its pure essence to merge in the wholiness of Brahman once more.
Sumarizing: if Atman and Brahman are identical, then Anatta is just the merge itself of the one in the whole; any conceptualizing of multiplicity, therefore, even individuality itself, is "dvaita" and, therefore, Maya.
Going even further, the whole conception of needing to divide the legitimacy, disregarding one or another, between Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta is also avidya, since both teachings have the same essence, in their practical nature.

>>17204964
>Then the wanderer Vacchagotta went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there he asked the Blessed One: "Now then, Venerable Gotama, is there a self?" When this was said, the Blessed One was silent. "Then is there no self?" A second time, the Blessed One was silent. Then Vacchagotta the wanderer got up from his seat and left. Then, not long after Vacchagotta the wanderer had left, Ven. Ananda said to the Blessed One, "Why, lord, did the Blessed One not answer when asked a question by Vacchagotta the wanderer?" "Ananda, if I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self — were to answer that there is a self, that would be conforming with those brahmans & contemplatives who are exponents of eternalism [the view that there is an eternal, unchanging soul]. If I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is no self — were to answer that there is no self, that would be conforming with those brahmans & contemplatives who are exponents of annihilationism [the view that death is the annihilation of consciousness]. If I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is a self — were to answer that there is a self, would that be in keeping with the arising of knowledge that all phenomena are not-self?" "No, lord." "And if I — being asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer if there is no self — were to answer that there is no self, the bewildered Vacchagotta would become even more bewildered: 'Does the self I used to have now not exist?'"
BOOM

>>17204737
>you are divided but also underlying this division is unity therefore you are also unity (Brahman)
I am either a jiva or Brahman, how can I be both? that seems counter logical
>Brahman has no point precisely because points or reasons for things are causes spoken of differently and Brahman is the uncaused author of time, space, causation etc. Brahman simply is there providing illumination like the sun
if it is there to illuminate, then it does have a point doesn't it? make up your mind
>the human being (one form of jivas) cannot exist without Brahman, for he is their indwelling sentience as well as the string on which everything is strung like beads
the string is separate form the beads, they both exist independently. You seem to get caught up in your false analogies a lot.

>>17204737
>Brahman simply is there providing illumination like the sun
Shankara's overreliance on concrete physical metaphors is alarming, it's well known in philosophy that metaphors can be a teaching aid but cannot replace determinate conceptual understanding. For instance it's fine to talk about "illumination" as a metaphor but God's light is not a literal light, because that brings in questions of what it is illuminating, what the void between object and knower and God is, etc. The point of metaphors is that they don't directly correspond to the thing they are analogous to, they are only analogous. They will always bring in extra elements from the thing being used for the metaphor (like the void between objects in the illumination example).

The logical questions for advaita are simple. How can something be both a unity and multiplicity at once? Why would a perfectly self-sufficient unity have apparent multiplicity at all? For whom or what is the multiplicity apparent? If everything is brahman, and deceivedness about brahman takes place in any capacity, even as illusion, then how is brahman not only deceived, but divided into different states (itself and its illusions) and capable of change? These can't be answered with metaphors.

>>17205099
>I am either a jiva or Brahman, how can I be both? that seems counter logical
The jiva and Brahman are the 'two in the heart' spoken of as two birds in the mundaka upanishad, the Brahman dwells within each jiva within its heart as the jivas innermost Self. The Brahman in each jiva is identical to the omnipresent omnipotent Brahman and is already liberated. The jiva just has to be released from ignorance through right knowledge which is synonymous with the end of superimposing things on Brahman, when this jiva does so it realizes it was and had been the already-liberated boundless Brahman all along. The jiva obscures the already-present liberation of its own indwelling Self with superimposition.
>if it is there to illuminate, then it does have a point doesn't it? make up your mind
That was speaking of It from the perspective of being subject to Its effects, but in Itself, It has no reason for Its existence because It is the author of reason and causation.
>the string is separate form the beads, they both exist independently. You seem to get caught up in your false analogies a lot.
In this analogy the beads are sustained at a lower contingent level of reality via the omniscient powers of the string, so yes in a way they are separate. The bead and the string exist independently but the string allows the beads to be neatly strung in order which is what the point of the analogy was.

look guys i clicked on this thread to see what people are saying about buddhism but i literally cant follow anything. everyone seems to be talking about buddhism but somehow everything seems incomprehensible and foreign. is this a new sect? please help.

what the fuck is guenonfag anyway

so many selves here, every one is the most smart.

>>17205503
>what the fuck is guenonfag anyway
tranny fetishist who talks about loving feminine penis, comes back to /lit/ every christmas (seriously) to spam 500 threads about guenon and then cry that nobody likes him

>>17205190
>How can something be both a unity and multiplicity at once?
If both of the categories fail to encapsulate the true nature of the absolute reality of Brahman, which transcends and is the cause of the perception of unity and multiplicity as two distinct categories in our intellects, this is through the same power which allows Brahman to seemingly give rise to the world of multiplicity, while having all of that included within an infinite and indivisible transcendental unicity.
>Why would a perfectly self-sufficient unity have apparent multiplicity at all?
Because it is the conscious and self-established Supreme Lords uncaused nature to do so
>For whom or what is the multiplicity apparent?
it is for the jivas subject to beginningless samsara and transmigration, the jivas are beginningless because they are images of Brahman who is beginningless
>If everything is brahman, and deceivedness about brahman takes place in any capacity, even as illusion, then how is brahman not only deceived, but divided into different states (itself and its illusions) and capable of change?
Everything is not Brahman equally, the Brahman that exists as the omniscient wielder of His power maya is unequalled, other things exist at lower contingent levels of conditional existence, but as you traverse upwards to what sustains them ontologically there is just Brahman alone left at the end. Brahman is not deceived by via His omniscience he only grants the semblance of His consciousness to the jivas which allows them to falsely perceive themselves as autonomous consciousness beings without realizing that they posses no life and intelligence aside from what the luminous gaze of the Brahman-Atman imparts to them without being subjected to their delusions. When their delusion ends there is the undecaying Lord alone left remaining, without any superimposition by the jiva covering up His eternal presence.

>>17205541
santa?

>>17205503
>is this a new sect? please help.
It's called Advaita Vedanta, aka the Hindu school of philosophy that shattered the intellectual foundations of Indian Buddhism and revived Hinduism. It's pretty cool

https://iep.utm.edu/adv-veda/

>>17205585
>shattered indian buddhism
buddhism got BTFO'd from india like thousands of years ago so what is it really shattering

>Brahman has emanated a uncountable multitude of ephemeral entities who he has tricked into believing they are self-willed creatures for 'play'
That's gross.

>>17205653
Brahman remains the only real entity throughout, the ephemeral things are not entities

>>17205672
That doesn't make it any better that the apparent reality is supposed to be Brahman idly fantasizing about bob and vagene

>>17205693
Brahman doesn't fantasize. Thoughts are insentient and possess no consciousness, the thoughts of the fantasizing jiva are illumined and observed by Brahman who is untouched and untainted by them

>>17205653
Blame yourself then.

>>17205753
Blame cannot attach to something that is not real.

>>17202554
If life is a fire then let's fucking rage

>>17200619
>Why not just take acid and trip out in the park by some hobos?
because last time I did that the hobos yelled at me and killed my vibe

>>17200536
>wtf is getting reincarnated?
Nothing, nigga
That's the whole point

>>17205768
Based.

>>17201839
>>17200555
>t. hasn't read in the Pali Canon where people who kill Buddhist monks get hellish rebirths
Yes, Buddhism never denied reincarnation as such, not even in the Pali Canon (the symbol is fire moving from one burnt piece of wood to another). It denied the existence of "you." For all intents and purposes, reincarnation should not even be considered, because there is no conscious continuity, memory or anything of the sort.
>>17204906
This is the type of idiot who thinks Buddhism is about ending "suffering."

>>17205565
>both of the categories fail to encapsulate the true nature of the absolute reality of Brahman
But all things, including categories, exist within Brahman. Therefore Brahman, or some part of Brahman, "fails." And Brahman has parts.
>which transcends and is the cause of the perception
A thing transcended and a thing caused are both still things. So Brahman causes other things, even things within it, so it is not the only thing, and it has parts.
>they are images of Brahman
Then Brahman has images, which are parts.
>Everything is not Brahman equally,
>lower contingent levels
So levels of existence, differentiations, do exist within Brahman. That is not complete unity. That's actual multiplicity.

>Because it is the conscious and self-established Supreme Lords uncaused nature to do so
You're being asked to demonstrate this logically, not proclaim your faith in it without proving it. What you are describing in logical terms is a relationship of an initial substrate creating differentiations within itself. Even if those differentiations participate in its original nature the very fact that we can differentiate them means they have some kind of independent createdness, therefore existence. You can call them illusions or contingent beings or tater tots if you want, but they aren't one with Brahman when they aren't one with Brahman. Christians and Jews could say the same thing about their God since they also say they all creation depends on Him and could be undone if He ever wished it.

>>17205907
>>This is the type of idiot who thinks Buddhism is about ending "suffering."
That's what the buddha says, but it's not masturbatory enough you huh, fuckwit.

>>17205963
>That's what the buddha says,
No, it isn't.

>>17205967
post buddha's words

>>17205945
Short-answer: Maya

>>17205494
>The jiva and Brahman are the 'two in the heart' spoken of as two birds in the mundaka upanishad, the Brahman dwells within each jiva within its heart as the jivas innermost Self. The Brahman in each jiva is identical to the omnipresent omnipotent Brahman and is already liberated. The jiva just has to be released from ignorance through right knowledge which is synonymous with the end of superimposing things on Brahman, when this jiva does so it realizes it was and had been the already-liberated boundless Brahman all along. The jiva obscures the already-present liberation of its own indwelling Self with superimposition.
So you are confirming that jiva and brahman are the same thing? do you not see the illogic in saying each unique jiva is actually brahman?
>That was speaking of It from the perspective of being subject to Its effects, but in Itself, It has no reason for Its existence because It is the author of reason and causation.
Ok so its irrelevant, thanks for letting me know
>so yes in a way they are separate but...
lol then the whole analogy falls apart. You are just squirming for a reason to make your 'analogy' fit into a nonsensical proposition.

Riddle me this. If the main goal is to rid oneself of desires, why don’t they rid themselves of the desire to eat, breath and live and meditate until they die? Isn’t that the ultimate goal anyway? To be free if the earthly body?

>>17205984
no need to die and be free when you can live and be free

>>17205984
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Way
Done.

>>17205980
But the whole question in the first place is why a perfect being would cloak itself in a second skin of illusion. Or have to create individual jivas (why not just one? why not an infinite number? why a determinate number?) to experience the illusion, in finite time. These are all classic problems in theology.

>>17200536
Reminder we have no idea what the historical Buddha taught, but from what little you can gather from the most ancient parts of the Pali canon, no-self in the way most Buddhist schools interpret it might not have been his original teaching. It's even possible he might not have believed in rebirth as it's understood now, and that's why later sects had to introduce shit like alaya-vijnana, etc.

>>17205977
The term used in the Canon is "dukkha", which is more accurately translated as "commotion", "change", or "illusion." For example, the term is applied to gods as well as men, which supposedly don't "suffer" as we do (Brahma can't suffer - he is the "perfect" creator god). The correct translation is "life is illusory/changing" or at worst, "unsatisfactory." There is plenty of pleasure to be had in life, but this is not the goal of the noble Ariya, who seek more than pleasure or pain. Buddha himself joined an ascetic group before liberation, in which he would starve himself and cause all other sorts of suffering, and found that it held no substance for higher liberation.

>>17206004
ok Ken

>>17206014
Literally who

>>17206024
some youtube schizo who larps as a 'pali scholar'

>>17200536
>wtf is getting reincarnated?

The illusion

>>17205945
>But all things, including categories, exist within Brahman.
Yes but only conditionally and in a contingent manner, not in a way so as to contradict their ultimate cause
>Therefore Brahman, or some part of Brahman, "fails." And Brahman has parts.
false and false, the non-Brahman doesn’t exist as a part of Brahman but it is just Brahman’s power which is not a part of Brahman. In absolute reality, Brahman is the only thing there is and is partless, on lesser levels of reality which are sustained via His omniscience, there is a world of multiplicity and parts, but underlying that in absolute reality is the partless Brahman alone, all multiplicity and duality is resolved into complete non-duality in Advaita as you progress from the conditional existence up to the level of absolute reality. And the illusion, parts , transmigration etc never really existed or exists for Brahmin but only subjectively from the viewpoint of the jivas.
>>Everything is not Brahman equally,
>>lower contingent levels
>So levels of existence, differentiations, do exist within Brahman. That is not complete unity. That's actual multiplicity.
false, see above
>You're being asked to demonstrate this logically, not proclaim your faith in it
It makes sense, only an uncaused God can account for the existence of the universe and our experience of it. Advaita doesn’t care about convincing random people, they just care about showing that their doctrine is logical and free from internal contradictions, which it is.
>What you are describing in logical terms is a relationship of an initial substrate creating differentiations within itself.
Brahman is an immaterial self-revealing conciousness, its not a substance in the sense of being a material substance possessed of the status of being conscious
>Even if those differentiations participate in its original nature the very fact that we can differentiate them means they have .. ... therefore existence.
our whole experience is just superimpositions upon the underlying undivided and unchanging awareness, every thing you identify as an experience is just the same screen with different images projected on it every time, it is the same self-revealing intuitive sentience which experiences itself as a continuum of uninterrupted presence, the different experiences you can look at and identify as proof of their independent existence is the same unchanging self-knowing Self appearing otherwise to the jiva but only to the jiva.

>>17206130
No amount of meming is going to fix the fact that your understanding of Brahman posits real=unreal and multiplicity=unity, arbitrarily, and then refuses to explain.

I say your understanding because I'm increasingly wondering whether you're a bad spokesperson for Advaita. Maybe someone who knows more about it can post.

>>17200619
What is wrong with educating yourself about other religions?

>>17206135
>No amount of meming is going to fix the fact that your understanding of Brahman posits real=unreal and multiplicity=unity, arbitrarily, and then refuses to explain.
‘real’ and ‘unreal’ in advaita are used in the absolute sense. Real means ‘absolutely real’, eternal and unchanging, always and everywhere, and Brahma(n) alone is real in this sense; unreal means ‘absolutely unreal’ in all the three tenses like a ‘skyflower’ or a ‘barren woman’s son’ which no worldly object is.
And in this sense, these two terms are neither contradictories nor exhaustive. Hence the Law of Contradiction and the Law of Excluded Middle are not overthrown. The Law of Contradiction is maintained since all that can be contradicted is declared to be false. The Law of Excluded Middle- is not violated because, 'absolutely real' and 'absolutely unreal' are not exhaustive and admit of the third alternative, the ‘relatively real’ to which belong all world-objects. Again, since avidya is only a superimposition it vanishes when the ground-reality, the Brahma(n), is immediately realised, just as the rope-snake vanishes for good, when the rope is known. Avidya can be removed only by the immediate intuitive knowledge of Reality, which is the cause of liberation. Removal of avidya, Brahma(n)-realisation and attainment of moksa or liberation are one and the same.

This question is unironically answered by Evola

>>17200536
>wtf is getting reincarnated?
I would say you only have one life, and reincarnation is a metaphor for how many times you try and fail to awaken/realize.

>>17200536
An aggregate that experiences. Buddhists don't believe in an eternal self, that doesn't mean they don't believe in conscious beings.

>>17200536

>>17206924
who is "you" in this scenario?

>>17207046
In one way its the Atman, in a greater way its everything.

>>17207059
buddhists dont believe in atman

bump