/lit/ - Literature

Sure you don't like Buddhism for dumb emotional reasons (some yoga chad slamming your oneitis probably) but too dumb to understand it enough to challenge it so needs some intellectual daddy's opinions to parrot to feel superior.
Why do you do things like this, OP?

>>17551809
Wow that's not very loving kindness of you, mr. western buddhist
the projection is unreal lmfao

>>17551766
daodejing

>>17551884
Explain

>>17551885
Similar observations to buddhism, different, more simple conclusions. Go with the flow, accept death when it comes.

>>17551766
buddhism is as correct as you can get without Revelation.

>>17551934
Sounds based

>>17551941
retard

>>17551766
> What are some books that refute buddhism?
Bulssi Japbyeon (Buddha's Nonsense) by Jeong Dojeon
> Don't fucking recommend shankara
Why not? There is nobody else who refutes Buddhism with the same degree of thoroughness as the great Adi Shankara (pbuh)

>>17551954
I said this to avoid guenonfag's walls of text
Since everyone calls him a cryptobuddhist I have a hard time believing he could be that convincing, and judging by guenonfag's walls of text I get the impression he makes mostly the same assumptions as buddhism concerning existence but just disagrees on some autistic details like the so-called self-illuminating lamp or whatever

>>17551766

A hindu critique of buddhist epistemology - John Taber
Brahma Sutra Bhasya - Adi Shankara
Why I Am Not A Buddhist - Evan Thompson
An Evaluation of the Vedantic Critique of Buddhism - Gregory Darling
Emptiness Appraised - David Burton
Relation as Real : A Critique of Dharmakirti - Raghunath Ghosh
Bulssi Japbyeon - Jeong Dojeon

>r/buddhism

Do you really want to be like these fucks

>>17551975
Nice, thanks

Buddhism is refuted by the sublime, and I'm not even a Christian.
Buddhists cannot comprehend the inherent value of beauty, let alone the beauty of transience.

>>17551969
>and judging by guenonfag's walls of text I get the impression he makes mostly the same assumptions as buddhism concerning existence but just disagrees on some autistic details like the so-called self-illuminating lamp or whatever
No, that’d be wrong, Shankara critiques Buddhism extensively and understands existence pretty differently from them. His different arguments against Buddhism in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya run on for some 20-30 pages of careful reasoning. I’d read that section yourself before posting any more unfounded generalizations about it.
> but just disagrees on some autistic details like the so-called self-illuminating lamp or whatever
This is not just an autistic detail, but it concerns important arguments in theory of mind, the later Yogacharin Buddhists like Dinnaga and Dharmakirti held to the position that consciousness instead of being and abiding Self consists of a stream of momentary self-knowing vijnanas, and they cite the lamp as an example of something that knows itself as well as something else at the same time, and Shankara explains in his works why we can tell from examining our experience and through using logic that this is wrong and that our conciousness doesn’t actually work this way. So the lamp stuff has to do with the specific details of the debates between contrasting theories of mind, which has important consequences.

>>17552039
One question: the advaitin position is that there's brahman, which is the ultimate reality, and that it kind of "fools itself" with maya to experience specific existence (through the jiva), which is an illusion. Once the egoic subject realizes this through moksha, he returns to brahman and his illusion is shattered. So why do you always call buddhism nihilistic since for all intents and purposes many of the conclusions it makes are similar? The path of the advaitin and the path of the buddhist are not all that different

>>17552018
>Buddhism is refuted by the sublime
What does that mean?

>>17551766
Just look at the people practicing that shit. Physiognomy check, you know. Bunch of smelly faggots. Fuck them.

>>17552163
That's not an argument, western buddhists are cringe, who knew, but you're putting aside hundreds of millions of asians

>>17552178
Lmao. How are bugmen much better?

>>17551954
>>17551975
>Bulssi Japbyeon
Where can I find this in English? I could only find a text commenting on it here
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric_Nelson20/publication/336133460_Suffering_Evil_and_the_Emotions_A_Joseon_Debate_between_Neo-Confucianism_and_Buddhism_uncorrected_proofs/links/5d918be1299bf10cff1a14a6/Suffering-Evil-and-the-Emotions-A-Joseon-Debate-between-Neo-Confucianism-and-Buddhism-uncorrected-proofs.pdf

>>17552208
stop being retarded
address how the doctrine itself is wrong or fuck off with your /pol/ faggotry

>>17552069
>One question: the advaitin position is that there's brahman, which is the ultimate reality, and that it kind of "fools itself" with maya to experience specific existence (through the jiva), which is an illusion.
Yes, but the consciousness of the Atman doesn’t actually experience or get fooled by samsara, the Atman is not the subject of the jiva’s subject-object experiences
> Once the egoic subject realizes this through moksha, he returns to brahman and his illusion is shattered. So why do you always call buddhism nihilistic since for all intents and purposes many of the conclusions it makes are similar?
I still see Buddhism as nihilistic because with only a few small exceptions, the majority of Buddhist schools teach that there is no Atman, and that the skandhas (aggregates) making up living beings die out and dont get reborn when an arahant or Buddha enters Parinirvana, they don’t admit the continuance of anything which has to do with the being, soul, consciousness etc which continues into and experiences and abides in Parinirvana. To me this is nihilistic because it makes Parinirvana indistinguishable from nothingness. In both nothingness and in this conception of Parinirvana, there is no sentience, no sensations, no presence, no entities, no consciousness etc, so the Buddhist is unable to point to anything that would distinguish it from nothingness. To me this is as good as annihilation, and the only answer Buddhists seem to have is to take it on faith that this doesn’t constitue an extinction because Buddha said so, but Buddha didn’t say why or how its not a nihilistic extinction, he just said “trust me bro”, but for me that doesn’t hold water. Advaita doesn’t face this problem, because for them the spirit is eternal, unconditioned and non-dual, so it lives forever as eternal self-knowing Awareness-bliss. On the other hand if there is no way for Parinirvana to be experienced in any manner by the entity who attains liberation, it’s not any different in practice for that entity than being annihilated.

>>17552217
Shankara can be seen here explaining why the Buddhist doctrine of Parnirvana on the other hand is foolish:

>"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."

Also, this is only true of certain schools of Buddhism, but I also see some of them as being nihilistic for the additional reason that in their respective metaphysics they sometimes do things like negate the conventional reality of the world but then not admitting any underlying existing absolute reality (Madhyamaka does this) or for denying the existence of the outside world and for holding that there is only the self-contained solipsistic stream of deluded mental ideations (i.e. late Yogachara)

>>17552217
So the atman isn't me? Are you saying I don't exist or something? If the jiva dies with the death of the body, is it not the same as nothingness since the me I experience now will fade into nothing and the atman is pretty much unrelated to my current experience of self?
>>17552221
>negate the conventional reality
>denying the existence of the outside world
Doesn't advaita do this with maya? A lot of people compare maya to an illusion, a dream or a magic show, so basically nothing we experience is real, only brahman is real, but brahman is never really defined. Is it a being, a world, neither?

>>17551766
The main idea of asceticsm and worldly renouncement seems inorganic to me as as human bean. Thats why taoism tickle my dingles since they have similar way of observation but reaching a whole different conclusion on life

>>17552271
>they have similar way of observation but reaching a whole different conclusion on life
How can their axioms be so similar yet their conclusions so different?

>>17552271
From their perspective it makes sense because they see the world as suffering. From what I understand taoists see it more like a dream as per Zhuangzi's butterfly story
Also why does taoists autocorrect to rapists kek

bump

>>17552221
It is not the extinction of consciousness but the extinction of false identification, which is Nirvana. It is different from Moksha in that there is no other more real self(Brahman), but only the void between all possible constructed selfs(shunyata), which is being sought out. To be enlightenend is not to not exist, but to be, and not be, and be neither one of those, at the same time. To attain Nirvana is therefore not be annihilated for ever, but to experience on-going self-annihilation and self-creation within every moment.

>>17551766
>what are some books that refute x
>what are some books that prove x

SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY, DO YOU LACK ABSTRACT THINKING AND CRITICAL THINKING? COME TO YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS YOU STUPID SHEEPTARDS

>>17552557
>DO YOU LACK ABSTRACT THINKING AND CRITICAL THINKING
yes

>>17552584
oof
based

>>17552237
>So the atman isn't me?
No, you are the Atman, the intellect and body are not the you/Atman
>Are you saying I don't exist or something?
You are the Atman which does exist
>If the jiva dies with the death of the body, is it not the same as nothingness since the me I experience now will fade into nothing and the atman is pretty much unrelated to my current experience of self?
No, since the basis of your conscious experience is the you or Atman, which is non-dual self-revealing awareness. The jiva superimposes the intellect and its subject-object distinctions onto this basis of non-dual awareness which itself is actually ‘you’, once the ignorance of the jiva ends this Self reveals itself and one abides in and revels in It as one’s own natural and effortless state. This self-revealing Awareness continues on eternally after the body dies, so it’s not as though some hypothetical nothingness which has no connection whatsoever with you continues and you die, but rather your own natural state continues, the light and basis by which your subject-object distinctions participate in being, but this isn’t immediately clear to people that this is in fact their own natural state, since the state of beginningless spiritual ignorance causes everyone to normally obscure it with their misidentification with their intellect, and so they don’t realize the forest through the trees. Once you learn to identify one’s consciousness and distinguish and isolate it from the things that appear in it like the intellect and subject-object distinctions, there is just immediate and self-revealing luminous presence left.
>>negate the conventional reality
>>denying the existence of the outside world
>Doesn't advaita do this with maya?
No, since Advaita only denies the outside world in the sense of denying that it has absolute reality (i.e. it is not eternal and immutable and doesn’t possess unconditioned existence). Advaita still holds that the manifestation of Brahman’s power into the elements and the world they make up are a conventionally- and empirically-real realm of shared experience existing outside the individual perceptions of people. It’s just that the shared realm existing outside our perceptions is sustained by Brahmans power and is not completely real like Brahman or God. And this doesn’t devolve into nihilism since Advaita maintains there there is always an eternal absolute reality underlying this, in which everything else takes place.
> but brahman is never really defined. Is it a being, a world, neither?
Brahman Itself is beyond being and non-being, It is the transcendental source of the two categories of existence and non-existence, from which they emerge.

>>17552212

https://web.archive.org/web/20160303171945/http://www.acmuller.net/jeong-gihwa/bulssijapbyeon.html#div-4

>>17552271
That's because it is
It is pure cope

>>17552524
>It is not the extinction of consciousness but the extinction of false identification, which is Nirvana.
If there is nothing about the being still existing which can experience Nirvana and Parinirvana when false identification ends, then for the living being reaching (Pari)Nirvana is no different from dissolving into nothingness. False identification presupposes an existing real being who is being falsely identified, for if this being was completely unreal, it would not have any subjective experience, even as illusion, for illusions such as mirages not possess any awareness or sentient experiences.
>To be enlightenend is not to not exist, but to be, and not be, and be neither one of those, at the same time. To attain Nirvana is therefore not be annihilated for ever, but to experience on-going self-annihilation and self-creation within every moment.
Buddhists already posit that the self is a delusion which arises and perishes in the moment based on changing inputs, so that’s not really changing anything. And if that’s supposed to be Nirvana, why is there still self-creation going on which Buddhists identify with ignorance?

bump

>>17553276
>Why is there still self-creation?
Well, because there is no difference between annihilation and creation, everything vanishes the moment it arises.

Experience without a clinging to the narrative of an observer is possible. You are implying that experience is caused by the subject, as if the subject where outside of experience. This is obviously false as you, your body, your thoughts, and your feelings all happen within experience. So any sense of self is located within experience. You cannot be the cause of experience, as experience precedes you and will be there long after you have vanished, and it will experience, for it is experience's definition to do so. For there is simply nothing outside it.

>>17554164
Hinduism = Identity Ontology
Buddhism = Differential Ontology

>>17554175
What about taoism

>>17554193
I don't know the ontological stances of taoism. But I like the overall mindset they have.

>it's another guenonag fails to convinces anyone that atman is both real and not real, the jivas are both real and not real, brahman is like the sun but it isn't thread
lmao this autist has singlehandedly discredited advaita here

>>17554225
Actually I don't think taoist philosophy alone even has a specific ontology
The religion probably does

>>17554240
Shame really

>>17554240
>its another ‘schizo suddenly starts talking to himself about guenonfag because he has a homoerotic love-hate obsession with him and cannot stop thinking about him and is immediately impelled to post about him in every single eastern-philosophy related thread’ thread

>>17554286
Sounds like the perfect metaphor for the brahman lmao

>>17554240
>>17554286
>>17554294
Make your own buddhism thread if you want to have another autistic argument about ontology, this one is about book recs

>>17554318
As has been noted, the only major anti-Buddhist writers have been Confucianists or Hindus. So your best bet is to research those. Otherwise there is no special argument needed to "refute" Buddhism because as per the pomo condition we live in, all religions are wrong meta-narratives, or as per Science, they are all nonsense, or as per anthropology they are all made up, simple as.

>>17554386
>as per the pomo condition we live in, all religions are wrong meta-narratives
What do you mean by this?
Science doesn't have the full scope of reality yet so it doesn't refute religion

>>17554386
>the only major anti-Buddhist writers have been Confucianists or Hindus
The Taoists also critiqued Buddhism pretty often but less of this material has been translated.

The early Tang dynasty Taoist master Fu Yi called Buddhism a demonic religion in his work Gaoshi zhuan

>>17554408
I separated Science and postmoderism as arguments. Of course, you could just read Sextus Empiricus and be done with the whole thing.

>>17554486
>Of course, you could just read Sextus Empiricus and be done with the whole thing.
Why, is he the endgame of philosophy or something

>>17554454
I haven't read them myself but BDK publishes two volumes of "The Collection for the Propagation and Clarification of Buddhism" which are a Chinese Buddhist response to Taoist and Confucianist criticism. Could be a useful resource

Speaking of hinduism I liked the concept of divine play, or that this is all for show, that I got from listening to a few of Alan Watts' lectures. Does anyone know books on this?

>>17554506
Suspension of judgment on all dogmatic views of non-evident objects

>>17554553
Sounds reasonable, why do I never hear about it

>>17554562
It's not a story the dogmatists would tell you.

>>17554569
Are there other philosophers that have written on that subject?

>>17554547
It's a theme that shows up in the Enneads at one point.

>>17554578
Skeptics. The real ones, not the contemporary Anglos

>>17554582
wow Plotinus really was the cooler Plato. I'll definitely make sure my son get's breastfed until he is 9.

>>17554588
Yeah I looked them up but aside from sextus empiricus there are pretty much no other actual writings

>>17554592
It's not too late for you to make up for lost time and achieve henosis

>>17554633
Does he say how to do that in the enneads?

>>17554578
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
Early Buddhism also placed a lot of emphasis on avoiding baseless speculation, but that didn't last long

>>17554688
Buddhism speculates a lot about existence though, it's only skeptical about some metaphysical questions

>>17554386
have postmodernists suceeded in the complete deconstruction of all dogmas and narratives or can we go a step further? I want to peek behind the veil

>>17551844
You don't need to be a Buddhist to take offense at your lazy shitposting

>>17554724
You do need to be a buddhist to take the op post so personally you'd seethe as hard as >>17551809

>>17551766
Lolita

>>17554707
No you can become a Buddhist if you reject nihilism for emptiness or a Spinozist if you take god for a plane of immanence

>>17554707
Practically all the 20th century is just one giant error. Don't expect any of it to lead anywhere but further atomisation, until the implosion.

>>17554778
Buddhism doesn't deconstruct reality enough for me, it still posits conceptual truths
Haven't looked too much into Spinoza but same problem with pantheism. I'm looking for complete deconstruction; disintegration (not skepticism as was recommended earlier, that's another thing.)

>>17554824
How is pyrrhonic skepticism not total deconstruction? I'm not aware of any further deconstruction possible short of a non-discursive monke state that cannot be communicated.

>>17554824
But that tier of deconstruction is impossible. The unobserved perceiver always remains, even after everything else is seen through.

>>17554861
Is it right to call the suspension of judgment pushed by the skeptics an atomisation or genuine deconstruction of concepts?
Is subjectivism or extreme relativism really skepticism? I mean it's related but it's not the same

>>17552858
Thanks

>>17554910
I would encourage you to read the Outlines of Pyrrhonism and decide for yourself if anything is left unchallenged.

>>17554240
It does take the wind out of the 'mysterious eastern wisdom' idea a fair bit when its main defender is a thin skinned retard. You expect wise aloofness like in the movies but you get some weeb angrily ranting and failing to make his point.

>>17554164
>Well, because there is no difference between annihilation and creation,
That’s not true, one involves the vanishing of something, the other its arising
>everything vanishes the moment it arises.
Shankara already refuted the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness; It’s mutually incompatible with dependent origination because it makes it impossible for one link in the chain of pratityasamutpada to impart causal efficiency to the next if it only has a momentary existence. Moreover, if momentariness was true there would be no reason why a rhino or a piano should not spring out of existence to replace the person that was there before; because if everything truly is momentary then there cannot be any factor or organizing influence which persists in between moments and which makes things be consistently replaced by identical or similar copies of what arose and vanished in that spot previously, because if something persists when other things vanish in order to make sure they are replaced correctly, then momentariness is falsified. But in the absence of any cause for things being replaced by identical objects, there would be no reason why this would take place instead of complete chaos.
>Experience without a clinging to the narrative of an observer is possible.
That depends on whether you take ‘observer’ to be synonymous with sentience or not, experience cannot be separated from sentience, only sentient beings have experience and the non-existence of sentience automatically entails the non-existence of experience.
>You are implying that experience is caused by the subject, as if the subject where outside of experience.
No I’m not, I reject this and hold that sentience is neither subject nor object and that it is instead non-dual. Without sentience you cannot have subject or object.
>This is obviously false as you, your body, your thoughts, and your feelings all happen within experience.
‘I’ don’t happen in my experience, because if that were so there would be no ‘I’ left to have that ‘I’ as their experience; so to say that ‘I’ happens within experience is to imply either an unexperienced experience (which is a contradiction in terms) or the subject being both the subject and object of a subject-object distinction (which is logically impossible)
>So any sense of self is located within experience.
That’s wrong for the reasons elaborated above

>>17554738
Not necessarily. Do you know where you are? This isn’t reddit faggot

What are some good books on advaita written more recently?

>>17555254
Samkara's Advaita Vedanta: A Way of Teaching by Hirst is very good and was published in 2005, I’m not aware of any book by an academic that is more recent and as good or better than Hirst’s book

The Virgin Buddhist vs The Chad Charvaka

>>17555289
Thanks

>>17551809
Is it forbidden to criticize buddhism here or something?

>>17551934
do daoists typically meditate? I don't know how else one could hold to the simple, though I guess the doing is supposed to be not-doing

>>17555313
Yeah they do

>>17552221
>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
ezpz Gotama was a monotheist

https://youtu.be/jGG_90xXyA8
https://youtu.be/eGKFTUuJppU
https://youtu.be/viPVFqxHrRM

>This physical existence is not you. You are not your memories or personality. You are awareness. Pure, empty, unchanging, infinite. You are the eternal witness. Upon death you will remember this, if you don’t during your life. All will be well in the end. All is well.

>>17555254
Most of the up to date general overview sources are cited here (Richard King, Isayeva, Mayeda, Arvind Sharma, Whaling, Potter, Hacker).

>>17555289
For once Guenonfag and I agree on something. Hirst's book is quite good. I will post a compilation in a sec, showing that she also recommends King as the best major overview of the relationship between Advaita and Buddhism, along with Isayeva and Mayeda, and somewhat endorses Hacker's widely accepted view that Shankara developed from being mainly a buddhist and yogin to reformulating his ideas in light of the Upanishads.

>>17555254
Here is Hirst's view with some citations.

>>17555701
I disagree with Hirst’s take there, as do other scholars like C. Sharma. Her getting that point wrong doesn’t detract majorly from the book though, which is otherwise very good. Unfortunately she makes the mistake of attributing those doctrines to Buddhist influence while omitting an examination of the pre-Buddhist Upanishads for those doctrines, which would reveal that in fact they predate Buddhism and have their origin in the Upanishads.

>>17552018
Buddhism does not reject the transient. It just says to make sure you don't become attached to it, because it is transient and you will suffer when it disappears and you are still attached.

>>17555738
You should email her and tell her she made a mistake! She'll want to correct it right away.

>>17555772
how does one know one is attached? and what remains if one is not attached to anything? are all mental processes derivatives of some attachment or other?

>>17552163
>>17552208
Post body

>>17555310
>Is it forbidden to criticize buddhism here or something?
No, but a lot of buddhists (especially online western ones) seem to struggle with the concept that someone can be correctly informed/educated about buddhism and still reasonably disagree with it. Hence, why that poster acted like the most likely explanation for someone disliking Buddhism was for emotional reasons.

>>17551766
Decline of The West, vol II

>>17551766
The Bible, but believing in it doesn't entirely denounce some of Buddha's teachings. It's the highest teaching.