/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20406588]

What would Guénon have thought about Nagarjuna and Madhyamaka? Did it make him seethe? Also, what made him okay with Buddhism later in his life?

[Anonymous No.20406673]

>>20406588
>Guenon
Simply bypass him. Schertel presents in a few pages what Guenon could not express with thousands.

[Anonymous No.20406683]

>thread after thread about ooga booga superstitions

Stop shitting up the board.

[Anonymous No.20406721]

>>20406683
Filtered obviously

[Anonymous No.20406783]

>>20406683
>bumps a thread about so-called "ooha booha superstitions."

Stop shitting up the thread.

[Anonymous No.20407725]

>>20406588
> What would Guénon have thought about Nagarjuna and Madhyamaka?
In some letter he says that Nagarjuna was more closer to the primordial tradition than is commonly realized (aka he actually kinda agreed with Upanishadic non-dualism, aka Guenon thought he was a crypto-Advaitin like Buddha).

Why did he think this? Well, once you really understand Advaita at a deep level the normative Buddhist understanding of Nagarjuna (i.e. the Gelug reading or the ‘wittgensteinian’ reading of certain academics does not seem philosophically or metaphysically serious at all, it rather seems almost laughable. For a committed pro-Advaita perennialist its therefore easier to fit Nagarjuna into your perennialist perspective by seeing him as a crypto Advaitin (as TRV Murti and C. Sharma both see him) , this would be the more appealing option for a committed perennialist than to admit a major world religion was bigly influenced by someone with laughable teachings. One of the more prominent examples is Nagarjuna’s denial (which is not supported by any actual argument) that consciousness is intrinsically reflexive; this is laughable because not only does it result in an infinite regress (which Nagarjuna ignores), but dismissing it out of hand with no argument undermines his whole project of purporting to show that ‘accepting that things have svabhava’ is untenable, since if you can’t refute reflexivity one can no longer say that awareness having svabhava is disproven, thus sunyata is no longer proved prima facie (and it never was to begin with, since Nagarjuna uses logical fallacies elsewhere in trying to do so as Richard Robinson points out, his whole project is a charade unless you interpret it as pointing to an *actually existing* Absolute). The history of the later Yogachara/Tantra synthesis with Madhyamaka in India and Tibet often consisted of Buddhists realizing that the normative Madhyamaka understanding of consciousness is totally untenable and attempting various stratagems of saying that Nagarjuna *akshualky* accepts reflexivity “conditionally” while not accepting it as an ultimate truth, even though if you accept it empirically and conventionally there is no serious basis any longer for saying its not true ultimately as well.

>Did it make him seethe?
No, nothing could make him seethe because he was at too advanced a level of spiritual understanding for such behavior

>what made him okay with Buddhism later in his life?
Coomaraswamy and Pallis presented evidence to him that 1) A reasonable but not airtight case can be put forth that Buddha’s original teaching was basically Upanishadic non-dualism that was misunderstood by later Buddhists as Atman-denying, and that 2) later Buddhist schools imbibed enough Shaivist and Taoist teachings to the point that they (in certain cases) circled back around to the primordial metaphysical tradition (a la Upanishadic non-dualism) but expressed in Buddhist vocab

[dago !deClb9SBC. No.20407732]

>>20406673
Kek

[Anonymous No.20407736]

>>20406588
>lso, what made him okay with Buddhism later in his life?

He got refuted by Marco Pallis and Coomaraswamy, but then took back the revisions he made. So really, he was still stubborn and insisting that he was right and they were wrong. All monist annihilationists have this vain tendency.

[dago !deClb9SBC. No.20407739]

>>20406673
Schertelfag, you unironically memed me into digging this up from my storage unit so I could read it tonight

[Anonymous No.20407754]

>>20407739
Good for you anon. I'm glad that you are recognizing the magical genius of Schertel.

[dago !deClb9SBC. No.20407767]

>>20407754
I blocked off my entire schedule for tomorrow morning to DANCE

Did guenon and Evola even dance? Big think.

[Anonymous No.20407774]

>>20407736
> All monist annihilationists have this vain tendency.
t. sentimentalist-fag

[Anonymous No.20407787]

>>20407767
Only Adepts can see the tutelaries dancing around Hitler in that gif.

[Anonymous No.20407857]

>>20407725
>reeeeeeee logical fallacies
This is of course, a silly criticism coming from opponents who believe assorted non-demonstrable gibberish like "the atman is brahman" because holding such premises and then arranging them according to the "rules" of "logic" to produce various outcomes only further underscores how useless logic is for describing an absolute and that its main utility is to smash various delusions together for the sake of proliferating more delusions.

[Anonymous No.20407897]

>>20407725
>>20407857
Time for another debate.

>>20407857 is right. Advaita is way too full of unprovea le shit such as "atman" and "Brahman."
"iT jUsT eXiSts oKay"

But do tell me how Madhyamaka isn't nihilistic.

[Anonymous No.20407912]

>>20407857
>coming from opponents who believe assorted non-demonstrable gibberish
“non-empirically demonstrable” isn’t in any sense the same thing as “gibberish”, if that were true (it’s not) it would make more than half the teachings in Buddhism and in the Pali Canon into “gibberish”. Saying that the Absolute is identical with our own Self isnt gibberish either but it connects two well-known ideas by positing their complete identity with each other.

[Anonymous No.20407927]

>>20407897
>Buddhism is way too full of unproven le shit such as "rebirth" and “Nirvana” and “Parinirvana” and “karma” and “formless realms” and “heavenly realms” and “hellish realms” and “hungry ghosts” and “stream-entrants” and “twice-returners” and “once-returners” and “buddhas superpowers” and “buddhas retracted penis” (its physically impossible because there is no space for it to be retracted despite the Pali Canon saying he had one but w/e)
>”iT jUsT eXiSts oKay"

[Anonymous No.20407945]

>>20407897
>how Madhyamaka isn't nihilistic
Depends what you mean by nihilism. Theists associate all atheism with nihilism, which is why Shankara for instance will refer to "the nihilist" when he is trying to differentiate his position from the Buddhism he criticizes and to impress upon his fellow Hindus that he is not a crypto-Buddhist. But if nihilism is understood as a transitional period from theistic world denial (god is good and real and the lived world is evil and fake) to post-theistic world affirmation (just B.E. yourself), as in Nietzsche, then nihilism (nothing matters because there is no divine real) had already happened in India, and Mahayana was a response to it. The formulation that nirvana is not different from samsara, or that emptiness is form (i.e. that the absolute is immanent), is a rejection of nihilism. It negates what had negated. Nietzsche does not have this reading of Buddhism but it is compatible with his view of nihilism.

[Anonymous No.20407954]

>>20407912
>connects two well-known ideas by positing their complete identity with each other.
How exciting, the nth permutation of dogmatic assertions. Truly this time it will be correct despite remaining entirely impossible to produce

[Anonymous No.20407988]

>>20407927
A bunch of those are just lifted from the dominant religious discourse at the time, thus not unique to Buddhism, and ultimately a concession to the culture and vocabulary of classical India. The most unique view advanced by the Buddhists in the nikayas is anti-substance or nairatmya, which is quite the opposite of "it just exists," and is effectively "not only can you not show me your x or y exists, but if it did exist, it would wreck causality, efficacy, etc. by merit of not being able to change or be changed moment to moment"

[Anonymous No.20408490]

>>20406588
did Guenon even read the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā and the Saravastivada y and Kosha? because those are obligatory lectures if you wanna talk with some kind of authority about Madhyamaka, and Guenon seems to have a pretty shallow notion of what the philosophy actually entails, he make the same mistakes Shankara did trying to "refute" buddhism, that is ignoring the logical determination negation creates ontologically, bringing this wrong notion of "emptiness" as something more aking to nihilism instead of the actual non-dual dinamism suyata posit

[Anonymous No.20408515]

>>20407927
nirvana is a empirical concept, in the same vein than Fichte's !absolute otherness" is, that is, the fact that you feel suffering arleady presupouse a state of non-suffering, a problematic-state logically infers a solution-state, since sufffering presents itself as a problem, as something to be resolved, nirvana is less a particular spiritual state, and more a conceptual part of a system, just as a language has rules to function and a cience has axioms, you don't need to "believe in nirvana" nirvana is not somehtign that needs faith, is a conceptual tool to better systematize the path
brahma on the other hand is a metaphysical entity which need some non proven dogmas to be real, not to mention the contradictions his existence posit, like being the cause of existence without him itself being part of causation, or maya being either being or not being, which is like syaing a something can be neither a cat nor a non-cat, breaking the law of non contradiction
tl.dr:nirvana and brahma aren't the same, one is a empirical concept the other is a dogmatic metaphysical entity

[Anonymous No.20409412]

>>20407725
Reminder that Mahayana has nothing to do with buddhism.
Here is the chronology of eastern teachings

Vedas:
The Jews of the East are called Brahmins and they are saying that to please blue gods during their orgies, the Jews, I mean the Brahmins , have to kill horses and cut very special woods in order to burn it and dance around the fire while chanting '''''''''magical & sacred''''''''''' sentences called '''mantras'''. Brahmins live off the royal families and have a comfy life, spending their day doing rituals mandated by the king, because the local Brahmin told him that the gods were somehow not pleased with the local king, until the king does what the brahmin recommends...
At this point karma, rebirth and meditation are not in the Vedas and do not matter. The only way to live the holy life is to be a born a Brahmin and do rituals around a fire and killing some animals once in a while. Brahmins rave about sacrifices.

Buddhism and so on...
Then Buddhism, Jainism and some materialist gurus came along and said the Vedas and Brahmins are full of shit. Sainthood is not hereditary for instance. Buddhists introduce karma, aggregates are not self, and very precise meditation and their only goal is to ''end suffering''. They do not give a shit about politics. The Brahmins get super triggered and write the Upanishads as a counter attack.
The origin of the hindus and the buddhists isn't super clear. THe latest theory is that the brahmins were some indo-aryans and settled on the north west of India. The futur buddhists and jains were living at the Norf east of India. In the South there was some bums, whoever that was, and nobody cared. As the aryans moved towards the east, they encountered the futur jains and buddhists which later mogged the vedas big time.
By carbon dating, the buddhists sutras are the earliest written indian record of any texts.
Brahminical texts, including Upanishads, are much much newer than anything buddhist.

Upanishads
From now on, in the Upanishads it's wrong to kill animals to please the gods and they say any past killing by their self proclaimed righteous ancestors was '''''''''''verily symbolic'''''''''''.
They say that sainthood is not hereditary and instead Brahmins should meditate once in a while. They do not say what meditation is, since they don't even know themselves. They just heard the word from the buddhists and jains, so they just mention the word and cross their fingers their audience will move past that. The Upanishads is a half-assed work.

[Anonymous No.20409417]

>>20409412

Buddhism dies
Buddha died a long time ago already and buddhism along with him. The Brahmins are still seething at the buddha and start to kill whatever remains of buddhism from the inside by making up new teaching like Mahayana inside the buddhist monasteries. There is barely any filter at the entrance to become a buddhist monk, so anybody charismatic could join and change the daily rules and the teachings.
The ''''buddhist'''''' brahmins like Nagarjuna create completely new '''buddhist'''' sutras for the first time written in perfect sankrit [the language exclusive to the brahmins] in the exact same style, content and presentation as the brahminical texts, replacing the word ''brahman'' by ''buddha'' , and they add that ''those sutras are totally the Budhdas teaching dude just trust me lmao'''. Now in buddhism there is a '''''primordial mind'''' which '''encompasses everything'''' and it's the ''''''''''''true self''''''''''''. Doing ''''''''rituals''''''''' makes good karma and anybody can be enlightened just by saying ''''''''''mantras''''''''''.

Middle Ages
Some Brahmin tard called Patanjali decided also to write a manual on meditation. Since Brahmins made that shit up in a rush in the Upanishads , they can't pad their manual with custom teachings, so they copy word for word the buddhist manual. But this time they call it ''''''''''yoga'''''''''''''''and they use ''''''''''''''the breath''''''''''' in order to ''''''''''''''reach Brahman'''''''''''''''.
In the middle ages, a Poo called Shankaracharya was still triggered by buddhism from 1000 years ago so he tried to refute it by saying '' lol buddha did not use sanskrit so what he says is just wrong bro''. To this day, the Poos still use this midwit to ''''''''''''refute'''''''''' buddhism and sometimes jainism.

Renaissance
Buddhism has been dead for several centuries and what is left is various Brahminical-buddhist intellectuals struggling to differentiate Vajrayana, Mahayana and Hinduism, saying each one is different and better from the others. They make up lots of contrived mental gymnastics, but since they all reject the buddhist claim that ''contionned things rise and fall, so they don't have a true nature'', they don't have much room to differentiate themselves, their teachings get more and more confusing and more and more the same. At this point in buddhism, buddha is literally the ''''acosmic essence of the universe'''' and to get enlightened you have to do some rituals, following the orders of the newly introduced concept of the local Vajrayana guru [the buddhist equivalent of a brahmin] while saying some mantras to connect to the ''primordial mind'', ie the ''the buddha'', because ''you just have to see that you were already enlightened all this time, you just don't know it yet''.

[Anonymous No.20409421]

>>20409417

Nowadays, the situation is the same with:
- buddhism still dead
- hindus still seethe IRL and online at buddhism and jainism, even though there are 0% buddhists and only 1% jains in India right now lol
- hinduism-mahayana-vajrayana crowd still desperate to say they are different yet still saying the exact same things
- judeobuddhism taking off, which is just the feel-good perennialist atheist version of mahayana-vajrayana. Atheist bugwomen rave about westerners such as ''Sylvia Boorstein'' and ''Steve Hagen'' and 'René Guénon"
- more lay people try to do meditation, but they either do the non-buddhist meditation like all the zen ''do nothing'' crap, all the mahayana worship crap, all the vajrayana devotion crap, or do the the meditation from buddhist commentaries also written centuries after the death of the buddha.

[Anonymous No.20409526]

Buddhism isn't "dead" unless you are expecting some sort of high church Christendom-like situation where all the Buddhists are corralled by a princely archbishop with branch offices in every country (or even one country) who works to ensure orthodox teachings prevail and taxes are collected to enrich the international monastic community. Buddhism is alive so long as a single person has studied and applied a single discourse, whether it's the Satipatthanna Sutta or the Vimalakiriti Sutra or the Mahavairocana Tantra. It should also be noted that people today, especially the average Westerner, are of an exremely poor capacity to appreciate anything outside of therapeutic practice (consider the vicious pervasiveness of the opioid epidemic and it should be obvious how much of a failed culture this is that people are willing to become addicted to chemical nihilism). With that in mind, even the most banal and bovine developments of westernized Buddhism are a preferable direction. One should also remember that it is impossible to transfer a religion wholesale and it may be centuries away before a sizable and enduring population exists of Westerners who are not pop-Buddhists (popularized forms will always be the majority in all places at all times). The most practical concern should always be to educate the most capable and do what can be done for the rest; it is the locating and cultivating of these that is the challenge. And that is universally difficult from Classical India to feudal Japan to hamburger land.

[Anonymous No.20409537]

>>20409412
>>20409417
>>20409421
Okay you're full of shit. Upanishads were written before Buddhism, and only Carvaka was Materialist.

You're embarrassing if you're Indian too. This is indian levels of seethe. Like I'm not even trying to be favourable to any position since I view Advaiata and Madhyamaka to be both valid but you're simply retarded.

I'm sure you may be smart irl, but seething and malding drops your IQ points to the double digits

[Anonymous No.20409868]

yes

[Anonymous No.20410061]

>>20407954
> Truly this time it will be correct despite remaining entirely impossible to produce
Buddhisms assertions are also impossible to produce, your coping double standard is obvious

>>20407988
> ultimately a concession to the culture and vocabulary of classical India. The most unique view advanced by the Buddhists in the nikayas is anti-substance or nairatmya
Saying “everything supernatural taught by Buddha except anti-substance aka nairatmya is a concession aka a lie” is not even Buddhism anymore but its just a heresy that contradicts most of what Buddha taught. If you remove all these other elements Buddhism collapses and nothing in it makes sense or can be justified anymore.
> but if it did exist, it would wreck causality, efficacy, etc. by merit of not being able to change or be changed moment to moment"
When the Absolute exists in a manner that is transcendent to change and causal relations then Its existence wrecks nothing at all

[Anonymous No.20410129]

>>20410061
>When the Absolute exists
Ah yes when it exists, that's the key problem—nowhere is this permanent spooky substance ever found

[Anonymous No.20410148]

Any Pure Land Buddhists here? Namo Amituofo to you all. I've been thinking about branching out into Daoism (if the Chinese can have three or four religions at once, why can't I do the same?) Are there any good books on Daoism, I already have the Zhuangzu and Dao De Ching.

[Anonymous No.20410159]

>>20408490
> Shankara did trying to "refute" buddhism, that is ignoring the logical determination negation creates ontologically
Not only is that an incorrect and foolish claim, it has nothing to do with Shankara’s refutations of Buddhism

>>20408515
> nirvana is a empirical concept, in the same vein than Fichte's !absolute otherness" is, that is, the fact that you feel suffering arleady presupouse a state of non-suffering, a problematic-state logically infers a solution-state, since sufffering presents itself as a problem, as something to be resolved
Wrong, that doesn’t make Nirvana into an empirical claim; it still involves non-verifiable (non-empirical) metaphysical claims like reaching Nirvana ends rebirth. Just because you have a problem state does nothing to prove that the solution state exists, nor does it provide empirical confirmation of that proposed solution state. There is no way to have epistemic access to the solution state while still in the problem state and hence its therefore non-empirical. Moreover, what constitutes the ‘solution’ is a subjective opinion loaded down by ideological baggage anyway. What you are saying is retarded pseudo-logic that can be used to justify any bullshit claim made up on the spot.

>not to mention the contradictions his existence posit, like being the cause of existence without him itself being part of causation
That’s incorrect, Brahman *IS* existence and does not cause existence, the only thing that has existence is Brahman and this existence is uncaused. Brahman casts the illusion (which itself has no existence) in a non-causal manner, causality only appears as a false distinction within the illusion and doesn’t characterize Brahman’s casting of it.

>or maya being either being or not being, which is like syaing a something can be neither a cat nor a non-cat, breaking the law of non contradiction
That’s incorrect, because the LNC is only violated if you posit two mutually-exclusive statuses or attributes to something, but saying that an illusion (falsity) neither has real existence nor is complete nothingness is not violating the LNC, because falsity is neither existence nor is it nothingness and so saying “maya (falsity) is not existence or nothingness” is not violating the LNC because its not attributing two mutually exclusive things to maya, just like saying “a neutral molecule is not a positively-charged molecule or a negatively-charged molecule” does not violate the LNC either.

[Anonymous No.20410166]

>>20410129
> Ah yes when it exists, that's the key problem—nowhere is this permanent spooky substance ever found
One can discover it within and as oneself in spiritual realization. For someone who has not reached this yet though it’s not immediately confirmable in experience, just as Buddhism’s assertions are also non-empirical.

[Anonymous No.20410181]

>>20407725
>thought he was a crypto-Advaitin like Buddha
I don't know who's cryptoing who anymore. I thought the meme was that Shankara was a crypto-Buddhist, not that Buddha was a crypto Advaitin. How is it possible for the Buddha, who came before Shankara, to be secretly an adherent of his philosophy, and not the other way around? That makes no sense

[Anonymous No.20410183]

>>20410159
>check this out—my made up premises are consistent with my made-up logic
Too bad about the whole not being able to prove your substance(s) thing though... but were I a Hindu who was sympathetic to Buddhism I might agree with your reading of the Vedas!

[Anonymous No.20410198]

>>20410181
Never underestimate the copes possible in a scholastic theology which prizes winning oral debates and getting grant money from the local raja.

[Anonymous No.20410222]

>>20410181
>How is it possible for the Buddha, who came before Shankara, to be secretly an adherent of his philosophy, and not the other way around?
Simple! Because Advaita was already taught in the pre-Buddhist Upanishads and Buddha took much or most of his teachings from them, while deviating in certain aspects…

> The EBT (early Buddhist Texts) frequently bear the stamp of influence from Brahmanical literature in their literary style. The most obvious is the poetry, where we find that the metres are developed from Vedic precedent [6,15–16]. Likewise, the characteristic feature of framing narratives is derived from the Vedas [5]. In the Vedas we also find the models for such organising principles as the Saṁyutta principle of grouping texts by topic,3 and the Aṅguttara principle of grouping them according to number [2, 23–24] [3, 101]. The EBT frequently share metaphors and imagery with the Vedic literature. Indeed, we can point to several shared similes in just one Upaniṣadic passage, the dialogue between Yājñavalkya and his wife Maitreyī: the origin of the sound of the conch or the lute, (DN 23.19/DĀ 7/MĀ 71/T 45 vs. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4.7–9), the rivers that merge in the ocean (AN 8:19 vs. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4.11), and the ocean that every- where has one taste, the taste of salt (AN 8.157 vs. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.4.11)

[Anonymous No.20410243]

>>20410183
>Too bad about the whole not being able to prove your anatman thing though
>Too bad about the whole not being able to prove your sunyata thing though
>Too bad about the whole not being able to prove your Nirvana thing though
>Too bad about the whole not being able to prove your Buddhist rebirth and karma thing though
>Too bad about the whole not being able to prove your impermanence thing though

[Anonymous No.20410249]

>>20410222
This proves there were stylistic conventions such that "here is what a holy man should sound like," not that Buddhism was Upanishadic. if Buddhism were merely a repack of the Upanishads then there should be no rent-free Buddhism problem in Hindu theology, but quite the opposite is the case as every thinker has to prove he is not a Buddhist

[Anonymous No.20410264]

>>20410243
What is there to "prove" about rejecting various substance delusions? If nairatmya is the essence of Buddhism and I contend that it is, it would be incumbent on you to show there are permanent eternal unchanging substance(s), since I can just ad absurdum them until you are blue in the face as Vishnu from repeating the same bit about how fake things must be real because otherwise there's a contradiction in other fake things