/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16452586]

I fucking HATE dualism

[Anonymous No.16452614]

How can you hate dualism? That doesn't make any sense. If you don't embrace dualism everything is one thing and you would have to hate everything to hate anything.

[Anonymous No.16452780]

>>16452586
>Gymnosophists

[Anonymous No.16452799]

And yet, you have two hands. Curious...

[Anonymous No.16452822]

>the duality of non-dualism

[Anonymous No.16452871]

>>16452586
>>16452614
Indeed, hatred is a result of ignorance or lack of awareness of non-duality. When you ground yourself in non-duality there is nothing to hate and no hatred to feel.

[Anonymous No.16452938]

>>16452614
>>16452871

[Anonymous No.16453357]

>>16452938
How would this work if someone hated themselves? Would you say that this self-hatred also stems from ignorance of the true self?

[Anonymous No.16453385]

>>16452586
Poor baby tiger. It's quite a fucked up image. I never noticed it until now.

[Anonymous No.16453387]

>>16452586
what's the best translation of the upanishads?

[Anonymous No.16453460]

>>16453387
Radhakrishnan's 'The Principal Upanishads', which has unabridged translations of all the primary Upanishads, or the translations by Gambhirananda and Madhavananda of Shankara's various Upanishad commentaries. Radhakrishnan's commentary in his Upanishad compilation is better for beginners, Shankara's are more advanced

[Anonymous No.16453472]

>>16453357
>How would this work if someone hated themselves?
The thing they hated would not actually be their self, if you can identity a certain trait, disposition, etc about your mind or personality which you hate those are actually not the self, the self is separate and observes those things. Self-hatred arises and persists due to the misidentification of the non-self as the self.
>Would you say that this self-hatred also stems from ignorance of the true self?
yes

[Anonymous No.16453494]

>>16453460
he said best translation...

[Anonymous No.16453510]

>>16452938

this reads easily enough, what translation is it?

[Anonymous No.16453518]

>>16453494

Unless you are already have an encyclopedic knowledge of Hindu metaphysical and philosophical terminology than you are not going to be able to understand the Upanishads without some sort of commentary or notes. The vast majority of Upanishad translations that you can buy come with various notes and comments by the translator for this very reason. I'm not sure even where to purchase an English translation of the Upanishads which doesn't have any notes and commentary, but it would be a very poor choice for a beginner regardless.

[Anonymous No.16453523]

>>16453472
I’m confused about how non-dual philosophies like Advaita reconcile illusion with Brahman. Does illusion actually exist? Is it a part of Brahman?

[Anonymous No.16453530]

>>16453510
That picture is from Volume 1 of the compilation of 8 of Shankara's Upanishad commentaries translated by Swami Gambhirananda, they are online here. It's from the very first commentary in the book

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

[Anonymous No.16453656]

>>16452586
does anyone have a guide/advice for getting into meditation?

[Anonymous No.16453821]

>>16453523
>Does illusion actually exist? Is it a part of Brahman?
Māyā is not an visual illusion like a mirage, the word can also be translated as magic or magical power, and this meaning is preserved in Old Avestan as 'māiiā', and in Young Avestan as 'maiiā' which mean “miraculous power”. Māyā is a power which Brahman possesses and wields. Advaita uses real in the absolute sense, in other words something is real if it is beginningless, immutable, eternal, indestructible, unconditioned and something is unreal if it is changing, non-eternal, conditioned, composite, subject to decay. In this manner the observable māyā-universe is unreal in relation to the unchanging principle and metaphysical truth (Brahman) because of which the observable universe exists. On the level of absolute reality, or paramārtha, there is no māyā-universe but just the undivided Brahman alone, Brahman causes māyā to appear or exist virtually at the level of conditional/contingent reality, vyavahāra, and all beings experience this conditionally-real māyā-universe until it is sublated (i.e. vanishes) at the dawn of liberation.

The vyavahāra designaiton of māyā as only conditionally-real is different from the completely unreal epistemic illusions such as mirages or the imagined seeing of spiders, which are only an imagined false reality (pratibhāsa); and is also different from the absolutely non-existent such as barren women's fetus, or the luminosity of a black hole. The vyavahāra universe is caused by Brahman's power and exists as a contingent shared plane of interaction independently of the subjective perception or ignorance of individuals, whereas the pratibhāsa only exists insofar as it is experienced as an imagined but still false reality by one individual (i.e. you believe that you are really seeing a snake when it's actually a rope); Unlike the vyavahāra and the pratibhāsa, the completely unreal and non-existent doesn't even have the capacity to appear in consciousness as an illusion. It is not taught by Advaita that our subjective experience of the world doesn't exist like a castle in the sky doesn't exist, but rather instead that individual limited conceptions, the perception of form etc appear as only conditionally-real māyā-phantasms within the absolutely-real (paramārtha) foundational reality of Brahman-consciousnesses which is their substratum. But until you learn to discern the presence of the paramārtha you can only perceive the vyavahāra.

[Anonymous No.16453829]

Why read cyptobuddhism when you can just read buddhism itself

[Anonymous No.16453832]

>>16453821
>all this babble to get at nothing
cringe

[Anonymous No.16453838]

>>16453829
Based

[Anonymous No.16453843]

>>16452614
>he doesn't know about the Trinity

[Anonymous No.16453846]

>>16453829
Why did Shankara rip off so much of Buddhism? He didn't even do a good job, everybody noticed it right away.

[Anonymous No.16453907]

>>16453821
conditional/absolute reality is a Buddhist concept

>The two truths doctrine was a heuristic device used by Abhidharmikas to interpret the Buddha's words in accordance with the warning given by the Buddha in Neyyatha Sutta (AN I.60) in which a meaning within a discourse was to either be clear and not inferred, or a meaning within a discourse was to be inferred and not be presented as clear. The solution to this was to separate the ultimate meaning (paramartha-satya) of a discourse with its conventional meaning (samvrti-satya), this way the Neyyatha Sutta would be upheld. The question of which discourses of the Buddha are of explicit meaning (nitattha) and which require interpretation (neyyattha) became one of the most intensely debated issues in Buddhist hermeneutics. Starting with the early Indian Buddhist schools, the debate continued in such later Mahayana sutras as the Aksayamatinirdesa and the Samdhinirmocana. The controversy continued even beyond India, in Sri Lanka, China, and Tibet. The Pali commentaries decided this issue on the basis of the Abhidhamma distinction between ultimate realities and conventional realities. Manorathapurani (II.118) states: "Those suttas that speak of one; person (puggala), two persons, etc., require interpretation, for their meaning has to be interpreted in the light of the fact that in the ultimate sense a person does not exist (paramatthato pana puggalo nama natthi) . One who misconceives the suttas that speak about person, holding that the person exists in the ultimate sense, explains a discourse whose meaning requires interpretation as one whose meaning is explicit. A sutta whose meaning is explicit is one that explains impermanence, suffering, and non-self; for in this case the meaning is simply impermanence, suffering, and non-self. One who says, 'This discourse requires interpretation/ and interprets it in such a way as to affirm that 'there is the permanent, there is the pleasurable, there is a self/ explains a sutta of explicit meaning as one requiring interpretation." The first criticism here is probably directed against the Puggalavadins, who held the person to be. ultimately existent; The latter might have been directed against an early form, of the tathagatagdrbha theory, which (in the Mahayana Parinirvana Sutra) affirmed a permanent, blissful, pure self. (B. Boddhi, 2000)

Hindus were not the original bearers of this thought because the Upanishads themselves contradict the 2 truths doctrine
>What you call truth is one. There cannot be two truths, three truths, four truths, five truths, etc. There is only one truth – satyameva jayate. II.12, 5th Brahmana - Br Up

It is only in the 'likely' post-Buddhist Mundaka upanishad that Advaitins claim to promote 2 truths in a single verse where it expresses higher knowledge (of Brahman) and lower knowledge (of Vedas, etc). Obviously this isn't the type of 2 truths that Advaitins themselves even use, it is more a prioritization of concepts.

[Anonymous No.16453914]

>>16453656
Find a teacher who can instruct you personally and don't try to teach yourself from books. Avoid Vipassana or anything promoting itself as "mindfullness" meditation unless you have no other options. Try to see if you can find a Hindu center near you which offers classes on meditation or introspective-/meditative-type yoga, or if there are none available than you can instead search for someone offering Mahayana/Vajrayana-type meditation instruction.

[Anonymous No.16453929]

>>16453907
>that in the ultimate sense a person does not exist

[Anonymous No.16454038]

>>16453907
>conditional/absolute reality is a Buddhist concept
False, it appears earlier in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which predates Buddha by centuries when the Brihadaranyaka makes the distinction between the lower, limited Brahman corresponding to the vyavahāra world of māyā and the higher unlimited Brahman corresponding to paramārtha.

>"Verily, there are two forms of Brahman: gross and subtle, mortal and immortal, limited and unlimited, definite and indefinite.
-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.3.1.

The first explicit mention in any Indian text of an absolute knowledge vs. a non-absolute knowledge, as opposed to an absolute vs. non-absolute form of God or Brahman, occurs in the Mundaka Upanishad verse 1.1.4., when it contrasts the supreme knowledge of Brahman and non-supreme knowledge of lower things. The distance between the two concepts as elaborated in the Brihadaranyaka and Mundaka Upanishads are very small, both talking about a higher absolute God/reality and It's knowledge, contrasted with the lower non-absolute world and its knowledge. The passage in the Mundaka is just continuing the same idea as already taught in the pre-Buddhist Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

>Hindus were not the original bearers of this thought because the Upanishads themselves contradict the 2 truths doctrine
>What you call truth is one. There cannot be two truths, three truths, four truths, five truths, etc. There is only one truth – satyameva jayate. II.12, 5th Brahmana - Br Up

False, this does not contradict the idea of absolute and non-absolute realms/realities/knowledge. The Upanishads like Advaita Vedanta generally use real and unreal in an absolute sense, i.e. there cannot be two absolute realities side by side, but there can instead only be one absolute reality or truth, as absolute reality is synonymous with truth in the most complete sense of the term. This cannot also be interpreted as the Upanishad specifically disagreeing with the later "two-truths doctrine" of Mahayana Buddhism, since it would be about 200 years after the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad before Buddha lived, and then another 600 after Buddha before Nagarjuna wrote about a two-truths doctrine. At the time the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad was composed Buddhism didn't exist and there was no Buddhist "two-truths doctrine" to disagree with, only a moron would assume that the Brihadaranyaka passage you quoted was referring to the Buddhist two-truths concept or that the passage was attacking the idea of a distinction between the absolute and non-absolute which the very same Upanishad itself teaches in verse 2.3.1.

[Anonymous No.16454048]

>>16453914
thanks anon, atm im talking to a person that is with some esoteric mystic school and theyve been giving me some tips

[Anonymous No.16454051]

>>16454038
cope, these are old talking points disproved many times

[Anonymous No.16454067]

>>16453929
Advaita agrees

[Anonymous No.16454070]

>>16453907
This

Are Hindus capable of any original thought of their own?

[Anonymous No.16454073]

>>16454051
>these are old talking points disproved many times
a blatant lie and hilarious cope

But just to humor you, where and what exactly is the source which says that in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad verse 2.3.1. when it says "there are two forms of Brahman: gross and subtle, mortal and immortal, limited and unlimited, definite and indefinite"; that the Upanishad *isn't* saying that there is a higher absolute form of Brahman which is subtle, immortal, unlimited and indefinite, and that there is also a lower non-absolute form of Brahman which is gross, mortal, limited and definite? The text is as plain as day, anyone can see it for what it is.

[Anonymous No.16454085]

>>16454073
>why do my neovedanta english language sources interpret this verse as neovedanta

I don't know, why don't the massive majority of Hindus agree with Advaita, seeing it as a buddhist copycat heresy? Life is full of mysteries

[Anonymous No.16454093]

i used to like these threads but now i feel like it's just begging for the schizo cryptobuddhist to argue with, probably, himself.

[Anonymous No.16454105]

>>16454093
>argue with, probably, himself

What?! He would never do that...

[Anonymous No.16454106]

>>16454067
No it doesn't since in Advaita that person's consciousness is the absolute reality, whereas in Buddhism a person's consciousness is one of the aggregates which are transient and unreal. So, as long as you are including a person's consciousness within the umbrella of 'person' (and it would be absurd not to), it would be wrong to say that the person doesn't ultimately exist in Advaita, since there is a component to it or essence within it that does.

[Anonymous No.16454108]

>>16454105

[Anonymous No.16454110]

>>16454106
>a person's consciousness is one of the aggregates which are transient and unreal
Holy based, I will begin reading Nagarjuna.

[Anonymous No.16454112]

>>16454085
Okay so you are conceding that you actually don't have a source for that claim, that's what I thought

[Anonymous No.16454115]

>Okay so you are conceding that you actually don't have a source for that claim, that's what I thought

[Anonymous No.16454118]

>>16454115

[Anonymous No.16454123]

>>16454112
For your neovedanta claim? I am not a neovedantist like you so no

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.16454125]

>>16454110
What happened to Marge’s pearls?

[Anonymous No.16454180]

>>16454123
you originally claimed that the points made here >>16454038 have been disproved, but then when challenged to provide proof you failed to back up your assertion

[Anonymous No.16454416]

>>16454038
>>16454051
>>16454085
>>16454123
That verse is not even the only one discussing a two truth doctrine that can be found in Brihadaranyaka:


24.4.4 That great, unborn Self is the eater of food and the giver of wealth. He who knows this
obtains wealth.

25.4.4 That great, unborn Self is undecaying, immortal, undying, fearless; It is Brahman (infinite). Brahman is indeed fearless. He who knows It as such becomes the fearless Brahman.

[Anonymous No.16454422]

Hylic thread
t.pneumatic