Do all Mahayana schools accept the Nirvana Sutra

[Anonymous No.17018496]

>Nirvana is the state/sphere (vishaya) of the Eternal (nitya), Bliss (sukha), the Self (atman), and the Pure (subha), and that these Nirvanic attributes constitute the heart of the Buddha.

Do all schools, including Madhyamaka, accept this description of Nirvana?

Am I right in assuming that this belief is held as the ultimate truth, whereas the historical Buddha's teaching of Nirvana was the conventional truth?

Thanks anons :)

[Anonymous No.17019260]

bumping this

[Anonymous No.17019329]

no, because process philosophy deleuze transgenderism sunyata emtpyness is the final endgame of Buddhism

the end

[Anonymous No.17019359]

Anyone have a non-retarded take?

[Anonymous No.17019373]

Why do you care what other people believe? The Buddha's teaching is meant to be seen for oneself, not accepted because lot of people believe in it.
That said, this belief can be useful as long as you don't cling to it as ultimate truth. Nirvana is the only truth; any beliefs about nirvana are just convention.

[Anonymous No.17019400]

>>17019373
Not OP.
Didn't the Buddha say that unless you reach nirvana, you will go through rebirth? Then it makes sense to seek out teachings that would help reach nirvana as efficiently as possible. I don't think you can do this alone just by thinking about it on your own.

[Anonymous No.17019436]

>>17018496
>AHHHH!!!! THE HATED VERSES, NOOOOOOO, THEY DONT COUNT!!! AAAHHH!! NOOO!!

[Anonymous No.17019464]

>do all mahayana buddhist schools believe in the inherent emptiness of all things?
Yes. That's literally what the Nirvana Sutra says. If you reject the doctrine of universal Emptiness, you're just flat out not a Buddhist. There are no schools of Buddhism that hold otherwise. You could have just kept reading the exact fucking paragraph of the wikipedia article that you got that line from, and you would see that no, it does not mean that your ego gets to exist forever, it means exactly what the Buddha, Nagarjuna, the Theravada tradition, all Mahayana traditions, and all Vajrayana traditions have been saying. Rewording the exact same question you ask every single day won't suddenly get you the answer you want.

[Anonymous No.17019491]

>>17019464
>it does not mean that your ego gets to exist forever,
Literally no religion on Earth says this, why are you framing it as if it could be a point of contention for anyone? All traditions aim to eventually recognize that you are not your ego (and more after that).

[Anonymous No.17019495]

>>17019464
I'm fine with my ego not existing. I asked if the mahayana schools all agreed that nirvana is characterised as such.

[Anonymous No.17019538]

>>17018496
I would be careful about reading Mahayana interpretations such as the Mayahana sutras as an elaboration of the Nikayas as they are extremely reliant on Madhyamaka philosophy (Nagarjuna is called a "cryptohindu" by most Theravadins, and most scholars agree). If you want to read the Pali Canon, work through them with editions and read sutras that aren't sectarian, or at least read an interpretation that is closer to the original meaning, rather than 3rd century AD Mahayana quasi-hinduism.

[Anonymous No.17019549]

>>17019538
>muh eastern protestantism
cringe

[Anonymous No.17019568]

>>17019538
Will keep in mind, anon. But i'd rather stick to the original question of whether Mahayana schools believed in the above description of Nirvana, regardless of their validity.

[Anonymous No.17019573]

>>17019538
kek

[Anonymous No.17019611]

>>17019495
>do all mahayana schools agree that nirvana is a state of limitless freedom beyond all limits?
Yes. If you continued to read the rest of the paragraph on the wikipedia article that you got that line from, you would see that the line does not mean "hurf durf despite the buddha teaching anatman there's actually a SECRET ATMAN", but is instead just a restatement of Emptiness and the traditional Buddhist line on nirvana.

>>17019491
Not really. All Abrahamic religions explicitly hold the continuation of the ego after death.

[Anonymous No.17019643]

>>17019568
I was just memeing, the answer as far as I know is that some do and some don't. The Buddha's teaching of Nirvana was in any case not conventional truth, conventional truth is what the worldling believes. It was perhaps upaya, and perhaps what the Nirvana Sutra teaches is upaya.
I'd recommend having a look at The Awakening of Faith, attr. Asvhaghosa, if you want to learn more about general Mahayana doctrine. Pic related edition is good.
Or if you ask a Zen master he might beat you with a stick till you understand.

[Anonymous No.17019661]

>>17019611
Why would the Buddha describe Nirvana's 'positive aspects' if they were just restatements of emptiness, what did it add?

[Anonymous No.17019670]

>>17019611
>All Abrahamic religions explicitly hold the continuation of the ego after death.
The soul isn't the ego.

[Anonymous No.17019719]

>>17019611
>there's actually a SECRET ATMAN
Since nibbana does not make you into a vegetable, yet supposedly eliminates the transient aggregates, one has to wonder how exactly how it is possible for the arhat to retain his ego

[Anonymous No.17019830]

>>17019719
That's exactly the point, the ego has no intrinsic nature, no atman. It's just a collection of stuff, one of which is a feeling of self. It can't persist because it doesn't, it, like all things, is constantly changing.

>>17019670
And in most traditions they might as well be.

>>17019661
The Nirvana Sutra is part of a body of literature, alongside the Diamond Sutra, that aims to try and characterize what things are made out of. They are not made out of Emptiness, Emptiness is just how they exist (They exist "Emtpy-ly"). Dependent Origination is what GIVES them their existence (the existence of some other thing gives things their existence), but that doesn't explain what they're "made out of". In this sense, it's not so much trying to talk about nirvana, but the nature of reality itself.

Nirvana is eternal because all things are (see the Heart Sutra, and Nagarjuna), it is blissful because it is free of dukkha, it is the truth (this is what the point about atman is referring to, as "atman" is, among other things, just a reflexive pronoun; again, see the Heart Sutra, Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form), and it is pure because it is free of defilement. While these might appear to be positive statements when you extract them from their context, they're ultimately just negative ones. The Sutra isn't "adding" anything, it's just restating what the Buddha said, or rather, what he taught, the Mahayana tradition gets ~fuzzy~ about what is and is not the Buddha's words, as the Buddha was pretty clear that he was teaching Dharma, and that Buddhism is just a vehicle to get at Dharma.

[Anonymous No.17019864]

>>17019830
>it, like all things, is constantly changing.
What about Dharmakaya? Or prabhasvara?

[Anonymous No.17019876]

>>17019830
>no atman
This whole thread seems full of confusion because the atman deniers always treat atman as the "self" (lower case s), whereas those who say an atman has been smuggled in mean atman as in paramatman or "Self" (upper case S).
I realise the person you're responding to has also made this confusion, but it would be helpful to avoid talking that way since it really doesn't clear anything up.

[Anonymous No.17019885]

>>17019719
>Since nibbana does not make you into a vegetable, yet supposedly eliminates the transient aggregates, one has to wonder how exactly how it is possible for the arhat to retain his ego
they don't, arhats actually have no inner experience left when the aggregates which make up the totality of consciousness, thought and awareness are extinguished.
>but how do arhants and Buddhas walk around and communicate with people as if they were sentient beings possessing egos and consciousness
When in Buddhism someone attains Nirvana their consciousness is evaporated right there and then the residual karmic residues from former births animates the body until it dies, like how wind picks up and animates the lifeless husk of a former skin shed by a snake.

[Anonymous No.17019904]

>>17019876
Not him but it's obvious that there is something that isn't Empty. It's hinted at through concepts like alaya-vijñana.

[Anonymous No.17019914]

>>17019830
>And in most traditions they might as well be.
I think we can both agree that that's retarded.

[Anonymous No.17019916]

>>17019830
But how can one say nirvana is blissful just because it is free of suffering? Is this use of 'blissful' just trying to express its non-suffering nature? Or is there actual bliss in Nirvana?

[Anonymous No.17019922]

>>17019885
Source?

[Anonymous No.17019925]

>>17019922
my personal experience

[Anonymous No.17019931]

>>17019925
lol

[Anonymous No.17019941]

>>17019904
Shunyata is just the paramatman with added word salad and mental gymnastics due to apophatic autism though

[Anonymous No.17019953]

>>17019904
But isn't this just a concept of the Yogachara school, which many other mahayana schools disagree with about the 'mind-only' approach.

[Anonymous No.17019955]

>>17019941
Sunyata and paramatman are very different concepts, I don't see how you can relate them to each other

[Anonymous No.17019983]

>>17019953
I mentioned alaya-vijñana but there's also things like prabhasvara which is not exclusive to yogacara

[Anonymous No.17019991]

>>17019955
Nagarjuna identifies shunyata with pratityasamutpada, which is in turn samsara or nirvana depending on ones standpoint, and if one will it is also dharmakaya, tathagatagarbha, One Mind, buddhadhatu and whatever word salad mahayanists have come up with to avoid directly naming the Absolute

[Anonymous No.17020012]

>>17019991
Theravada doesn't have such things
>word salad
Apophatism is good though

[Anonymous No.17020044]

>>17019991
>directly naming the Absolute
Nirvana

[Anonymous No.17020079]

[Anonymous No.17020096]

>>17020012
>Apophatism is good though
Some degree of apophatism is always good as a reminder, and perhaps it is the ultimate way indeed, but if pure apophatism ends up with people arguing for millenia and still not being sure if you meant to deny everything or if you just meant that you can't speak about the one thing properly so you'll just speak negatively, then it's clearly failed as skilled means

[Anonymous No.17020110]

>>17019916
>Or is there actual bliss in Nirvana?
Apparently not. People who seemingly achieved Sotapanna talk about great burden being lifted from their shoulders which was invisible before. Also this one part of a Sutta gives a hint:
>I have heard that on one occasion Ven. Sariputta was staying near Rajagaha in the Bamboo Grove, the Squirrels' Feeding Sanctuary. There he said to the monks, "This Unbinding is pleasant, friends. This Unbinding is pleasant."
>When this was said, Ven. Udayin said to Ven. Sariputta, "But what is the pleasure here, my friend, where there is nothing felt?"
>"Just that is the pleasure here, my friend: where there is nothing felt.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an09/an09.034.than.html

[Anonymous No.17020117]

>>17020044
>another negation

[Anonymous No.17020140]

>>17020110
blackpilled again... :(

[Anonymous No.17020152]

>Nirvana is pure bliss, t. Nagarjuna >>17020079
>Nirvana is nothing felt at all, t. Shariputra >>17020110
This is why pure apophatism is autism, because in the end nobody agrees on what you meant

[Anonymous No.17020221]

>>17020117
Perhaps but Nirvana is not equivalent to dharmakaya, tathagatagharba, Buddha nature etc
These are not all the same

[Anonymous No.17020268]

>Noa Ronkin states that while Buddha suspends all views regarding certain metaphysical questions, he is not an anti-metaphysician: nothing in the texts suggests that metaphysical questions are completely meaningless, instead Buddha taught that sentient experience is dependently originated and that whatever is dependently originated is conditioned, impermanent, subject to change, and lacking independent selfhood

This sounds sane

[Anonymous No.17020281]

>>17019904
>It's hinted at through concepts like alaya-vijñana
In the original Yogachara writings of Asanga and Vasubandhu there was an unconditioned Vijnana or Vijnaptimatrata (Parinispanna) behind or underneath the storehouse-consciousness (Alaya-Vijnana) and Vijnanas; this Parinispanna was eternal non-dual consciousness and is non-different from the unconditioned Absolute or Nirvana itself; and this understanding is reflected in some of the subsequent Yogachara commentators on Vasubandhu such as Sthiramati, later however this changed when subsequent Yogachara thinkers such as Dharmakirti and Dinnaga held that both the Parinispanna and the Alaya-Vijnana were transient and not-self. Later Chinese and Tibetan Buddhists would later exploit the internal disagreements over this issue by citing the positions of various Yogachara authorities to support their own mutually contradicting claims over the nature of mind etc.

>We shall briefly mention here the main points of difference between these two schools. (i.e. Asanga/Vasubandhu vs Dharmakirti/Dinnaga) This school has given up absolutism. The word ‘Vijnaptimatra’ or ‘Vijnanamatra’ is used in this school in the literal sense of ‘Consciousness-only1 which is declared to be momentary, i.e., in the sense of a Vijnana-moment, and not in the sense of eternal and absolute Consciousness in which it is used in the earlier school of original Vijnanavada. All the epithets which original Vijnanavada uses for the Absolute Vijnana are used by this school for a pure Vijnana-moment except the epithets of eternality and absoluteness. A pure Vijnana-moment is nondual (advaya), free from subject-object duality (gjahya-grdhakarahita), free from the defilement of vdsand or avidyd, is formless (nirdkdra or nirdbhasa) and self-luminous (svaprakdisha). gecondly, this school universalises the theory of momentariness. In original Vijnanavada, momentariness is restricted to phenomena and the Absolute is declared to be eternal, because the momentary is the miserable; in this school momentariness applies even to reality, because the momentary is the real. A Vijnana-moment, defiled by vdsand on avidyd, constitutes miser}' and the same, freed from vdsand or avidyd, regains its original purity and joy. Thirdly, this school treats pratityasamutpdda as real causation which operates even in reality. In original Vijnanavada causation is restricted within phenomena and the Absolute is declared to be beyond causation and change; in this school causation is real and operates within momentary ideas. Causation is efficiency and the momentary alone is the efficient. Momentariness and efficiency are equated and both are identified with reality. This school, therefore, is pluralistic and subjective idealism. Like original Vijnanavada, it is idealism par excellence, both ontologically and epistemologically; but, unlike it, it has degenerated into pluralistic subjectivism.

[Anonymous No.17020307]

>>17020152
My worry is that 'pure bliss' is being used as explaining the comparative ease being freed from the burden of samsara, so not actually saying anything about nirvana, just like Sariputta.

[Anonymous No.17020314]

>>17020268
basicly, i wanna be relgious without a notion of god or higher being or lemme just meditate bro.

[Anonymous No.17020325]

>>17020268
>instead Buddha taught that sentient experience is dependently originated and that whatever is dependently originated is conditioned, impermanent, subject to change, and lacking independent selfhood
wow, just it is in my atheist materialism! Who'd a thunk it?

[Anonymous No.17020335]

>>17020325
Midwit

[Anonymous No.17020351]

>>17020325
>wow, just it is in my atheist materialism! Who'd a thunk it?
just because there is a transient reality of experience does not mean that that is all that there is.

[Anonymous No.17020358]

>>17020281
>non-different from the unconditioned Absolute or Nirvana itself;
This basically implies that the only unchanging element in Buddhist metaphysics is nirvana, but that there is a "nirvana element" behind the aggregates. In that sense it doesn't contradict sunyata/anatta, though it's still very autistic

[Anonymous No.17020368]

>>17020351
But it is atheist that cling to this transient experience of reality as the only thing that is. They do not know themselves as anything other than a corruptible creature as Christianity would put it, or as emptiness as Buddha put it.

[Anonymous No.17020371]

>>17020351
as far the reality of "is" goes, transient experience is the maximum.

[Anonymous No.17020380]

>>17020221
All the latter are used in various and seemingly contradictory ways, but in the end they all seem to amount to different perspectives on the same, if they amount to anything. Given the common claims made about them they cannot be distinct

[Anonymous No.17020395]

Give it to me straight fellas, is Nirvana a blissful state of 'being' or a not-nothing, not-not-nothing, unqualifiable and empty state?

[Anonymous No.17020411]

>>17020395
nirvana is realizing that reality is infinite penises, and youre a homo

[Anonymous No.17020422]

>>17020411
so it IS a blissful state!

[Anonymous No.17020440]

>>17020380
Why isn't your take more popular?
I would understand vajrayana schools denying an eternal self because muh esoteric teachings but mahayanists have no reason to.

[Anonymous No.17020474]

>>17020358
>In that sense it doesn't contradict sunyata/anatta, though it's still very autistic
The author of that book (C. Sharma) concluded that while Yogachara initially wished to absolve some of the problems with Madhyamaka, it succeeded in bringing in its own internal contradictions into problemhood by attempting to meld the realism of the Abhidharma-based schools (i.e. Sarvastivada) with the aphophatic absolutism (as Sharma reads it) of Madhyamaka. In Sharma's understanding of which Indian schools were the most logically consistent in their model, he viewed Advaita Vedanta as being at the top, followed by Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, followed by the original Yogachara of Asanga, followed much later by subsequent Yogachara like Dharmakirti etc.

[Anonymous No.17020483]

>>17020395
Can't say

[Anonymous No.17020507]

Buddhism is just a lot more honest about Absolute reality than Hindus. They justly understands that it can't really even be talked about, and that even the possibility of achieving it is itself a sort of paradox as all actions are conditioned.
>Buddhism: Therefore will you fight or perish like a dog?
>Hindoos: just be happy :D:D:D:D::D:D:D brahman is bliss

[Anonymous No.17020515]

>>17020483
Buddhism is giving me such existential dread. In a way it feels worse than Nihilism; life is suffering and the only way to get out is through lifetimes of intense practice, where you then effectively cease to exist in any meaningful fashion that we can comprehend, yet are beyond existence and non-existence. Even asking if nirvana is pleasant doesn't apply because pleasure is something that is empty.

[Anonymous No.17020526]

>>17020395
Nirvana is eternity because it does not change. it is so real that other things are considered to not be real in comparison to it, even though it contains all things because it is the absolute and eternal now. And from this I speak and move for my being could be nowhere else but it. To be annihilated completely is simply to be lost in this, yet here I am more myself than ever I was when parts of me were playing. But still I play, for my playing lives in me and I in it. This body doesn't know if it is consciousness that it has or if it is simply I making the Aggregates do what it says.

[Anonymous No.17020529]

Is "nirvana" generally thought of as a monolithic state that can be reached regardless of specific cultural or denominational considerations?

[Anonymous No.17020540]

>>17020526
so nirvana = death?

[Anonymous No.17020603]

>>17020507
>They justly understands that it can't really even be talked about
About half of them do, and the other flat out deny it, and then they have autistic debates over what the Buddha really meant, which last for millenia and quite possibly won't be resolved in this kalpa.

[Anonymous No.17020617]

>>17020515
>Saṃvega is a Buddhist term which indicates a sense of shock, dismay and spiritual urgency to reach liberation and escape the suffering of samsara. According to Thanissaro Bhikku, saṃvega is the "first emotion you're supposed to bring to the training" and can be defined as:
>The oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it's normally lived; a chastening sense of our own complacency and foolishness in having let ourselves live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle.

[Anonymous No.17020653]

>>17020617
great, i'm so glad I have the quality that will help start my journey out of this meaningless cycle and into the meaningless void.

[Anonymous No.17020661]

>>17020507
>Buddhism is just a lot more honest about Absolute reality than Hindus. They justly understands that it can't really even be talked about, and that even the possibility of achieving it is itself a sort of paradox as all actions are conditioned.
Correction: Buddhists are unable to give a satisfactory coherent explanation for how their spiritual Absolutism works, and as a result become determined to extent their failure to everyone else by arbitrarily and sophistically claiming that no can do it, because if the Buddhist can't then nobody can!

>>Hindoos: just be happy :D:D:D:D::D:D:D brahman is bliss
Actually, in Hinduism Bliss is just one final sheath (Anandamaya kosha) that obscures the self-luminous Real. Shankaracharya explains why the Anandamaya kosha is separate from the Atman in his bhasya on Taitirriya Upanishad 2.5.1. We are inculcated by the Upanishads to separate the Atman from the sheaths (koshas) enclosing it including the physical body (Annamaya kosha) and the sheath constituted by bliss (Anandamaya kosha) as one might separate grass from its stalk.

[Anonymous No.17020695]

>>17020515
>Buddhism is giving me such existential dread. In a way it feels worse than Nihilism; life is suffering and the only way to get out is through lifetimes of intense practice, where you then effectively cease to exist in any meaningful fashion that we can comprehend, yet are beyond existence and non-existence. Even asking if nirvana is pleasant doesn't apply because pleasure is something that is empty.
tfw Buddhism is worse then Roko's basilisk

[Anonymous No.17020720]

>>17020661
You could have just said "You are right" if all you were going to do was agree with him.

>>17020653
Nirvana isn't a void, and it is beyond meaning. Don't like it? Religion isn't for you, because "transcendental states beyond your current existence" is all religion will get you. Only the most absolute smooth-brained pleb-tier interpretations of Islam say otherwise, and even then the Mullahs openly talk about how this is just to hoodwink dumb dumbs.

[Anonymous No.17020743]

>>17020720
oh now you've done it, he's going to respond with an eight post max-character rant, and then screencap it and start posting it in random threads because you've gaslit him.

[Anonymous No.17020757]

>>17020743
>he's going to respond with an eight post max-character rant
Based, here's hoping he does

[Anonymous No.17020777]

>>17020540
Trying to do mental gymnastics around Buddhist is silly. You die and in dying you live. How can these idiots that have experienced nothing dare to say what it is, what I have but a drop of? My existence bundles up my aggregates and I say that I have a self. It is so because it is so. What truly needs to die are all these people talking about things, who have apparently experienced nothing at all. They don't even know themselves. They are so ignorant that they don't even understand anything at all. That's why they fight each other.

[Anonymous No.17020778]

>>17020720
>You could have just said "You are right" if all you were going to do was agree with him.
But we don't agree, he claimed that "they justly understand that it can't really even be talked about", and I was disputing whether or not this claim of theirs was in fact justly reached.

[Anonymous No.17020813]

>>17020778
Nagarjuna's Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way goes over this. Start there.

Well, no, start with In the Buddha's Words and the Heart Sutra before you get to the Fundamental Verses.

[Anonymous No.17020833]

>>17020777
>just sit, bro

[Anonymous No.17020837]

>>17020813
>goes over this.
goes over what?

[Anonymous No.17020854]

>>17020837
Your entire problem with ineffability.

[Anonymous No.17020872]

>>17020813
Not the guy you're responding to, but
>Nagarjuna's Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way
Buy any modern edition and you will see the introduction shit over all the other editions' interpretations. Earlier someone posted Chandradhar Sharma's take on it, which in other threads Nagarjunafags have disavowed. The MMK does nothing for me in terms of clearing up the (perceived) mess of Buddhist doctrine, since interpretations of it diverge so wildly that some even hold it to teach the polar opposite of what others claim.

[Anonymous No.17020894]

>>17020854
>Your entire problem
which is?

[Anonymous No.17020945]

>>17020872
That's why you get an edition with commentary. Siderits does this. This Protestant idea that you can just take a book and "interpret it" free of any context is absolutely ludicrous. This is ESPECIALLY the case with a book like the MMK, where it was intentionally written in a terse format with an actual line-by-line explanation given to the student after they've memorized it (this format was adopted to allow monks to mentally carry sutras around when they couldn't be sure that they'd actually be able to move physical books or scrolls).

This is also why you should get a translation by an impartial academic or a Buddhist and not a Hindu, by the way.

>>17020894
That it simply is. Some things are beyond words. If you've never experienced anything like this, I am genuinely sorry for you.

[Anonymous No.17020976]

>>17020945
>That's why you get an edition with commentary
That's what I meant, sorry if I wasn't clear. I haven't even seen editions without commentary for sale.
I have one German edition and two English ones, each with scholarly commentary. I have read the section on Madhyamaka in the forementioned Chandradhar Sharma, and have read articles online. I still don't know, in the end, what the MMK really taught.

[Anonymous No.17021010]

>>17020945
>This is also why you should get a translation by an impartial academic
And what are we to make of this when even some of the so-called 'impartial academics' (much like jumbo shrimp) brought forward by /lit/ Buddhists as Nagarjuna experts make sweepingly partisan claims rejected by Buddhist tradition, such as when David Kalupuhana in his MMK translation labeled Chandrakirti a "crypto-Vedantist"

[Anonymous No.17021043]

>>17020945
>That it simply is. Some things are beyond words.
my disputation was not whether or not the Absolute itself can be encapsulating in language, but rather I was disputing the validity of the separate-but-related assertion maintained by some Buddhists that you cannot correctly engage in metaphysics which describes the Absolute itself in positive terms

[Anonymous No.17021074]

>>17020976
Siderits is on libgen. Part of why I recommend this one is that it includes commentary from people who were taught the "extended meaning" of the MMK. That is, Nagarjuna's exposition on what the 80 lines-to-be-memorized actually meant. He did write a few of these out, so perhaps there was one for the MMK that is now lost.

I do totally agree that it's a format that makes textual understanding far more difficult than it needs to be, however.

>>17021010
This is why you actually read, and look at commentary. If you're just taking one person as gospel, ESPECIALLY on hermeneutics, then you're doing it wrong. The Buddha himself says not to do this.

[Anonymous No.17021079]

>>17021043
to clarify, the latter does so while pointing the way to an immediate and intuitive understanding which is not itself completely mappable 1:1 to language

[Anonymous No.17021098]

>>17019464
>There are no schools of Buddhism that hold otherwise.
https://buddhanature.tsadra.org/index.php/Articles/Introduction_to_Dzogchen_and_Buddha-Nature

[Anonymous No.17021129]

>>17021098
Yes, thank you for providing an article that demonstrates that Dzogchen holds the same basic opinion as all Buddhist schools.

[Anonymous No.17021254]

>>17021129
I'm not that guy, but you seem to be intentionally obfuscating and trying to avoid admitting that there has been a long history of debate between the Tibetan Buddhist schools themselves over the nature of emptiness, and on whether the Absolute is empty of self-nature (Rantong) or whether the Absolute is merely empty of other-nature (shentong) and has its own effulgent existence. And some Tibetan schools and figures like Dolpopa and select Kagyu/Nyingma teachers have concluded before that the Shentong view is the absolute truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangtong-Shentong

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/652239/summary

[Anonymous No.17021479]

>>17021254

>This Tibetan debate on the nature of ‘emptiness’ is of particular relevance to the Tathagata-garbha. Those of the other-emptiness view see the other-empty pure reality as the Tathagata-garbha, interpreted as a pre-existent reality that just needs uncovering: it is a radiance that is empty of defilements. Those of the self-emptiness view regard talk of ‘Tathagata-garbha’ as simply a way of saying that emptiness of inherent nature of the minds of beings means that they are capable of ultimate change, so that they can become Buddhas. The latter view downplays the idea of the radiance of the mind, uncovered in meditation, as the specific seed of future Buddhahood, whereas the otheremptiness view is contentious in holding that the Tathagata-garbha does not and need not change, being an already present perfect Buddhahood that only needs to be uncovered.

>In Tibet, the other-emptiness approach is seen, for example, in the approach of Dzogch’en, as found in the Nyingmapa school. This ‘Great Perfection’ practice is seen by its adepts as a wholly self-sufficient ‘spontaneously perfect’ way leading to a sudden realization of one’s primordial perfection and wisdom. The approach is seen as one of simply allowing radiant clarity, the true nature of mind, to manifest itself. This involves allowing thoughts to come and go as they will, without attachment for – or rejection of – them or their objects, so as to be able to focus on the radiance in the thought-flow itself. By such a practice, the adept develops the ability to let his flow of thought-trains gradually and naturally slow down.

>At a certain point in this development, the flow suddenly stops, as true nonattraction and non-aversion to thought arises in a spontaneous instant, with the mind resting in a state of pure awareness (rigpa), thusness, empty of constructing ‘objects’, motionless. This is seen as the sudden attainment of enlightenment, the unproduced spontaneous perfection of the primordial Buddha Samantabhadra, personification of the ‘Dharma-body’ – or at least a foretaste of this. The self-emptiness approach to enlightenment, though, is a more gradualist one

http://buddhist-world.com/mahayana/tathagata-garbha/self-emptiness-and-other-emptiness/

[Anonymous No.17021526]

>>17019538
>Nagarjuna is a cryptohindu
>Shankara is a cryptobuddhist
What is this strand of autism called

[Anonymous No.17021712]

>it’s another guenonfag tries to meme himself to promote Hinduism but gets clowned on by Buddhists episode

[Anonymous No.17021735]

>Mahayana
>having anything to do with the teachings of the Buddha

[Anonymous No.17021739]

>it's another 'anti-guenonfag starts talking to himself about his eternal boogeyman guenonfag in the midst of an otherwise informative thread' episode

[Anonymous No.17021816]

>>17021254
Rangtong vs Shentong is not about whether or not there is an atman, because both sides are completely in line with anatman. Both sides totally accept that there is no eternal ego. The fact that they use आत्मन् as a reflexive pronoun at various points is confusing, I agree. That doesn't change the fact that they are both fundamentally in line with anatman.

Rentong vs Shentong is about the precise nature of Emptiness and what Empty things are made of it. It's closer to the the constitutional monism of the Pre-Socratics than it is to the "NO REALLY GUYS IF WE REWORD THE SAME FUCKING QUESTION FOR THE EIGHT HUNDREDTH TIME IT WILL LET ME HAVE AN ETERNAL EGO THAT NEVER GOES AWAY!" that these threads always devolve into.

[Anonymous No.17021834]

>>17021254
>>17021479
Good posts.

[Anonymous No.17021918]

>>17021712
based
>>17021739
cringe

[Anonymous No.17022025]

>>17021526
second one is historically valid, first one I'm not so sure.

[Anonymous No.17022036]

>>17021816
Very important if it leads to a Spinoza's position of substance (shentong's buddha-nature or Dzogchen's luminous mind) and mode (dependent origination of everything else from substance).

[Anonymous No.17022138]

>>17021816
>Rangtong vs Shentong is not about whether or not there is an atman
>Both sides totally accept that there is no eternal ego
Atman in the Vedantic sense is not an eternal ego, your second sentence is not an argument in favor of the first.
>That doesn't change the fact that they are both fundamentally in line with anatman.
Can you explain to me where in your view Dolpopa diverges from Shankara then when Dolpopa explicitly says in his writings that Nirvana, the Absolute, Buddha-matrix etc are the true Atman?

>In line with the Buddha-nature teachings and the prevalent Yogacara-Madhyamaka synthesis, Dölpopa interpreted śūnyatā as twofold, distinguishing the conventional "emptiness of self-nature" (rangtong), and the ultimate "emptiness of other" (shentong), which is the clear nature of mind. Dölpopa taught that emptiness of self-nature applied only to relative truth, while emptiness of other is characteristic of ultimate truth, i.e. ultimate Reality is not empty of its own uncreated and deathless Truth, but only of what is impermanent and illusory.[10]
>Dölpopa employed the term 'Self' or 'Soul' (atman) to refer to the ultimate truth, that, according to him, lay at the heart of all being. In his Mountain Doctrine work, he refers to this essence as the "Great Self", "True Self", "Diamond Self", "Supreme Self", "Solid Self" and "Supreme Self of all Creatures", basing himself on specific utterances and doctrines of the Buddha in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, the Aṅgulimālīya Sūtra and the Śrīmālādevī Siṃhanāda Sūtra, amongst others[11]

[Anonymous No.17022400]

Lads lads, I just found a terma behind my couch
>There is a soul
>t. Buddha

[Anonymous No.17022426]

>>17022400
if you sneed the Buddha, kill the Buddha
>t. Chuckacharya (pbuh)

[Anonymous No.17022428]

>>17021254
>>17021479
Any good book recs on Shentong philosophy? Preferably from a Western academic and not a magic mountain man trying to spook the local villagers into handing over their wives and daughters for dakini sex rituals.

[Anonymous No.17022614]

>>17022428
>Any good book recs on Shentong philosophy?
The book 'The Buddha Within' by Susan K. Hookham is a good secondary source on the topic. Dolpopa's magnum opus 'The Mountain Doctrine' has also been translated by Hopkins and is available to purchase in English translation.

[Anonymous No.17022669]

>>17019400
>I don't think you can do this alone just by thinking about it on your own.
you can. how do you think people who live in times and places where no such teachings exist achieve it?

[Anonymous No.17022684]

>>17019830
>>17019670
>>17019611
>>17019491
Most Buddhism includes a soul too, you retard, it's not self.

[Anonymous No.17022686]

>>17022614
Ty. How different is other-emptiness to Greek henosis?

[Anonymous No.17022812]

>>17022686
That's a complicated subject, which I am not qualified to comment on, as I am not extensively familiar with the different meanings that both terms can have within both Neoplatonism and Vajrayana. I will say though that insofar as the term henosis implies an attainable union not yet actualized, it differs from Shentong as the Vajrayanists who hold to it are (like the Advaitins) speaking about something that we are already in a union with so to speak, but this is virtually obscured because of ignorance of its nature and existence. It seems to be possible to read Plotinus et al as agreeing in some ways with this viewpoint though.

[Anonymous No.17022820]

>>17020515
not really. you just don't get religion and can't think outside of your worldview.

[Anonymous No.17022874]

>>17022820
what he said about it isn't wrong though, that's generally what Buddhist doctrine is, you just don't like what his conclusions about it are

[Anonymous No.17023076]

Buddhism is decadent escapism for rich kids weary of palace life.

[Anonymous No.17023674]

The mahayana bugmen created their own parinirvana fan fiction where they crammed their buddhanature crap in it because they seethed that their circle jerking is not found in original sutras

>According to Sallie B. King, the sutra does not represent a major innovation, & is rather unsystematic, which made it "a fruitful one for later students & commentators, who were obliged to create their own order & bring it to the text". According to King, its most important innovation is the linking of the term buddhadhātu with tathagatagarbha. The "nature of the Buddha" is presented as a timeless, eternal "Self", which is akin to the tathagatagarbha, the innate possibility in every sentient being to attain Buddha-hood & manifest this timeless Buddha-nature. "[I]t is obvious that the Mahaparinirvana Sutra does not consider it impossible for a Buddhist to affirm an atman provided it is clear what the correct understanding of this concept is, & indeed the sutra clearly sees certain advantages in doing so."

>>The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṅa Sūtra, especially influential in East Asian Buddhist thought, goes so far as to speak of it as our true self (ātman). Its precise metaphysical & ontological status is, however, open to interpretation in the terms of different Mahāyāna philosophical schools; for the Madhyamikas it must be empty of its own existence like everything else; for the Yogacarins, following the Laṅkāv


>The existence of the tathagatagarbha must be taken on faith:
>>Essentially the Buddha asks his audience to accept the existence of buddha-nature [tathagatagarbha] on faith [...] the importance of faith in the teachings of the Nirvana Sutra as a whole must not be overlooked.

[Anonymous No.17023677]

Origins & development

>According to Shimoda Masahiro, the authors of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra were leaders & advocates of stupa-worship. The term buddhadhātu originally referred to śarīra or physical relics of the Buddha. The authors of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra used the teachings of the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra to reshape the worship of the śarīra into worship of the inner Buddha as a principle of salvation: the Buddha-nature. "Buddhadhātu" came to be used in place of tathagatagarbha, referring to a concrete entity existing inside the person. Sasaki, in a review of Shimoda, conveys a key premise of Shimoda's work, namely, that the origins of Mahayana Buddhism & the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra are entwined.

>The Indian version of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra underwent a number of stages in its composition. Masahiro Shimoda discerns two versions:

>>a short proto-Nirvāṇa Sūtra, which was, he argues, probably not distinctively Mahāyāna, but quasi-Mahāsāṃghika in origin & would date to 100 CE, if not even earlier; an expanded version of this core text was then developed & would have comprised chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 & 7 of the Faxian & Tibetan versions, though it is believed that in their present state there is a degree of editorial addition in them from the later phases of development.

>The sutra was further developed in China by the Chinese translator Dharmakṣema in the fifth century CE, who added a thirty extra fascicles to the original core text.[6]:124–5[7]

[Anonymous No.17023795]

>>17018496
>Am I right in assuming that this belief is held as the ultimate truth, whereas the historical Buddha's teaching of Nirvana was the conventional truth?
the historical gave the ultimate truth right at the beginning. There is no conventional truth in buddhism anyway.

[Anonymous No.17023846]

>>17018496
i know at least that it's important within Shin

[Anonymous No.17023898]

>>17020515
>you then effectively cease to exist in any meaningful fashion
Wrong

[Anonymous No.17023945]

>>17018496
Different school place different emphasis/path/scripture focus.

AFAIK, Nirvana sutra is popular one amongst the Chinese/East Asian(korean/japanese) variants of Mahayana. Not there are differences between Nirvana sutra of Chinese and Tibetan. There are few more chapters in the Chinese version afaik.

[Anonymous No.17024019]

>>17019830
>>Nirvana is eternal because all things are (see the Heart Sutra, and Nagarjuna),
Nirvana is not eternal, nirvana is unconditioned. It's not the same thing.

[Anonymous No.17024069]

>>17020281
Imagine spending your life reading all this intellectual crap

[Anonymous No.17024071]

>>17020603
>About half of them do, and the other flat out deny it,
Which halves are you referring to?

[Anonymous No.17024084]

>>17020526
>>17020395
The only full description of nirvana is the destruction of desire. It has nothing to do with time, merit, just being yourself, and so on.

[Anonymous No.17024094]

>>17022669
It's more difficult than by joining a sect.

[Anonymous No.17024103]

>>17023674
>>17023677
Fuck off spammer. Nobody gives a shit about your mental illness

[Anonymous No.17024113]

>>17020813
>Nagarjuna
>>17020872
Nagarjuna is a an intellectual who seethed at some sarvastivada intellectuals and their claim about what exists and doesn't exist, so Nagarjuna tried to intellectually rebuke some autism and he ended up just sperging like them.

No wonder intellectuals and atheists like him to this day.

[Anonymous No.17024122]

>>17020096
>then it's clearly failed as skilled means
Buddhism is not meant to be practices after the death of a buddha.

[Anonymous No.17024134]

>>17021816
>>Rentong vs Shentong is about the precise nature of Emptiness and what Empty things are made of it.
and yet wanting nirvana to have a nature is sterile, but that doesn't sell books , does it?

[Anonymous No.17024140]

>>17024019
how are conditioned and unconditioned different?

[Anonymous No.17024155]

>>17024019
Eternal/Unconditioned are roughly similar things in linguistic terms. The whole yogacara movement gaining momentum was due to bad public perception they were receiving with nagarjuna's sunyata take on nirvana. IMO, its slightly misleading to say nirvana is eternal and same as emptiness of heart sutra/nagarjuna. Nagarjuna wasn't arguing nirvana is eternal. He's arguing against the fetishization of nirvana as some "other place."

[Anonymous No.17024173]

>>17021816
>totally accept that there is no eternal ego
Again with the language confusion. You're using atman in the sense of jivatman, whereas those who say that an atman has been smuggled in mean atman in the sense of paramatman.

[Anonymous No.17024213]

>>17024140
It's a basic philosophical distinction. Conditioned things are conditional on other things. Unconditioned things are not conditioned on any other thing. Typically it would be used in reference to being, conditioned things depends on other things for their being, the unconditioned depends on no other thing for being.

Absolute means without conditions, from ab (“away”) + solvo (“to loose”).

Novalis distilled the problem of the absolute into an aphorism:
>We seek everywhere the un-conditioned, but only ever find the conditioned
If you can experience the absolute then you've placed a condition on it: your sense apparatus, conceptions, and mind. Similar to the problem of Plato's cups versus their cupness. We can see the form of cupness conditional in a particular cup, but never the form of cupness absolutely in itself.

[Anonymous No.17024234]

>>17024213
sorry i meant for buddhism how are conditioned and unconditioned different to the thinking of everchanging and everlasting (or nothingness if they take issue with that).

[Anonymous No.17024375]

>>17024140
conditioned means:
-that there is a condition of the arising of the thing
-there is a condition for the fall of the thing


unconditioned means it's not conditioned, so it doesn't work with the usual finding of a condition to get it arisen and finding a condition to get it disappear

The other word for conditioned is ''fabricated'' and unconditioned is ''unfabricated''

Saying nirvana is eternal means embracing the idea by buddhist commentaries that impermanence means momentariness. This is what you get with ''pragmatist buddhism'' or ''secular buddhism'', ''dry insight'' and of course ''mahayana''.

It a impotent idea because time is not relevant, but thinkers really want to talk about nirvana and existence in terms of time.
For instance, their whole obsession is with how many lives are spanned in the exposition of the dependent origination. They talk about the ''3 lives model'', the ''2 lives model'' and so on.
Then they went deeper into autism by wondering if two phenomenas can arise together and how long they last.

[Anonymous No.17024407]

the whole point and force of the dependent origination is that it doesn't depend on time

[Anonymous No.17024438]

>>17024375
Interesting. You might like Richard Sorabji's work on classical theories of time, including discussions on atemporality versus eternity.

[Anonymous No.17024618]

>>17024407
Didn't the Buddha explicitly say that dependent origination has no beginning and that time is infinite? Why are people arguing about this

[Anonymous No.17024724]

>>17024618
There's a difference between something that is eternal within time, and something that is timeless outside of time.

[Anonymous No.17024735]

>>17024724
Well nirvana is the latter, I think everyone acknowledges this

[Anonymous No.17024822]

>>17024735
As long as you don't confuse "infinite time" with "atemporal".

[Anonymous No.17024834]

>>17024822
I don't. Who does?

[Anonymous No.17025058]

>>17024834
This poster>>17024618

[Anonymous No.17025350]

>>17022138
>Rangtong vs Shentong is actually just Advaita Vedanta, which is actually just Gnosticism meets Sufism, so my ego gets to live forever!
lol

>>17024019
True, but within the context of the line that OP was getting at that's what the "eternal" is getting at. Is this a translation issue? Yes, I agree. Buddhism is full of them. It's why autists who don't read books get hung up on "consciousness".

[Anonymous No.17025368]

So this is the power of Buddhism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-hsCfIOasM

[Anonymous No.17025407]

>>17025368
I love how tibetans believe ngondro is buddhist and will help them reach the truth. Mahayana is really spirituality for the bugman.

[Anonymous No.17025437]

>>17025368
>>17025407
absolutely obsessed

[Anonymous No.17025440]

>>17025368
>The Cultural Revolution was wron-

[Anonymous No.17025442]

Namu Amida Butsu

[Anonymous No.17025444]

>>17022820
>you just don't get religion
No because with literally every other religion on earth, I don't have this problem.

[Anonymous No.17025457]

>>17025444
The other guy is wrong, you just don't understand buddhism specifically

[Anonymous No.17025463]

>>17020515
>Buddhism is giving me such existential dread. In a way it feels worse than Nihilism; life is suffering and the only way to get out is through lifetimes of intense practice
Give up your delusions of self-power and accept the Other Power.

[Anonymous No.17025476]

>>17025368
These people needed British rule to ban this shit like wife immolation and thugee cults in India. Would have been objectively better off if Islam hadn't stopped at the foothills. Why the Communists allow it idk.

[Anonymous No.17025477]

>>17025463
>the Other Power.
What's that

[Anonymous No.17025513]

>>17025477
"inshallah" basically, to accept your own powerlessness and stop struggling

[Anonymous No.17025519]

>>17025513
There is no higher power in Buddhism unless you're a pure land follower
You are also not powerless since you are able to achieve nirvana

[Anonymous No.17025535]

>>17025519
Are you able to achieve nirvana?

[Anonymous No.17025539]

>>17025535
Presumably

[Anonymous No.17025562]

>>17025539
That's the spirit.

[Jesus No.17025568]

>>17018496
what a bullshit, af.

[Anonymous No.17025649]

>>17025457
Please elaborate on my misunderstanding.

[Anonymous No.17025677]

is the goal of buddhism to end suffering?

[Anonymous No.17025683]

>>17025649
>life is suffering
No, the original teaching is "suffering exists"
>the only way to get out is through lifetimes of intense practice
No, pretty much all Mahayana and Vajrayana sects deny this and say you can reach enlightenment in this lifetime if you apply yourself. In Theravada you'd need to become a monk, but you can become a stream enterer in this lifetime without becoming a monk and that's very good too.
>you then effectively cease to exist in any meaningful fashion that we can comprehend
This doesn't mean what you think it means. Nirvana is not annihilation in the sense of nothingness, as it is above existence and nonexistence. Arguing about Nirvana leads nowhere though, the Buddha said you shouldn't be hung up on what it is and just know that it is something to strive towards.
>pleasure is something that is empty
Empty in Buddhism means dependently arisen. It does not mean meaningless or nonexistent.

[Anonymous No.17025699]

>>17025350
Is this bait? It has been explained to you a number of times that the Atman spoken of here is not the ego

[Anonymous No.17025720]

>>17025368
>noooo you have to practice yoga in padmasana otherwise it's not Buddhisterino!!

[Anonymous No.17025728]

>>17025442
Is Amidism just Buddhist bhakti yoga?

[Anonymous No.17025756]

>>17025350
I didn't say that Rangton vs Shentong was "just Advaita", I asked you to explain where you thought Dolpopa and Shankara differed, and what your response was to Dolpopas identifying of Nirvana as the "true Self" and supreme Self", and why this contrasted with your prior insistence that all schools who adhere to Shentong are fully in line with anatta teachings. How can this be so when Dolpopa evidently uses Atman just as Vedantins do? You are clearly wrong but you failed to provide a response. It shows that you don't actually know that much about Vajrayana and are just projecting your partisan take onto all of Buddhism. I was hoping for a serious answer but the best you had was a greentext strawman which didn't address the question.

[Anonymous No.17025769]

>>17025756
Not him but if a school rejects anatta, is it really Buddhist?

[Anonymous No.17025809]

>>17025728
i don't know what that is but from a glance at wiki, i see similarities, maybe you can enlighten me on it

another comparison is islam: practice: nianfo/dhikr, goal: samadhi/fana

there is a schism within what is considered Pure Land:
some see it as i explained above, nianfo as means to an end
others see faith as the end, and nianfo as merely thankfulness and devotion given after attaining faith

the reason for the split being that the latter believe the former reeks too much of "self-power" - the latter group obviously diverging most radically from buddhism and essentially being a kind of monotheism

[Anonymous No.17025817]

>>17025699
I don't think it is bait, but when the conversation is pointing towards areas he would rather it not go, he is trying to misdirect people through sleight-of-hand such as by switching the Paramatman and ego when its convenient for his argument. I have observed the same phenomena before viz other related topics. One of the main Buddhist posters on lit/ seems to be quite intellectually dishonest and quite adept in the art of switching goalposts.
>>17025769
If don't know, Buddhist themselves are divided on what anatta means according to their sect anyway and the various Mahayana sutras say all sorts of different things about Atman/tathagatagarbha etc anway. How would you even make a rule of what "authentic anatta" is when Buddha never even unequivocally states once in the Pali Canon that there is no Atman or that the Atman doesn't exist?

[Anonymous No.17025821]

though maybe calling it monotheism isn't a useful description... more devotion to one buddha but not a rejection of the existence of others

[Anonymous No.17025828]

>>17025699
That's what I've been saying, retard.

>>17025756
>I didn't say that Rangtong vs Shentong was "just Advaita", I just said that it's just Advaita Vedanta, therefore my ego gets to live forever!
Yeah, and the Buddha was a time traveler and stole everything from Shankara, blah blah blah. We've heard this all before. Fuck off with your schizobabble.

[Anonymous No.17025832]

>>17025817
>when Buddha never even unequivocally states once in the Pali Canon that there is no Atman or that the Atman doesn't exist?
Is that true?
How would we know anyway, the Pali canon isn't even entirely translated
I've been trying to figure out how the hell anatta and shunyata can possibly make sense alongisde concepts like tathagatagarbha, dharmakaya etc and so far I have not received a satisfactory answer. Should I just go ask actual monks?

[Anonymous No.17025862]

>>17025832
The Pali Canon has been translated entirely to English, several times.

The Buddha states several times that there is no atman. There are entire sutras in the Pali Canon dedicated to this. The anon you're talking to is trying to argue that the Buddha was actually a practitioner of Advaita Vedanta. This is on its face absurd, how could he be teaching a doctrine in the 400sBC that would not be invented until the 700sAD?

As anons have said up thread, and as anons have linked up thread, these higher concepts are closer to discussions about material. There is no atman, but what are things made out of? You can still, for example, have anatta alongside dharmakaya precised because dharmakaya does not posit an atman (in the sense that we are using it here, that is a non-composite eternal unchanging ego that makes you "you").

Instead of /lit/, you should read books by monks, and go talk to monks. You should also keep in mind that these are Vajrayana concepts, and there is no consensus within Vajrayana about these higher concepts, let alone within the Mahayana as a whole. Go read the Heart Sutra. Get Red Pine's translation, he uses line-by-line commentary from seven historical masters.

[Anonymous No.17025874]

>>17025862
I'm not talking about ego but about an eternal 'thing' equivalent to paramatman. These higher concepts are described in a way suspiciously similar to it. It's unrelated to ego, ego is a transient thing that goes away like all other things that make you 'you', but this is not the subject matter.
>these are Vajrayana concepts
Bodhicitta and tathagatagarbha are Mahayanist ideas, the former especially is agreed upon by most schools.

[Anonymous No.17025876]

>>17025862
>The anon you're talking to is trying to argue that the Buddha was actually a practitioner of Advaita Vedanta
yeah that seems to be a running problem in these threads, retards who got memed into thinking a french larper was some kind of islamic mystic muddying the waters and thinking that maybe if they reword the same question for the hundredth time they will finally be able to put words in the buddhas mouth.

ironically, its actually the opposite as shankara was the one who was just taking buddhism and tweaking it a little.

[Anonymous No.17025884]

I love these Buddhist threads so much. I never post in them or rarely to ask a question but I appreciate all you autists

[Anonymous No.17025895]

>>17025874
This is a recurring criticism of you Advaita Vedatins, and a historical one at that levied by other Hindus. Whenever anyone tries to pin down what exactly you believe, you just shrink it away. Oh, no no, THAT isn't the atman, the ATMAN is just a tiny piece of that! And when we examine THAT, oh no, the Atman is just a tiny piece of THAT! You keep shrinking the atman down until it goes away entirely.

[Anonymous No.17025900]

a monk will tell you to meditate and uphold the precepts

all philosophies in the world are but mental fabrications
there has never been a single doctrine
by which one could enter the true essence of things

[Anonymous No.17025901]

>>17025862
>>17025876
>This is on its face absurd, how could he be teaching a doctrine in the 400sBC that would not be invented until the 700sAD?
Very simple: pre-Buddhist Upanishads.

In the end it is irrelevant which one was influenced by the other. Both end up being the same and presenting the same problems.

[Anonymous No.17025905]

>>17025895
I don't give a fuck about vedanta, did you quote the wrong post?

[Anonymous No.17025910]

>>17025900
>there has never been a single doctrine
>by which one could enter the true essence of things
Which is why if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.

[Anonymous No.17025916]

>>17025895
The problem is that most of you buddhists, like the other one above explictly shows, are dishonest. There is no problem at all with what the Atman is, go read any advaita vedanta text. The problem is the inherent brahman-maya duality in their system, but not with Atman itself.

[Anonymous No.17025932]

>>17025901
Most of the Upanishads would only be codified centuries after the Buddha's death, however. Which is irrelevant because Shankara's thought is not the Upanishads, and the Upanishad's are not Shankara's thought. The dualistic schools of Hinduism draw just as much from the Upanishad's as the non-dualistic schools.

[Anonymous No.17025940]

>>17025910
That may be so, but if I use "experience" instead of "awareness", then maybe you'll admit that the Buddha taught something that wasn't created until after he died!

[Anonymous No.17025944]

>>17025828
>Yeah, and the Buddha was a time traveler and stole everything from Shankara, blah blah blah. We've heard this all before. Fuck off with your schizobabble.
So are you unable to respond to my questions about Dolpopa and Shentong except with ridiculous strawmen? How can you expect people to take Buddhism seriously when you fail to answer questions about it and devolve into strawmanning?

Furthermore, I have never accused Buddha of being a time-traveler who stole from Shankara, that is yet another one of your ridiculous strawmen arguments which you retreat into every time you get cornered in a debate. Buddha lived before Shankara, Buddha could have stolen non-dual (i.e. Advaita) ideas from the Upanishads existing before the life of Buddha, but he couldn't have done so from Shankara since Shankara lived centuries after him. This is all that I have ever maintained and you created the strawman that I said Shankara was a time traveler. Further proof of your own intellectual dishonesty.

>>17025862
>The Buddha states several times that there is no atman. There are entire sutras in the Pali Canon dedicated to this
False, this is wrong. Buddha in the Pali Canon only ever says "X is not the Atman", "Y is not the Atman", he never says "Atmans as a category or phenomena don't existence, period". If you want to assert otherwise, you'll have to provide a citation which shows what you claim.

[Anonymous No.17025946]

>>17025932
You can cope all you want. Some fundamental Upanishads predate Buddhism by hundreds of years. End of story.
As for Shankara, I don't care, but the thing is the upanishadic teachings were a huge influence for him and his teacher, Gaudapada.

[Anonymous No.17025967]

>>17025862
>The Buddha states several times that there is no atman. There are entire sutras in the Pali Canon dedicated to this
What about the quote in the OP? In the end it changes nothing, Nibbana is the Self of Buddhists.

[Anonymous No.17025974]

>>17025895
>Whenever anyone tries to pin down what exactly you believe, you just shrink it away. Oh, no no, THAT isn't the atman, the ATMAN is just a tiny piece of that! And when we examine THAT, oh no, the Atman is just a tiny piece of THAT! You keep shrinking the atman down until it goes away entirely.
The Atman is clearly defined in Advaita works. It is not a "piece of something", but the Atman is self-contained and qualitatively different from everything it observes and from everything it is associated with. Your lack of comprehension is not the result of a lack of clarity in Advaitin writings (which they don't have as they are generally very lucid). You cannot shrink down the Atman until it goes away entirely because if it goes away entirely there would be no sentience left. To isolate sentience from its contents or objects is not to make the sentience "shrink down" anymore then walking into a pitch-black room makes your eyes "shrink down".

[Anonymous No.17025975]

>>17025940
What does that have to do with what I said? Are you mentally ill?

[Anonymous No.17026035]

>>17025975
Worse, he's Indian.

[Anonymous No.17026055]

>>17025932
>Which is irrelevant because Shankara's thought is not the Upanishads,

Shankara: the Atman is Brahman

the pre-Buddhist Brihadaranyaka Upanishad verse 4.4.25: That great, birthless Self is undecaying, immortal, undying, fearless and Brahman

the pre-Buddhist Chandogya Upanishad verse 4.15.1: The person seen in the eyes is the Self. It is immortal and fearless. It is Brahman.

>The dualistic schools of Hinduism draw just as much from the Upanishad's as the non-dualistic schools.
That certain Dualist schools of Hinduism try to foster their doctrine on the Upanishads doesn't itself mean that equal justification can be found for dualist ideas in the Upanishads. It is acknowledged pretty often in the writings of scholars that the primary Upanishads have a primarily monistic, pantheistic or non-dualist orientation to them, although the exact type is of course open to interpretation which is why Hindu theologians do scriptural exegesis. Madhva to support his dualism had to literally change a verse of the Chandogya Upanishad by moving one of the letters around. Even on the internet encyclopedia of philosophy page for Madhva it admits that he struggled to find passages supporting his Dvaita in the Upanishads.

>Madhva’s attempts to locate his controversial views in the canonical Vedanta texts often proved difficult. He is perhaps most famous for his idiosyncratic rendering of the Chandogya Upanisad’s statement tat tvam asi or “you (the atman) are that (brahman).” By carrying over the ‘a’ from the preceding word, Madhva rendered the phrase atat tvam asi or “you are not that.”
https://iep.utm.edu/madhva/

[Anonymous No.17026145]

How does Buddhism think of every single other 'enlightened being' who was not Buddhist? It seems disingenuous to say they have only reached The sphere of infinite consciousness and nothing else past this. Surely if what Buddhism says is true, at least a few non-buddhist enlightened beings would mention the fact that there are higher realms than mere infinite consciousness.

[Anonymous No.17026155]

>>17026145
What do you mean? Nibbana is unqualifiable

[Anonymous No.17026168]

>>17026155
If Nirvana is the ultimate goal, why have no other enlightened beings outside of the Buddhist tradition talked about it. Many enlightened beings have talked about oneness with the absolute, though.

[Anonymous No.17026173]

>>17026168
>why have no other enlightened beings outside of the Buddhist tradition talked about it.
But they have. What do you think moksha, gnosis, henosis, fana etc are?

[Anonymous No.17026182]

>>17026173
One with the absolute.

[Anonymous No.17026184]

>>17026182
Wrong.

[Anonymous No.17026196]

>>17026184
So they all posit anatta, and a state beyond pure sentience, then?

[Anonymous No.17026201]

>>17026196
They all posit an undescribable state that has to be experienced and not cognized, yes.

[Anonymous No.17026205]

>>17026182
Right but that's what nirvana is too.

[Anonymous No.17026250]

>>17026201
But they disagree on what is permanent, other religions have an unchanging 'real' core, Buddhism does not.

[Anonymous No.17026251]

>>17026250
>Buddhism does not.
It does and it's been mentioned several times in this thread.

[Anonymous No.17026288]

>>17025946
Right, just as they were for every Hindu thinker. The point that you are ignoring, willfully or out of ignorance, is that ALL Hindu schools draw from the Upanishads. Saying that this one guy in 800AD managed to finally unearth these texts that no one else since 1000BC had been using and that no one else uses them, as Advaita Vedantins in these threads always end up claiming (see >>17026055), is absurd. How can the Buddha have simultaneously been influenced by the Upanishads AND no one even so much as looked at them between their codification and Shankara's birth? How come all of the other schools and traditions of Hindu thought, that claim to have been influenced by Shankara, some drawing from pre-Shankara traditions and thought, that disagree with Shankara, are just tossed aside? Because YOU personally think Shankara's thought lines up with them best? That's fantastic, but it's a lie by omission to ignore the vast majority of Hindu thought and play up this one dude as the culmination of Hindu religion.

I personally don't care, I don't believe the Vedas or the Upanishads have any ontological authority just because they are the Vedas and the Upanishads, I am not a Hindu, I am not Indian, I have no stake in this matter. But this comical lie that gets told on /lit/ is just absurd, misleading, and belies a critical lack of understanding of Hindu thought.

[Anonymous No.17026292]

>>17025809
>nianfo/dhikr
Interesting, that does sound a lot like namasmarana to me, which is a common bhakti practice from what I understand.
My understanding of bhakti yoga is too superficial for whatever I say to be very enlightening, but you've gotten me interested in pure land. Do you have any reading you'd recommend?

[Anonymous No.17026300]

>>17025946
>>You can cope all you want. Some fundamental Upanishads predate Buddhism by hundreds of years. End of story.
How do you explain that the Vedas don't mention karma and rebrith.

[Anonymous No.17026303]

>>17025828
Yep, I'm thinking it's bait

[Anonymous No.17026313]

>>17026145
It's not easy to do meditation and it's harder to go beyond this. Many jains and brahmins and wanderers couldn't even do it.

[Anonymous No.17026326]

>>17025974
Correct, this incoherence is why most thinkers reject Shankara's ludicrous conclusions. We're left concluding absurd statements that just do not reflect reality.

>>17025967
Read the thread.

[Anonymous No.17026334]

>>17026303
that's what i thought the first time i saw the whole
>the buddha was a time traveler and just cribbed from shankara
thing but as people in this thread demonstrate, no they actually believe this garbage.

[Anonymous No.17026350]

>>17026145
>>17026168
>A pratyekabuddha or paccekabuddha (Sanskrit and Pali, respectively, Chinese: 緣覺 ), literally "a lone buddha", "a buddha on their own", "a private buddha", or "a silent buddha", is one of three types of enlightened beings according to some schools of Buddhism.
>Pratyekabuddhas are said to achieve enlightenment on their own, without the use of teachers or guides, according to some traditions by seeing and understanding dependent origination.

[Anonymous No.17026354]

>>17026334
>>17026303
The CHAD time traveling Buddha vs the VIRGIN incoherent Shankara.

[Anonymous No.17026377]

>>17025884
no you don't, it's awful

[Anonymous No.17026383]

>>17026288
>Saying that this one guy in 800AD managed to finally unearth these texts that no one else since 1000BC had been using and that no one else uses them
Nobody is saying or has said that, stop inserting words in peoples mouth which they never said. The point is Shankara and his tradition have one of the most comprehensive exegesis of the Upanishads, not that only Shankara unearthed them. No surviving Upanishad commentaries survive from before Shankara's time, and no other Vedantist wrote a comprehensive set of Upanishad commentaries like Shankara's until Madhva did 500 years after Shankara.

>How can the Buddha have simultaneously been influenced by the Upanishads AND no one even so much as looked at them between their codification and Shankara's birth?
Nobody is claiming the latter position, this is just one of your strawmen arguments that you constantly invent. Many different Hindus looked at the Upanishads between the time they were codified and the time of Shankara, and this is why Upanishadic teachings show up in other Hindu texts from this time-span such as the Puranas, Bhagavad-Gita, Mahabharata, Brahma-Sutras and even in Dharmasastra texts like the Manusmriti which mention the Paramatman. Shankara is just one point on a chain of continued expansion and development of Upanishadic/Vedic philosophy that continued from the Upanishads down to Shankara's time and beyond.

>How come all of the other schools and traditions of Hindu thought, that claim to have been influenced by Shankara, some drawing from pre-Shankara traditions and thought, that disagree with Shankara, are just tossed aside?
Nobody is tossing them aside, people are free to find certain Hindu schools as most interesting or logically consistent or convincing. Talking about Advaita and believing their exegesis to be more correct doesn't entail tossing out the other schools, anymore then believing Madhyamaka to be correct entails throwing out all of Yogachara doctrine.

[Anonymous No.17026404]

>>17026300
>How do you explain that the Vedas don't mention karma and rebrith.
I have seen passages which imply they do but you would dispute that. I don't care one way or another, the whole combined Vedas+Upanishads are considered to be a revealed scripture, so maybe there was a reason certain ideas were mostly kept to the last portion of the Vedas, i.e. the Upanishads. The pre-Buddhist Upanishads like the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads were talking about karma and rebirth centuries before Buddha though.

>>17026326
>this incoherence
What incoherence?
>We're left concluding absurd statements that just do not reflect reality.
such as?

[Anonymous No.17026438]

https://youtu.be/tJfM0tyOwjc?t=977

What do you guys think about what he says from about 16:00? Are Hindus and Buddhists describing the same thing? How does this make sense if nothing experiences nirvana though?

[Anonymous No.17026452]

>>17026438
Also, any books which talk about the comonalities between these two philosophies?

[Anonymous No.17026468]

>>17026055
>It is acknowledged pretty often in the writings of scholars that the primary Upanishads have a primarily monistic, pantheistic or non-dualist orientation to them
Not by Hindus and scholars of Hinduism, as the majority of Hindus follow schools and traditions that explicitly reject Shankara's monism and non-dualism.

[Anonymous No.17026483]

>>17026383
>Nobody is saying that
>proceeds to say exactly that

>Nobody is claiming that
>proceeds to claim that

>Nobody is tossing them aside
>proceeds to toss them aside
God you "people" are insufferable.

[Anonymous No.17026501]

>>17019538
how can someone who who literally argued against svabhava and elaborated the most on sunyata be a cryptohindu? fucking retard. go read fundamental wisdom of the middle way and reconsider your dogmatic assertion.

[Anonymous No.17026511]

>thread about buddhism
>devolves into advaita trash
Like fucking clockwork. Can you fags just stay on your discord instead of spamming the board with this shit?

[Anonymous No.17026537]

>>17025677
yes

[Anonymous No.17026606]

>>17026483
>Nobody is saying that
>proceeds to say exactly that
Saying that nobody unearthed the Upanishads until Shankara is not the same as saying that Shankara has the most comprehensive exegesis on them. The second statement doesn't deny the existence of other, less comprehensive exegesis done by other Hindus. There were earlier commentaries which just don't survive. Shankara attacks and refutes Bhrartrpranancas's earlier commentary on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (which does not survive but which other Hindus quote) in his commentary on the same text. Bhartriprapancha never wrote 10 or 11 in-depth Upanishad commentaries like Shankara did though

so there are not the same statement.

The first statement (that Shankara was the first to unearth the Upanishads) is blatantly false, and not claimed by Advaitins anyway, and its proven false by that other Hindus were citing and talking about the same Upanishads before Shankara

The second statement (that Shankara had the most comprehensive exegesis of the Upanishads until the 13th century) is proven true by the sheer output of Shankara in terms of Upanishad commentaries, and the inability of other Hindu philosophers to match this feat for half a millennium.

>>Nobody is claiming that
>proceeds to claim that
What the fuck are you talking about? I just explained why the whole premise of your statement "AND no one even so much as looked at them between their codification and Shankara's birth?" was completely false. I don't say anything that supports that statement in my post.

>>Nobody is tossing them aside
>proceeds to toss them aside
Not granting equal validity or ultimate truth to things is not the same as tossing them aside. Buddhists do the exact same thing when they view Madhyamaka as being higher level teachings and Yogachara as being conventionally true. To state that other schools of Hinduism have spiritual value, enjoyable texts and are worth studying but that they don't codifiy the Upanishadic teachings with the same degree of accuracy as Advaita does it not to toss out those other schools. There are other scriptural sources in Hinduism such as the Shavia agamas and Shaktist agamas; you can view Shaivite etc schools based on those texts as being legitimate while also believing that Advaita does a better job of elucidating the meaning of other scriptures such as the Upanishads.


Why are you so dishonest?

[Anonymous No.17026616]

>>17026511
>Like fucking clockwork. Can you fags just stay on your discord instead of spamming the board with this shit?
Don't blame us, blame Buddha come coming up with such a nonsensical philosophy that every thread about it inevitably devolves into talking about its logical contradictions and the innate superiority of Advaita Vedanta

[Anonymous No.17026621]

>>17026606
>>17026616
You're the only one in these threads constantly vomiting your advaita nonsense in and nobody gives a shit
Fuck off schizo

[Anonymous No.17026713]

>>17026326
>Read the thread.
Can you just tell me briefly why that statement would not be valid? I mean, ok, Nibbana might be a Self that is no Self at all, so apophatic you can't even refer to it as the Self.

[Anonymous No.17026773]

>>17026468
>as the majority of Hindus follow schools and traditions that explicitly reject Shankara's monism and non-dualism.
The majority of Hindu schools have a metaphysics which corresponds to a type of monism, pantheism, panentheism or non-dualism, just not of the specifically Shankarite Advaita type. I am not asserting that most Hindus accept the specifically Shankarite type of Advaita, but rather I am pointing out that many scholars have said the Upanishads are generally monistic/pantheist/non-dualistic, and so are most sects in Hinduism. The completely or purely dualist schools have always been a smaller minority.

Let's take a look at the Vedanta schools for example

>Bhedabheda (difference and non-difference)
>Achintya Bheda Abheda (inconceivable one-ness and difference)
>Suddhadvaita (purely non-dual)
>Advaita (monistic),
>Vishishtadvaita (qualified monism)
The 5 above Vedanta schools all posit that the human soul is in some way non-different from God, either that the soul is a part of God, is God, or is both God and not-God at the same time. Hence according to how westerners generally use these terms, all of these schools can be categorized as either monism, pantheism, or panentheism, because of how they all posit the identity in some way between the universal infinite God and individual souls

>Dvaita (dualism)
>Dvaitādvaita or Svabhavikabhedabheda (dualistic non-dualism)
The above two schools regard the soul as separate from and contingent upon God, and are dualistic, but they are outnumbered by the schools which say that God is has some level of identity with souls.

Similarly, in Shaivism, the dualist schools (Pashupata and its outgrowth of Shaiva Siddhanta) are outnumbered by the non-dualist/monist schools (Lingayat, Navnath, Trika)

[Anonymous No.17026782]

>>17026621
>Fuck off schizo
Aside from posting about Eastern philosophy all I have done here is point out that you are dishonest and are constantly using strawman arguments and inserting words into peoples mouth that they never used. If you have an issue with that then stop acting so dishonest and try to have a conversation/debate like a normal person for once.

[Anonymous No.17026796]

>>17026452
The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy by Sharma is good. I disagree with some of his takes on Buddhism in the book but it is still informative nonetheless.

[Anonymous No.17026807]

>>17026501
>how can someone who who literally argued against svabhava and elaborated the most on sunyata be a cryptohindu? fucking retard

"Of the transient there is no endurance, and of the eternal there is no cessation"
- Bhagavad-Gita 2.16 (~200 BC)

"If they existed by way of their own essence
They could not become non-existent.
And an essence that transforms
Could never be admissible."
- MMK 15.8, Nagarjuna, (200 CE)

It should come as no surprise that the Chinese biographies of Nagarjuna mention that he learnt methods of reasoning from the tirthikas (non-Buddhists)

[Anonymous No.17026818]

>>17026326
I'm still waiting for you to back up your original assertion by explaining what is "ludicrous" and "incoherent" in Advaita or in the post you replied to btw

[Anonymous No.17026826]

Kind of hard to not mention other religions when we all share the same reality and we're all trying to understand as much as possible. If there truly were Masters in various religions and they all spoke of the same thing then the lesser context of all the religions must submit to what the Masters are saying. We need to understand and synthesize the Masters or better yet become a Master. how could we possibly understand who is superior between two Superior beings if we are inferior?

[Anonymous No.17026890]

>>17026826
>and they all spoke of the same thing
according to the buddha, they didn't

[Anonymous No.17026901]

>>17026890
This is why the path starts with right view and not some wrong views from other religions, then switching to buddhism.

[Anonymous No.17026904]

>>17026383
Good on you for having enough patience to set it straight, but >>17026483 at this point it's clearly bait.

[Anonymous No.17026915]

>>17021526
>>>Nagarjuna is a cryptohindu
>>Shankara is a cryptobuddhist
>>17022025
They are both historically and doctrinally accurate.

[Anonymous No.17026918]

>>17021526
>>17026915
Who cares?

[Anonymous No.17027132]

>>17026918
Nobody really cares, people are now just memeing about it after it became a meme when some autist created a bot that would spam "I would be careful about reading Shankara he is muh crypto-Buddhist" which was posted in every single thread night or day mentioning Hinduism, always within a few minutes of the thread being posted. Or it was never actually a bot but there was some guy who was actually autistic enough to be lurking 24/7 for the purpose of posting that canned response in every thread, we never got a straight answer.

>>/lit/image/X69vOg-TO4zD8GhOWxpJSg

[Anonymous No.17027203]

>>17027132
Yeah, Guenonfag has done more for Buddhism on this board and more to damage the reputation of Advaita Vedanta than a thousand of these >>17026773 seething walltexts have. It's a shame, we could have interesting threads on this stuff, but these autists just throw shit every opportunity.

[Anonymous No.17027253]

>>17026713
See >>17019830. tl;dr The line in the Nirvana Sutra that OP posted is not talking about a svabhava (a self nature), a self nature, it's talking about a fundamental "material" of sorts that things are made out of. The problem arises in that "atman" means "breath, soul". However, atman is ALSO used as a reflexive pronoun, referring to a thing. A reflexive pronoun is something like "itself" or "yourself". This means that you can't actually not talk about atmans when using Sanskrit because the word is literally used in Sanskrit in a manner that is fundamental to communication.

The Nirvana sutra spends entire pages going over anatman, and reifying anatman, and talking about anatman, and talking about sunyata, and dependent origination. OP is taking a single line out of context.

[Anonymous No.17027324]

>>17027203
>Guenonfag has done more for Buddhism on this board and more to damage the reputation of Advaita Vedanta than a thousand of these
Then why are Hinduism threads usually full of interesting discussions and debates about metaphysics while Buddhist threads are usually full of people shitting on Buddhism for being nihilistic, quasi-materialist, sophistic, soul-denying, full of internal contradictions and so on (as this very thread is)? 5 or 6 years ago people didn't really talk much about eastern philosophy on /lit/ other than Buddhism but now it seems a large portion of /lit/ are red-pilled about large slices of Buddhism being full of retarded stuff; and now many people here are more familiar with Hinduism, Sufism, Taoism etc than they were 6 years ago. It seems the opposite of what you describe happened, that people here have turned away from Buddhism and become more interested in other eastern philosophy. It was a predicable outcome really since most westerners are overexposed to Buddhism while having less exposure to other eastern doctrines.

[Anonymous No.17027332]

>>17027324
You're the only one who does the things you mentioned and nobody's falling for it. Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.17027408]

>>17027332
>You're the only one who does the things you mentioned
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHH

[Anonymous No.17027421]

So it begins

[Anonymous No.17027449]

>it's an anti-guenonfag thinks that everyone who disagrees with him is guenonfag episode
>it's an anti-guenonfag is the first one to bring up guenonfag and the associated autism, but then blames others for derailing the thread episode

[Anonymous No.17027499]

>>17027203
>>Yeah, Guenonfag has done more for Buddhism
a dilettante spiritual bourgeois will never help buddhism

[Anonymous No.17027590]

>>17026901
>This is why the path starts with right view and not some wrong views from other religions, then switching to buddhism.
>>17026890
>according to the buddha, they didn't
Don't you mean according to your perception of the Buddha they didn't? Do you not know that everyone must perceive what someone says if they speak to them and that then those two joining together creates a third thing? Are you so prideful that you think you can easily understand one of the wisest beings that has walked the face of this Earth? maybe you are confused because you already believe others who are considered gods walking on the Earth are wrong. but you stumble over the Buddha's words even more because you say god's are nothing, it is the Buddha that has everything... as if you understood the Buddha. You folks are no different than the Normie Christians, always fighting over external appearances and stumbling over the truth. You could never hope to contend with the incongruities in the spirit.

[Anonymous No.17027621]

>>17027590
>with the incongruities in the spirit
The spirit is absolutely one, whence there can neither be congruity or incongruity properly speaking, as these are said of two composita, whether they be alike in a certain regard or not. But the spirit is neither two nor composite, and hence any incongruity in the spirit is by necessity only an appearance.

[Anonymous No.17027624]

>>17027449
Ok guenonfag

[Anonymous No.17027697]

It's true that you must have a Right View and that is the saying that you take from Buddha to try to give yourself a Monopoly on the truth. Christian's on the other hand use the saying I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but through me, as their totalitarian proclamation that they are right and others are wrong. Both of them were speaking about the same damn thing.

[Anonymous No.17027724]

>>17027324
Read the thread.

[Anonymous No.17027924]

>>17027724
I've been posting in it since the near beginning, I have read the whole thing already and I still stand by that post.

[Anonymous No.17027925]

>>17027253
Yes, I took OP merely as auxiliary to my point. Nirvana still is something beyond everything, beyond any form of saying it is a-thing. Still, it is an apophatic essence/state and differs nothing from other apophatic conceptions of ultimate reality. You are the one being fixated on linguistic aporias.

[Anonymous No.17028258]

>>17020395
It is beyond the four philosophical extremes.
>>17020661
>Buddhists are unable to give a satisfactory coherent explanation
No, you just have a shallow understanding of what is being said. When a Buddhist says, for example, nirvana is not existence yet not non-existence, that isn't dodging any questions, its not a cop-out, its the real view.
>>17020945
>Some things are beyond words. If you've never experienced anything like this
I would go so much further with this and say words are beyond words. Words themselves are empty and do not have a self. All experience is beyond words and is unintelligible.

[Anonymous No.17028339]

>>17018496
I think Billy Corgan says it best in these lyrics from the the Song 'through the eyes of ruby':
I believe in never, I believe in all the way
But belief is not to notice, believe is just some faith
And faith can't help you to escape.

[Anonymous No.17028664]

>>17028258
I think Mahayanists don't believe Nirvana is above everything though, it's still subject to sunyata alongside Samsara? Not sure

[Anonymous No.17028780]

>>17028664
Shunyata has a different meaning in this regard, see >>17020079

[Anonymous No.17028845]

>>17028780
I don't get it. Does Nirvana transcend pratityasamutpada?

[Anonymous No.17029264]

>>17025368
If you wait until winter you can belly-slide along the snow and get their faster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkSRIuKIsVg

[Anonymous No.17029371]

>>17028258
>No, you just have a shallow understanding of what is being said. When a Buddhist says, for example, nirvana is not existence yet not non-existence, that isn't dodging any questions, its not a cop-out, its the real view.
That's not the problem, Advaita says something similar about the sentient Nirguna Brahman, the point is that Buddhists have no good explanation of how Parinirvana is supposed to be experienced since Buddha did not admit in the Pali Canon anything which continues into and experiences Parinirvana, but since the aggregates come to and end and are not reborn there is no experiencer of Parnirvana. If nothing is experienced whatsoever and there is no trace of sentience, consciousness, thoughts, soul etc, that's functionally indistinguishable from nothingness. It makes Parinirvana the same as the atheist materialist conception of death, it's not a spiritual path worth following.

And there is also that the buddhist anatta doctrine makes no sense and is contradicted by how we experience consciousness as Shankara explains in his works. Buddhists also have no coherent explanation for why and how samsara exists to begin with since they deny that Nirvana is its transcendent cause. To say that dependent origination or beginningless avidya can be the cause of samsara is a homunculus argument, Buddhists just shrug their shoulders and ignore the resulting absurd infinite regress scenarios it results in (But Nagarjuna is supposed to be SOOO smart for pointing out infinite regresses in other schools even though he never solved this gaping one at the heart of Buddhism, lol yeah right). The internal problems and contradictions in Buddhism are so many that I have to mentally consider them almost as a multi-part venn diagram in my head with one side being the the logical contradictions in all the Buddhist schools (anatta, cause of samsara etc) which then intersects in different ways with the contradictions in all individual Indian Buddhist schools. In order to not have a horrible mess of contradictions you have to find a Buddhist school or figure whose teachings are almost indistinguishable from Hinduism IMO.

[Anonymous No.17029607]

>>17029371
>the point is that Buddhists have no good explanation of how Parinirvana is supposed to be experienced
They don't need to

[Anonymous No.17029615]

>>17027697
>Both of them were speaking about the same damn thing.
lol no, Christianity is akin to Hinduism and Mahayana, never to Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.17029668]

>>17029607
>They don't need to
I never said they needed to, it's just one thing that makes me find Buddhism inconsistent, because the logical implication of the theory of mind given in the Pali Canon results in the same thing as a materialist death at Parinirvana even though many Buddhists use logical gymnastics to deny this, but this is just not appealing to me. We can disagree whether this is a problem for Buddhism or not, but it remains true that countless people are turned away from Buddhism and disregard it for this reason.

[Anonymous No.17029671]

>>17029615
Why do you exclude Mahayana from Buddhism here?

[Anonymous No.17030017]

>>17019400
>>17022669

Basically a timeline/kalpa where Dharmic teachings flourish is seen as a good one. However, in times of emptiness (no dharma), then MAYBE you will get someone who canonizes a process to reaching Nirvana (in our timeline, this would be the Lord Siddartha Guatama Buddha Sakyamuni). And of course, because of Buddha's teachings, several others have also attained Buddahood or became Boddhisatvas.

There have been timelines where there have existed 800 million buddhas too.

[Anonymous No.17030031]

>>17023076
Yes you are right in a sense because to be born a palace kid you need too have very good karma from past lives. It's these things that make one lose attachment with samsara (worldly life). Being born to slave and work for survival is a lower existence in Buddhism. Even the Lord Buddha himself was an Emperor who was pampered and had everything for him which he decided to leave behind.

[Anonymous No.17030976]

>>17026915
>They are both historically and doctrinally accurate.
who has called Nagarjuna a cryptohindu? I know one of them called Dharmakirti a cryptohindu after he BTFO some shankarist peasant, but not Nagarjuna.

[Anonymous No.17030982]

>>17027132
>the pasta that broke guenonfag

[Anonymous No.17030994]

>>17027324
>guys Hindu threads are actually meaningful and Buddhists threads are not, trust me guys the tide has turned, my own religious inclinations are actually starting to get popular I swear to Brahman (SWT), my shitposting is attracting serious readers for years now, trust.

[Anonymous No.17031248]

am I wrong in thinking that the real difference between buddhism and advaita is that buddhism's whole method is one of negation (negating the idea of self, god, eternity) while advaita still posits an eternal whole as its focus of concentration? it seems like method is the real distinguishing factor since any sufficiently negative philosophy is going to sound pretty similar at a certain point and buddhism generally rejects claims of real understanding of anything absolute anyway

[Anonymous No.17031688]

>>17029264
lmao it looks way faster

[Anonymous No.17031778]

>>17031248
yes you are wrong
>buddhism's whole method is one of negation (negating the idea of self, god, eternity)
this is wrong

>buddhism generally rejects claims of real understanding of anything absolute anyway
this is wrong.

however, problems arise from not addressing a lot of philosophical questions. the point of this is to avoid the fruitless debate and confusion, and focus on the goal. evidently in history it had the opposite effect.

[Anonymous No.17031962]

>>17031248
>am I wrong in thinking that the real difference between buddhism and advaita is that buddhism's whole method is one of negation (negating the idea of self, god, eternity)
yes the self, god , eternity is just an idea

[Anonymous No.17032244]

>>17018496
UG refuted buddhism 30 years ago.

[Anonymous No.17032253]

>>17032244

[Anonymous No.17032264]

>>17032253
You have to understand that your own mind, which is conditioned, is not capable of freeing itself of samsara. Everything you do is a product of this conditioning and the outcome works against what you are trying to achieve. Look at all the time you've put into doing what you've been doing and see that nothing has really changed very much. Maybe your behavior has changed, which is alright, but is not the end of samsara. All of these practitioners you know are in the same boat. All trying to free themselves from themselves. It may be a noble effort, but if falls short because the mind cannot go beyond itself. Your thinking is limited and deceiving you. UG tried continuously to point this out to people. Did anyone get it? Who knows? Not my concern. It's a total letting go, a surrender, a death of an illusion.

[Anonymous No.17032266]

>>17019329
>no, because process philosophy deleuze transgenderism sunyata emtpyness is the final endgame of Buddhism
>the end

you cant even talk about emptiness without giving it form
we can lean into this concept, but i don't think its possible to actually fulfill it
by virtue of even having a body conditioned in some fashion, you are not empty
all phenomena seems interdependent

though you can perceive in no boundaries relative to what is
no preference

[Anonymous No.17032290]

also i would say inherent emptiness is the root
but we project onto it from there
we energize it

take this concept out as far as you like...

[Anonymous No.17032690]

>>17030976
>know one of them called Dharmakirti a cryptohindu after he BTFO some shankarist peasant,
Dharmakirti lived a century or two before Shankara, and he was refuted by Shankara in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya

[Anonymous No.17032739]

>>17032266
>no preference
that's not enlightenment though

[Anonymous No.17032765]

>>17032690
>he doesn't know the power of retroactive refutation
ngmi

[Anonymous No.17032990]

>>17029671
Because mahayanists live rent free in his head

[Anonymous No.17033129]

>>17032765
Is it still on Paramedies wikipedia page kek?

[Anonymous No.17033143]

>So, instead of answering "no" to the question of whether or not there is a self — interconnected or separate, eternal or not — the Buddha felt that the question was misguided to begin with. Why? No matter how you define the line between "self" and "other," the notion of self involves an element of self-identification and clinging, and thus suffering and stress. This holds as much for an interconnected self, which recognizes no "other," as it does for a separate self. If one identifies with all of nature, one is pained by every felled tree. It also holds for an entirely "other" universe, in which the sense of alienation and futility would become so debilitating as to make the quest for happiness — one's own or that of others — impossible. For these reasons, the Buddha advised paying no attention to such questions as "Do I exist?" or "Don't I exist?" for however you answer them, they lead to suffering and stress.

>To avoid the suffering implicit in questions of "self" and "other," he offered an alternative way of dividing up experience: the four Noble Truths of stress, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Rather than viewing these truths as pertaining to self or other, he said, one should recognize them simply for what they are, in and of themselves, as they are directly experienced, and then perform the duty appropriate to each. Stress should be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed. These duties form the context in which the anatta doctrine is best understood. If you develop the path of virtue, concentration, and discernment to a state of calm well-being and use that calm state to look at experience in terms of the Noble Truths, the questions that occur to the mind are not "Is there a self? What is my self?" but rather "Am I suffering stress because I'm holding onto this particular phenomenon? Is it really me, myself, or mine? If it's stressful but not really me or mine, why hold on?" These last questions merit straightforward answers, as they then help you to comprehend stress and to chip away at the attachment and clinging — the residual sense of self-identification — that cause it, until ultimately all traces of self-identification are gone and all that's left is limitless freedom.

>In this sense, the anatta teaching is not a doctrine of no-self, but a not-self strategy for shedding suffering by letting go of its cause, leading to the highest, undying happiness. At that point, questions of self, no-self, and not-self fall aside. Once there's the experience of such total freedom, where would there be any concern about what's experiencing it, or whether or not it's a self?

So the Buddha never taught that there wasn't a self, but that this question, no matter the answer, does not lead to the cessation of suffering? If that's the case, surely it's compatible with other non-dual philosophies?

[Anonymous No.17033390]

>>17032765
>doesn’t know the power of retroactive refutation
I’m literally responsible for the creation of that meme. In order to retroactively refute Shankara Dharmakirti would have had to come up with some clinching argument against Shankara, which he never did; whereas Shankara completely demolished Dharmakirti’s position.

[Anonymous No.17033444]

>>17029671
Because buddha is not a deity, contrary to what mahayanists say.

[Anonymous No.17033487]

>>17033143
The Buddha taught that the doctrine of "atman" is non-sensical. The gist of it is that if you suggest an atman exists, you're required to hold that, because of simple empirical observation, its existence is the same as its non-existence. As an Advaita Vedantin demonstrated up thread, a human can function totally fine without an atman as the existence of the atman is identical to the non-existence.

It's thus also incorrect to say that there's "isn't" an atman, however, as that's just taking the model of saying that there is an atman, but suggesting that there isn't, which is still a problem because its non-existence is identical to its existence. So instead, he proposes anatman, which isn't a statement about what is and what isn't, but how things are. Things exist anatmanly. A necessary result of this is rejecting the idea that things that change are less real than things that don't, with the changier something is the less real it is. The Buddha rejects this entirely, thereby sidestepping the entire framework in which an atman would even be a thing. This leads into Sunyata and Pratityasamutpada (they're the same thing from different angles). It's important to remember that anatman =/= "there is no atman", as the latter was an actual philosophy (whether it was held by anyone or was just a possibility that was taken seriously, if just to argue against, is irrelevant) that the Buddha held. In Buddhist thought, this wrong-view is nihilism, or annihilationism (they lead into the same thing, and both are just variants of another possible wrong view, eternalism).

Atman, no anatman, it's a cloud of smoke. The Buddha waves his hand, the cloud fades away. No atman is left, no lack of atman is left. What is left? Emptiness.

[Anonymous No.17033501]

>>17033444
>what mahayanists say.
Source: your ass

[Anonymous No.17033510]

>>17033487
>that the Buddha held.
This should be "that the Buddha argued against", excuse me.

[Anonymous No.17033550]

>>17026377
Why would you tell me what I like, autism

[Anonymous No.17033559]

>>17033487
>The gist of it is that if you suggest an atman exists, you're required to hold that, because of simple empirical observation, its existence is the same as its non-existence.
And why would this be true? You have not offered a logical reason for this but just said “because of an observation” without actually explaining how that proves your claim, and this claim is denied by Advaita. The existence and non-existence of the Atman are not the same, because having the Atman imparts the light of consciousness and allows the same sentient presence to persist from moment to moment, but without the Atman there is no conciousness or sentient experience. Ergo, the Atman’s existence and non-existence are not in any way the same.
>As an Advaita Vedantin demonstrated up thread, a human can function totally fine without an atman as the existence of the atman is identical to the non-existence.
What are you talking about? That never took place in this thread, what you said was already explained to you as wrong earlier in the thread, but you just repeated yourself without providing any logical basis for your original claim

> No atman is left, no lack of atman is left. What is left? Emptiness.
Emptiness is not self-aware, but we are self-aware or sentient beings, ergo there is not just emptiness and we are not empty

[Anonymous No.17033570]

>it's another "guenonfag doesn't understand what Emptiness means" episode
What an absolute fucking retard. Imagine spending months on end spamming advaitin garbage on /lit/ yet still not being acquainted with the basic tenets of what you're arguing against. Embarrassing

[Anonymous No.17033612]

>>17033390
>that meme is mine, it was me, I did it!!
cringe

[Anonymous No.17033624]

>>17033559
A chariot is made up of two wheels, a thill, a cart, and an atman. If the atman isn't present, can we still hook it up to a horse, and be carried? Yes. So where is the atman? What does it do? If all mental phenomena can occur in a person that lacks an atman, and the atman is just an ever shrinking grain of sand, then where is the atman? What does it do?

If something's existence is identical to its non-existence, then not only is this thing inherently incoherent, but the entire framework that supposes that it exists is too.

>Emptiness is not self-aware, but we are self-aware or sentient beings, ergo there is not just emptiness and we are not empty
Emptiness isn't a material, it's an adjective/adverb. Things aren't made of Emptiness, Emptiness just characterizes how they exist. They exist Emptyly. Nagarjuna literally goes over this. What you're suggesting is a radical nihilism and is just simply not Buddhism. How could something be "made" of Emptiness? That would be preposterous.

[Anonymous No.17033655]

>>17033570
I don't get him. Either Buddhism has some hidden atman behind the plethora of early suttas that espouse anatta or Buddhism is le atheio-materialist satanic death cult xD.

I realize he's larping as a 'mahayanist' in the hopes that it segways people into his cringey advaita-sufi-taoist-hindu abomination but he doesn't realize that he's implanting that ideology into something that is contradictory to it.

He can't have it both ways, then again he is the resident schizo...

[Anonymous No.17033768]

>>17033624
>A chariot is made up of two wheels, a thill, a cart, and an atman.
No it’s not, inanimate objects don’t have sentience, so they don’t have an Atman. That is a false example
>If the atman isn't present, can we still hook it up to a horse, and be carried? Yes. So where is the atman? What does it do?
This whole example is pointless because only living sentient beings have Atmans, so it is retarded to try to make inferences about the nature of consciousness in this way you are doing, it is a false equivalency.

>If all mental phenomena can occur in a person that lacks an atman
They can’t though, all people have one by default which is what allows them to be conscious

>and the atman is just an ever shrinking grain of sand,
The Atman is not a shrinking grain of sand, what are you even talking about? Nowhere is it taught in Advaita that’s what an Atman is, Atman is the constant sentient light which observes thoughts, sensations etc. It does not grow or shrink.

>then where is the atman? What does it do?
The Atman illuminates thoughts and sensations, without this there is nobody to experience them and they are not experienced. Without experience being self-revealed to a conscious entity who is different from those individual experiences, there is no way to distinguish the difference between the experiences of yours and those of others.
>If something's existence is identical to its non-existence,
Which you have failed to demonstrate about the Atman, due to the false equivalency in your example

>Emptiness isn't a material, it's an adjective/adverb. Things aren't made of Emptiness, Emptiness just characterizes how they exist. They exist Emptyly. Nagarjuna literally goes over this. What you're suggesting is a radical nihilism and is just simply not Buddhism. How could something be "made" of Emptiness? That would be preposterous.
That doesn’t change what I said, we don’t exist emptyly either, our lived experience is characterized by the fullness of conscious experience.

[Anonymous No.17033785]

>>17033768
Holy shit you are so fucking stupid it pains me to read your posts

[Anonymous No.17033859]

>>17033785
Well, if it pains you so much then stop being a passive aggressive bitch and try to refute anything I said

[Anonymous No.17033892]

>>17033859
>passive aggressive
Stop using terms you don't understand, retard
>try to refute
No I don't care about your verbal diarrhea, I'm not the guy you responded to. Your terrible "opinions" don't warrant a response

[Anonymous No.17033951]

>>17018496
No.

Why are these threads so retarded?

[Anonymous No.17033960]

>>17033892
>Incorrect
> of or denoting a type of behavior or personality characterized by indirect resistance to the demands of others and an avoidance of direct confrontation, as in procrastinating, pouting, or misplacing important materials
you are pouting instead of directly confronting anything I said, so its correct

> Your terrible "opinions" don't warrant a response
More like nobody can salvage the incoherent and contradictory mess that is Buddhist doctrine outside of the few quasi-Hindu schools of it

[Anonymous No.17033974]

>>17032290
>inherent emptiness

the fuck are you on about. emptiness is also empty motherfucker... the fact it has a name designation makes it also empty. The only reason it is the ultimate truth has to do with the fact that it has no opposite. Every other analysis yields back results making it empty.

[Anonymous No.17033992]

>>17033960
Didn't read, shut the fuck up schizo

[Anonymous No.17034021]

>>17033992
No, I will not shut up, I will continue to point out all the logical holes in the pile of sophistry known as Buddhism. You cannot stop me, you cannot even offer any good arguments against mine. You are powerless to stop me from defenestrating Buddhism in front of everyone, and every tantrum you throw for lack of a good argument is just further confirmation for everyone watching of how childish and ignorant so many Buddhists are

[Anonymous No.17034042]

>>17034021
Still didn't read
Seethe

[Anonymous No.17034045]

>>17034021
>>17034042
Real productive convo, guys

[Anonymous No.17034052]

>>17034045
These threads can never be productive so long as the schizo keeps spamming his shit endlessly.

[Anonymous No.17034093]

>>17033768
>No it’s not, inanimate objects don’t have sentience, so they don’t have an Atman. That is a false example
Why would you imagine this to be the case? The Buddha, and Nagarjuna as I have brought him up, are arguing with people who believe that more than just humans have atman. Chariots, cows, people, Gods, plants, rocks, all of them have an atman.

You don't really seem to get the basics of Buddhist, or Hindu for that matter, philosophy. For Buddhism, start with What the Buddha Taught, and then check out the Heart Sutra. "Hindu Philosophy" is an incredibly broad topic and should instead be thought of as "The philosophy of the Indian subcontinent excluding Buddhism, Jainism, Sihkism, and Islam". In that regard, I've seen good things about "An Introduction to Indian Philosophy: Hindu and Buddhist Ideas from Original Sources", by Bartley. I'm not sure if it's on libgen, however.

It's a fascinating subject, but you must start at the beginning, otherwise you'll get very confused, as I can tell that you are.

[Anonymous No.17034094]

>No, I will not shut up, I will continue to point out all the logical holes in the pile of sophistry known as Buddhism. You cannot stop me, you cannot even offer any good arguments against mine. You are powerless to stop me from defenestrating Buddhism in front of everyone, and every tantrum you throw for lack of a good argument is just further confirmation for everyone watching of how childish and ignorant so many Buddhists are

[Anonymous No.17034096]

>>17034094
based

[Anonymous No.17034100]

>>17034093
>What the Buddha Taught
Not him but people usually recommend In the Buddha's Words, which one is better?

[Anonymous No.17034101]

>genuinely interested in Hinduism and Buddhism
>strongly considering adding them to my filter list since all the threads become are chimps flinging shit at each other

[Anonymous No.17034107]

>>17034101
Go on the /lit/ wiki and follow the charts.

[Anonymous No.17034110]

You are Buddha

[Anonymous No.17034112]

>>17034101
if you're generally interested in them you wouldn't be here faggot

[Anonymous No.17034146]

>>17034112
this. No one in here knows what the fuck they are talking about and they refuse to read something they are arguing against but instead come up with intelligent guesses after a short wikipedia skim.

[Anonymous No.17034151]

>>17034146
>refuse to read something they are arguing against but instead come up with intelligent guesses after a short wikipedia skim.
Literally me in every single thread

[Anonymous No.17034171]

>>17033768
>Without experience being self-revealed to a conscious entity who is different from those individual experiences, there is no way to distinguish the difference between the experiences of yours and those of others.
there is no difference between each atman, it is just 1 whole atman = brahman.

[Anonymous No.17034177]

>>17034100
Frankly, they're the same thing. They're a basic introduction to Buddhism from a Theravada perspective written by a monk using the Pali Canon as a textual source for a Western audience. They're both written for people who don't know what a moksha, atman, siddhartha, or skandha are.

It should be noted that the Pali is used as an explanatory aid, the Theravada do not hold a Protestant "sola scriptura" view of the Pali Canon.

This simple explanation is better to start with than the Heart Sutra, which while very good, is a bit more of a trip for someone who, again, doesn't know that "meditation" entails many, many, MANY practices and isn't just "sitting there empty headed" (that's Zazen, and it's a bit more complicated than that).

[Anonymous No.17034188]

>>17034177
>they're the same thing
What the Buddha Taught is 400 pages shorter so I'm guessing it's much more succint and doesn't go into as much detail.
>the Theravada do not hold a Protestant "sola scriptura" view of the Pali Canon.
Don't they say the Mahayanist sutras do not correspond to the Buddha's teachings?

[Anonymous No.17034195]

>>17034093
>I've seen good things about "An Introduction to Indian Philosophy: Hindu and Buddhist Ideas from Original Sources"
I'm quite interested in compararative analysis between hinduism and buddhism. Anyone know any other books on the topic?

Was thinking about getting the 2 volume Indian Philosophy books by Radhakrishnan (yes, I know it will be slightly biased)

[Anonymous No.17034233]

>>17034093
>Why would you imagine this to be the case? The Buddha, and Nagarjuna as I have brought him up, are arguing with people who believe that more than just humans have atman. Chariots, cows, people, Gods, plants, rocks, all of them have an atman.
No, as far as I’m aware no school of Hindu philosophy says that inanimate objects have an Atman consisting of consciousness, this is a strawman position advocated by nobody in Hindu philosophy, so it is nonsensical and foolish for you to act as though that by debunking it you have debunked the Vedantic or Advaitic concept of Atman, which is a totally different concept from you are proposing, the Atman of Advaita is what people here mean 99% of the time when they talk about Atman. You know this as well as I do, don’t play stupid anon. You cannot refute the Vedantic Atman people reference here by attacking something different from it.

>>17034052
>the schizo keeps spamming his shit endlessly
pointing out the logical contradictions in Buddhist doctrine with reasoned arguments is not spamming

>>17034094
this but with a Gigachad image

[Anonymous No.17034239]

>>17034233
cringe

[Anonymous No.17034243]

>>17034171
I know, different intellects or subtle bodies are observed by the Atman though which is why that point still has validity

[Anonymous No.17034256]

>>17034188
Yes, much so.

The Theravada do not claim legitimacy as opposed to the Mahayana out of having the "correct" texts. Rather, they claim that they are adhering closer to the Buddha's teachings. The Buddha taught Buddhism, which is just a vehicle for Dharma. He was quite clear that you could modify Buddhism as you wish (The Parable of the Raft shows up several times). Theravada means "Way of the Elders". Not "doctrine", "way". It's an active, living, breathing tradition. The Theravada argue that they adhere more closely to this tradition. They do. Part of this is simply geographic, the Theravada tradition is located in SEA where people can live like the Buddha did, resting in fields and groves and retreating to fortified high-ground during the rainy season, walking around in scraps of leather and a simple robe.

You can't do that in Hokkaido, Japan, however. The Mahayana take this idea of modifying Buddhism to its logical conclusion, of just flat out restating what the Buddha says. Nothing in the Heart Sutra disagrees with what the Theravada hold. The problem, the Theravada argue, is that the Mahayana put too much distance between themselves and tradition. This leads to things being too complicated, too muddled, lost, people get wrapped up in scholasticism, they end up going down rabbit holes that prevent them from enlightenment. Doctrinal disagreements (such as the Bodhisattva Vow, which the Theravada reject out of ritual technicality and intention, not actual practice) are thus results of misunderstandings of tradition and intention, rather than hermeneutics.

[Anonymous No.17034283]

>>17034256
>Nothing in the Heart Sutra disagrees with what the Theravada hold.
Maybe not in the Heart Sutra, but a lot of concepts introduced in Mahayana disagree with Theravadin teachings as far as I know.
I thought Mahayanists also disagreed with the idea that monks held the monopoly on enlightenment, leading to teaching such as buddha-nature and the possibility of enlightenment in a single lifetime which Theravadins explicitly disagree with. There's this idea that Theravada is for the monks and Mahayana for the laymen which might not be entirely accurate but should at least hold some truth considering Mahayana now has the most practicioners.

[Anonymous No.17034349]

>>17034243
it doesn't, you had a brain fart

[Anonymous No.17034382]

>>17034100
>check the book out on amazon
>read the reviews
>mfw

[Anonymous No.17034390]

>>17034382
>reading reviews

[Anonymous No.17034406]

>>17034390
I usually don't care, but when the bulk of the reviews consists of literal reddit atheists posting photos of their pile of books on pastafarianism and praising buddhism for 'not requiring you to believe in fairies', I'm left wondering why that book in particular would attract that kind of crowd

[Anonymous No.17034426]

>>17034406
any examples?

[Anonymous No.17034447]

>>17034426

[Anonymous No.17034483]

>>17033143
>So the Buddha never taught that there wasn't a self, but that this question, no matter the answer, does not lead to the cessation of suffering? If that's the case, surely it's compatible with other non-dual philosophies?
it seems true to me and a good way to look at it. I'm happy the modern world had someone like UG to give another example of a person whose "main concern" is teaching the way or lack thereof rather than trying to use a path for some secondary concern such as metaphysics (which is a helpful path for some) since if they would just go the way they would eventually find out for themselves. everything has its pros and cons and that's why it is good that there is a multiplicity of ways that lead to the same place. this is also why i cannot merely agree with some perennialist philosophy because the truth and the way is more than pattern recognition. instead of having a fancy intellectual religion I want to have the actual life and reality. everyone will keep spinning around the wheel as much as they desire.

[Anonymous No.17034485]

>>17034447
ngl that looks pretty based (pbuh)

[Anonymous No.17034490]

>>17034483
>i cannot merely agree with some perennialist philosophy
Why not? There are many paths, but they all lead to the same place.
The truth isn't pattern recognition, those patterns are just common themes in traditions used to reach the truth more efficiently.

[Anonymous No.17034608]

>>17033624
>If something's existence is identical to its non-existence
that just means that there is an underpinning to reality where non-existence gives birth to existence. non-existence is a category of being higher than existence or being. non-existence is freedom, pure potentiality from which all things that exist manifest, the highest manifestation of it being pure actuality. it is the tao.

existence and non-existence are the same reality. they came from the groundless ground because they are the groundless ground. negation of everything better expresses supra-being because it penetrates further into existence and non-existence, positive manifestation being the smaller part of the unmanifest, because what is infinite is greater than an appearance of what is finite. zero and zero is nothing but zero.

[Anonymous No.17034611]

>>17034447

[Anonymous No.17034649]

>>17034349
wrong

We all feel that our selves are persisting through time and that I who experienced pleasure yesterday and I who am experiencing new pleasures to-day are identical; and the only theory by which this notion of self-persistence or self-identity can be explained is by supposing that the self exists‘and persists through time. The Buddhist attempts at explaining this notion of self-identity by the supposition of the operation of two separate concepts are wholly inadequate, as has already been shown. The perception of selfidentity can therefore be explained only on the basis of a permanently existing self.

Again, the existence of self is not to be argued merely through the inference that cognition, will and feeling presuppose some entity to which they belong and that it is this entity that is called self; for, if that were the case, then no one would be able to distinguish his own self from that of others. For, if the self is only an entity which has to be presupposed as the possessor of cognition, will, etc., then how does one recognize one’s own cognition of things as differing from that of others? What is it that distinguishes my experience from that of others? My self must be immediately perceived by me in order that I may relate any experience to myself.

So the self must be admitted as being self-manifested in all experience; without admitting the self to be self-luminous in all experience the difference between an experience as being my own and as belonging to others could not be explained. It may be objected by some that the self is not self-luminous by itself, but only because, in self-consciousness, the self is an object of the cognizing operation (saṃvit-karma). But this is hardly valid; for the self is not only cognized as an object of self-consciousness, but also in itself in all cognitional operations.

[Anonymous No.17034659]

>>17034649
The self cannot be also regarded as being manifested by ideas or percepts. It is not true that the cognition of the self occurs after the cognition of the book or at any different time from it. For it is true that the cognition of the self and that of the book take place at the same point of time; for the same awareness cannot comprehend two different kinds of objects at the same time. If this was done at different points of time, then that would not explain our experience—“I have known this.”

For such a notion implies a relation between the knower and the known; and, if the knower and the known were grasped in knowledge at two different points of time, there is nothing which could unite them together in the same act of knowledge. It is also wrong to maintain that the self is manifested only as the upholder of ideas; for the self is manifested in the knowing operation itself. So, since the self cannot be regarded as being either the upholder or cognizer of ideas or their object, there is but one way in which it can be considered as self-manifesting or self-revealing (sva-prakāśa). The immediacy of the self is thus its self-revealing and self-manifesting nature. The existence of self is thus proved by the self-luminous nature of the self.

The self is the cognizer of the objects only in the sense that under certain conditions of the operation of the mind there is the mind-object contact through a particular sense, and, as the result thereof, these objects appear in consciousness by a strange illusion; so also ideas of the mind, concepts, volitions and emotions appear in consciousness and themselves appear as conscious states, as if consciousness was their natural and normal character, though in reality they are only illusorily imposed upon the consciousness— the self-luminous self.

[Anonymous No.17034661]

>>17034649
>all this word salad to get at nothing

[Anonymous No.17034662]

jesus christ shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.17034695]

>>17034659
Ānandabodha Bhattārakācārya, from whom Vidyāraṇya often borrows his arguments, says that the self-luminosity of the self has to be admitted, because it cannot be determined as being manifested by anything else. The self cannot be regarded as being perceived by a mental perception (rnānasa pratyakṣa) ; for that would involve the supposition that the self is the object of its own operation; for cognition is at any rate a function of the self. The functions of cognition belonging to the self cannot affect the self itself[22]. The Vedānta has also to fight against the Prabhākara view which regards cognition as manifesting the object and the self along with itself, as against its own view that it is the self which is identical with knowledge and which is self-manifesting.

Ānandabodha thus objects to the Prabhākara view, that it is the object-cognition which expresses both the self and the not-self, and holds that the self cannot be regarded as an object of awareness. Ānandabodha points out that it may be enunciated as a universal proposition that what is manifested by cognition must necessarily be an object of cognition, and that therefore, if the self is not an object of cognition, it is not manifested by cognition[23]. Therefore the self or the cognizer is not manifested by cognition; for, like cognition, it is self-manifested and immediate without being an object of cognition[24].

[Anonymous No.17034714]

>>17034695
The self-luminosity of cognition is argued by Ānandabodha. He says that, if it is held that cognition does not manifest itself, though it manifests its objects, it may be replied that, if it were so, then at the time when an object is cognized the cognizer would have doubted if he had any cognition at the time or not. If anyone is asked whether he has seen a certain person or not, he is sure about his own knowledge that he has seen him and never doubts it. It is therefore certain that, when an object is revealed by any cognition, the cognition is itself revealed as well. If it is argued that such a cognition is revealed by some other cognition, then it might require some other cognition and that another and so on ad infinitum.;, and thus there is a vicious infinite. Nor can it be held that there is some other mental cognition (occurring either simultaneously with the awareness of the object or at a later moment) by which the awareness of the awareness of the object is further cognized.

For from the same mind-contact there cannot be two different awarenesses of the type discussed. If at a later moment, then, there is mind-activity, cessation of one mind-contact, and again another mind-activity and the rise of another mind-contact, that would imply many intervening moments, and thus the cognition which is supposed to cognize an awareness of an object would take place at a much later moment, when the awareness which it has to reveal is already passed. It has therefore to be admitted that cognition is itself self-luminous and that, while manifesting other objects, it manifests itself also. The objection raised is that the self or the cognition cannot affect itself by its own functioning (vṛtti) ; the reply is that cognition is like light and has no intervening operation by which it affects itself or its objects.

[Anonymous No.17034718]

>>17034649
>>17034659
>>17034695
>>17034714
you're just reposting your own quotes from previous threads (which are just copy pasted texts from different websites)

>>/lit/thread/S16475199

[Anonymous No.17034719]

>>17034714
Just as light removes darkness, helps the operation of the eye and illuminates the object and manifests itself all in one moment without any intervening operation of any other light, so cognition also in one flash manifests itself and its objects, and there is no functioning of it by which it has to affect itself. This cognition cannot be described as being mere momentary flashes, on the ground that, when there is the blue awareness, there is not the yellow awareness; for apart from the blue awareness, the yellow awareness or the white awareness there is also the natural basic awareness or consciousness, which cannot be denied. It would be wrong to say that there are only the particular awarenesses which appear and vanish from moment to moment; for, had there been only a series of particular awarenesses, then there would be nothing by which their differences could be realized.

Each awareness in the series would be of a particular and definite character, and, as it passed away, would give place to another, and that again to another, so that there would be no way of distinguishing one awareness from another; for according to the theory under discussion there is no consciousness except the passing awarenesses, and thus there would be no way by which their differences could be noticed; for, even though the object of awareness, such as blue and yellow, differed amongst themselves, that would fail to explain how the difference of a blue awareness and a yellow awareness could be apprehended. So the best would be to admit the self to be of the nature of pure consciousness.

[Anonymous No.17034730]

>>17034718
They are not quotes of mine, they are from a book, and I copied and pasted them here because they are relevant to the discussion and because they explain that what the other poster said was wrong

[Anonymous No.17034731]

>>17034718
yea I sort of figured the zombie posting his usual wall of texts, does he have any unique thought?

[Anonymous No.17034742]

>>17034730
no, you still had a brain fart and posted nothing but 'wrong....[unintelligible pasta]'

[Anonymous No.17034833]

>>17034490
>Why not? There are many paths, but they all lead to the same place.
>The truth isn't pattern recognition, those patterns are just common themes in traditions used to reach the truth more efficiently.
they are good and fun and they afford us an image of the truth but the sun is greater than the flares it makes. the "uncreated light" is in everything. even a perennialist philosophy is not the fullness of the truth. it becomes a serpent that eats other serpents just like someone advancing in a specific religion does the same thing. it's a bit reductionist in some of its forms and people can still work to improve upon it.

monism or transcendent dualism is the same thing but people will pick a word based on what best kind of way they feel they experience it as which is why accepting mere words can never be the truth.

[Anonymous No.17034850]

>>17034833
The only thing that matters is to walk the path though, see the raft analogy for buddhism, once the tradition has helped you and you start grasping the truth, you can let go of it and focus only on this "fullness of the truth" you're talking about
To try to grasp the truth alone without any framework is like walking in the dark. It becomes much easier with guidelines from an established tradition.

[Anonymous No.17034876]

holy fucking based

[Anonymous No.17034885]

>>17034742
There must be a self-revealing Atman or consciousness, because otherwise there is no sentience who can perceive the mind and recognize that the mind being perceived has different sensations then minds located in other bodies. If there is nobody like the Self to recognize this then all minds are equally unobserved, which leads to there no distinguishable difference between them, with nobody to observe them there is no way to distinguish one from another. Two unknown and unobserved things are both equally the unknown.

[Anonymous No.17034900]

>>17034897
kek absolutely seething
based jannies

[Anonymous No.17034961]

>>17034659
>so also ideas of the mind, concepts, volitions and emotions appear in consciousness and themselves appear as conscious states, as if consciousness was their natural and normal character, though in reality they are only illusorily imposed upon the consciousness— the self-luminous self.
to me that is what Buddhism is trying to explain as well. the point is to not be caught up in the attachments and led astray by them. we cannot let the tail be the head because then our brain will be as if it ate a bunch of lead. by detachment we have a kind of freedom to be. then we can play with things how we like to. but people get way too caught up in the process, a state known as sleep and NPC. some religious folk think the main point is to escape from it all. others think that it is to form higher and greater kinds of existences. one is a negative expression of mysticism and the other is a positive.

[Anonymous No.17034973]

>>17034900
Next time I will rephrase the relevant arguments in my own words, or they can just try replying to this >>17034885, which does that. I doubt they will though as my argument is irrefutable

[Anonymous No.17035045]

>>17034714
>If at a later moment, then, there is mind-activity, cessation of one mind-contact, and again another mind-activity and the rise of another mind-contact, that would imply many intervening moments, and thus the cognition which is supposed to cognize an awareness of an object would take place at a much later moment, when the awareness which it has to reveal is already passed
have you ever tried swatting a fly with your hand? sometimes it seems as if he is more quickly aware of things than humans are. perhaps he simply has his biological methods of avoidance, it might be some kind of reaction like cats get to snakes. they react before they even realize it fully.

Neuroscience might be an interesting thing to throw into this conversation concerning what people have said about Consciousness in the past. someone out there has surely already written good books about it.

[Anonymous No.17035135]

>>17034850
>To try to grasp the truth alone without any framework is like walking in the dark. It becomes much easier with guidelines from an established tradition.
generally someone will receive some form of help along the way. but darkness is greater than light. without the framework we would have yet another manifestation of the same experience. the path well-traveled is easy to walk but sometimes robbers stand there because they know everyone travels that path, so it can also be beneficial to travel with others, unless those others end up being The Highwaymen. no one can trace the path a serpent leaves on a stone. walking on water leaves no footprints. going through the jungle with a machete can be loads of fun. walking in a beautiful isolated forest going nowhere in particular can be wonderful.

[Anonymous No.17035275]

>>17035045
if an awareness or cognition requires another one to witness it in order for the 1st to be revealed, then the same is true of the 2nd and 3rd, it results in an infinite regress which makes having knowledge of anything impossible

[Anonymous No.17035376]

>>17035135
This is all in theory
In practice, without a teacher good luck attaining anything substantial