Wanna get into Hinduism

[Anonymous No.23328651]

What do I read first? The Rig Veda? The Bhagavad-gītā? Upanishads? Sankara?

[Anonymous No.23328656]

They’re cow worshipping mongs
Don’t waste your time

[Anonymous No.23328708]

>>23328651

Reading through Shankara is a great experience but it's time-consuming and requires some prior contextual foreknowledge about various elements of Hindu philosophy, pic related is one guide. For that reason it's better to get your toes wet first by reading some basic Hindu literature like the Bhagavad-Gita and maybe some secondary literature overview of Hindu philosophy before moving onto Shankara. You can also read some Upanishads first too although if you read through all of Shankara's commentaries you'll end up reading ~80% of the primary Upanishads that are included in the translations of his commentaries on them.

The Rig-Veda is best read after already having read the Upanishads and Gita IMO.

In addition to the Bhagavad-Gita, some shorter texts that you can also read to get started are
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali (Yoga darshana)
Ashtavakra Gita (Advaita Vedanta)
Shiva Sutras of Vasugupta (Trika/Kashmir Shaivism)
Devi Mahatmya (Shaktism)
Tripura Rahasya (Advaita and Shaktism combination)
Manusmriti (an influential text on law and societal organization)

You also read the Puranas too, they are longer mythic narratives but they do weave Upanishad-derived spiritual and philosophical ideas in and out of the longer narrative. A popular one to read is the Bhagavata-Purana.

[Anonymous No.23328824]

>>23328651
You should read
1. The Gita
2. The Upanishads

I don't really think you need to read the Vedas as the philosophical section of them is the Upanishads. The rest consists of instructions for ritual, hymn, music, etc. If you're interested in a particular school of though like Kashmiri Shaivism or Adi Shankara you can read the commentaries on texts such an the Upanishads

[Anonymous No.23328883]

I always felt like the Bhagavata Purana would be a good place to start but I haven't gotten around to it.

[Anonymous No.23328887]

>>23328824
I know very little about hinduism through direct reading but this seems the most correct to me.

[Anonymous No.23328897]

>>23328883
Swami Tapasyananda of the Ramakrishna Order has an unabridged translation of the Bhagavata-Purana which is good quality and has great formatting. The translation that comes up first typically when you search online is the Hare Krishna Prabhupada's translation but based on his Bhagavad-Gita translation I would recommend avoiding that one and choosing Tapasyananda's instead if you decide to read it.

[Anonymous No.23328901]

>>23328897
>An actually good post on /lit/ for once
Color me schocked. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.23329538]

>>23328887
I try
>>23328901
The quality of posts on /lit/ used to be consistently higher. There were many times where I was taken aback by how well-read random posters on here were.

[Anonymous No.23331000]

>>23328651 First you need to understand that the word 'Hinduism' was invented by the colonizers.

You'll not be able to understand the Vedas without a proper preparation, but you can read the Gita and the Upanishads.

[Anonymous No.23331017]

It depends what you are interested in. If you are interested in very basic "Hindu mysticism" then some small primer on Hindu metaphysical concepts would probably be sufficient, you could even just dive into studying Yoga-Samkhya with a beginner-friendly approach and some standard translation of the Yoga. If you are interested in Hindu metaphysics more rigorously I recommend starting with the first volume of Dasgupta's multi-volume History of Philosophy, or his one-volume abridgment if you can find it but it's out of print. The first volume of the multi-volume series is thick but introduces you to most major currents of thought, including Buddhism, and ends with Advaita if I recall.

You could also just dive right into the Bhagavad Gita, then the Upanishads. If you do this I recommend reading the Brhadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads, the first and most difficult two, in chunks, while also reading shorter subsequent Upanishads from the start. This will ensure that you don't get utterly buried in the difficulties of the first two Upanishads and become discouraged or misled about the relative easiness of the others. You could then read commentaries like Shankara's, or read the Brahma Sutras with Shankara's commentaries, etc.

Or some combination of all of the above. There are also shorter helpful summaries of Indian philosophical concepts but these can be quite dense and leave you feeling "why is this important?," as they assume that the entire medievally formalized "scholastic" framework of Indian metaphysics is of equal interest to you, which it may not be.

You could also read Guenon's introductory works on Hindu metaphysics, while taking them somewhat with a grain of salt however.

In general, you should do some combination of the above so that you can familiarize yourself with the basic structure and major reference points of Hindu thought, and then from there you will be able to chart your own path based on what interests you.

[Anonymous No.23331026]

>>23328824
I agree with skipping most of the pre-Upanishadic Vedas, however OP could read selections/anthologies like Radhakrishnan's and Doniger's since these do a decent job of collecting proto-philosophical and proto-mystical stuff from the otherwise unreadable Rgveda and such.

[Anonymous No.23331091]

>>23328824
>>23331026
>>23331026
>>I don't really think you need to read the Vedas as the philosophical section of them is the Upanishads. The rest consists of instructions for ritual, hymn, music, etc.

the pre-Upanishadic texts are the true part of Hinduism

[Anonymous No.23331348]

>>23331091
> the pre-Upanishadic texts are the true part of Hinduism
t. larper

[Anonymous No.23331448]

>>23328651
Any recommendations on Kashmiri Shaivism texts?

[Anonymous No.23331581]

>>23331448
The Aphorisms of Siva (a translation of Vasugupta’s Siva Sutras with 2 commentaries)
Spandakarikas
Paratrisikavivirana
Vijnana Bhairava Tantra
Paramārthasāra - Abhhinavagupta
Tantraloka/Tantrasara - Abhinavagupta
Paramarthasara - Abhinavagupta
Bhagavad-Gita commentary - Abhinavagupta
Īśvarapratyabhijñā-vimarśini - Abhinavagupta
Pratyabhijnahrdayam - Ksmeraja

The Shaiva and Shakti Tantras are not specific to Kashmir Shaivism but are important to all Shaiva and Shakti traditions, I know that at least the Matrikabheda Tantra and the Kularnava Tantra have been translated to English.

[Anonymous No.23331637]

>>23331581
Thank you for such great recommendations anon. I appreciate the time you took to respond

[Anonymous No.23331897]

not hindu exactly but check out my new book please
https://twitter.com/JigokuCake/status/1784305362327261271

[Anonymous No.23331910]

You're better off reading a few academic overviews of Hinduism first. It is an umbrella term that includes a shitload of very different movements so it's important to orient yourself.
I recommend Gavin Flood's Introduction to Hinduism.

[Anonymous No.23331937]

>>23328651
Lsd

[Anonymous No.23332946]

>>23328651
>>23328708
Lmao, a pajeet shilling Hinduism to a crypto-pajeet.

[Anonymous No.23332947]

>>23328651
Just skip the reading and go straight to having zero hygiene, eating shit, and drinking urine. Don't forget to worship hamburgers.

[Anonymous No.23333019]

[Anonymous No.23333661]

>>23328651
hinduism is vast. the 6 astika (orthodox) schools are:

1. nyaya - logic & epistemology
2. vaisheshika - atomism
3. samkhya - dualism
4. yoga - action
5. mimamsa - ritualism/orthopraxy
6. vedanta - metaphysics

I think hinduism is very similar to the greek religion in the sense that you have this "high philosophy" of these 6 schools similar to plato and democritus etc. but you also have the folk aspect of the religion practiced by the majority of the population.

I would say start with the Rig. But don't buy a book or anything, just look it over on sacred-texts. Then you can study the upanishads. Then the ramayana and mahabharata. And you can branch off there from there based on what interests you.

>>23332946
you will always be an inbred, sister-fucking paki, abdul

[Anonymous No.23334943]

Bump out of interest

[Anonymous No.23335378]

I've read the Bhagavad Gita and the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad and enjoyed them a great deal, but what if I want to learn about all the gods n stuff? Those works are great for philosophy but I want some cool anime battles of asuras and devas, gods and their aspects, etc. Is that what Ramayana/Mahabharata are for?

[Anonymous No.23335421]

>>23335378
>Is that what Ramayana/Mahabharata are for?
Yes, also the Puranas. Some Puranas are like halfway between the Mahabharata and the Upanishads in terms of content devoted to plot development vs discourses on spiritual matters.

The Shiva Purana and Skanda Purana are important in Shaivism
The Vishnu Purana and Bhagavata Purana are important in Vaishnavaism
The Srimad Devi Bhagatava Purana and the Markandeya Purana are important in Shaktism.

[Anonymous No.23335486]

>>23328883
Read the Aṇuvyākhyāna of Śrī Madhvācārya and the Śrībhāṣya of Śrī Rāmānujācārya. Don't fall for the atheism of Śaṅkara and his followers.

[Anonymous No.23335518]

>>23335378
Yes. In addition to what >>23335421 said, read the Devi Mahatmya

[Anonymous No.23335520]

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN9tS6ehGx5_fiv3JmJwQdclR_DAR6Tvl

[Anonymous No.23335527]

Is there a version of Hinduism where I can eat beef?

[Anonymous No.23335534]

>>23335527
Yes. Not all recommend vegetarianism. And even some of the ones that do say its fine to eat meat so long as you're a warrior and you get it through hunting.

[Anonymous No.23335536]

>>23335486
>Read the Aṇuvyākhyāna of Śrī Madhvācārya
This has not been translated into English.
>Don't fall for the atheism of Śaṅkara and his followers.
Shankara isn’t an atheist because he follows the Upanishads in propounding the existence of an Absolute Entity or Being that is sentient and which is also the origin of everything.

[Anonymous No.23335830]

>>23335527
You don't have to follow any compulsory restrictions in Hinduism including dietary ones

[Anonymous No.23335841]

Anons here have given good recs for Vedanta. From a Bhakti Vaishnavism POV I would recommend the Ramayana.

I would also recommend the Devi Mahatmyam for an introduction to Shakti Hinduism.

[Anonymous No.23335843]

>>23335534
>>23335830
definitely not Indians lmao

[Anonymous No.23335845]

>>23328651
Sell me on hinduism. Why would want to read those books? What philosophy would get out of reading them, because have zero chance out of getting anything spiritual from religion will never believe in.

[Anonymous No.23335860]

>>23335843
I am Indian. If I remember correctly, only ~ 36% of India is vegetarian. Mostly the older generation. In the younger generation it is more common to eat meat - especially chicken and mutton.

[Anonymous No.23335879]

>>23335845
The Gita and Abridged Upanishads quick reads that contemplate the whole scope of life from birth to death. Perhaps you won't get anything out of them, but it will at the very least give you a new perspective on an ancient culture. I was irreligious until I was about 22. I began reading the Upanishads as well as other supplementary texts on Hinduism. I found it to be life-affirming and inline with what I felt but could not articulate. I'm not outwardly religious in anyway, but hold the Hindu scriptures very dear to myself.
t. UpaniChad

[Anonymous No.23335899]

>>23335860
Beef is a big no-no. Other meat maybe—but there's a reason butchering cattle is a Muslim occupation

[Anonymous No.23336328]

>>23335845
>Sell me on hinduism. Why would want to read those books?

“Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans, the idealism of reason, as it is set forth by Greek philosophers, appears in comparison with the abundant light and vigor of Oriental idealism, like a feeble Promethean spark in the full flood of heavenly glory of the noonday sun—faltering and feeble, and ever ready to be extinguished."
- Friedrich von Schlegel (1772 – 1829)

"When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East, above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe, we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which the European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy."
- Victor Cousin (1792 – 1867)

"It is impossible to read the Vedanta, or the many fine compositions in illustration of it, without believing that Pythagoras and Plato derived their sublime theories from the same fountain with the sages of India."
- Sir William Jones ( 1746 – 1794)

"I spend my happiest hours in reading Vedantic books. They are to me like the light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountains - so simple, so true, if once understood."
- Max Muller (1823 – 1900)

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial…"
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

(The Bhagavad Gita is) "The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ....perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show."
- Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 – 1835)

"I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life -- it will be the solace of my death. "
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860)

[Anonymous No.23336381]

>>23335845
Buddhism is inherently superior.

[Anonymous No.23336445]

>>23336381
This

[Anonymous No.23336554]

>>23328651
Start with the greeks

[Anonymous No.23336561]

>>23336381
Buddha was filtered by the Upanishadic Atman.

> Also, readers may further challenge the Buddha’s take on the self, or the atman, as well as the Self, or the Atman, by debasing the notion that if one strives for permanent joy and enlightenment for the sake of entering an eternal and absolute reality one is, in fact, pleasure seeking and attached to this world of delusion. Now, the mistake of the Buddha here is that there cannot be a teleological story compatible with the Hindu Upanishads, for the Self, or the Atman is infinite and eternal, as stated above, and because of this the Self, or the Atman is immune from beginnings or ends, and thus it is already self-sufficient, and in no need of a purpose to fulfill. Finally, if individual people are fragments of the Self, or the Atman as selves, or as atman(s), then how can it be that each possesses a purpose that each must fulfill, if the power to uncover the Self, or the Atman is within, and thus not an external goal that he/she must strive for, in a way that necessarily renders him/her attached and craving of spiritual liberation as well as reunification with the Self, or the Atman?

>Hence, if one understands the Upanishads as a story of how he/she can uncover himself/herself, or atman to find the Self, or the Atman within, instead of a quest for achieving reunification with the Self, or the Atman in a purely desiring way, that situates itself with reaching a source outside of us then the Buddha is not indubitably correct about the accuracy of his concept of the anatman. That is because the process of self-discovery, of the self’s, or the atman’s effort to raise to an awareness of the inner Self, or Atman within, is not an effort to attain something totally unique, or distinct. Instead, the self’s, or atman’s inner journey toward the Self, or the Atman is something individuals already harbor and although it is for us to come to realize, or recognize, it is still something that connects us all to the same common origin point that is the Self, or the Atman.

> Accordingly, readers may begin to see how it is that the Buddha commits a straw man fallacy against the Hindu concept of the self, or the atman as well as the Self, or the Atman. For, the Buddha by understanding and claiming that those driven by purpose, to attain absolute reality, mistakenly takes this to be a desire for grasping to something that is separate, other, or estranged from oneself, when Hinduism instead expounds that absolute reality is that which one finds from within.

[Anonymous No.23336578]

The brahmins got BTFO by the buddhists

>It may not be out of place here to mention that from the frequent episodes in the Upaniṣads in which the Brahmins are described as having gone to the Kṣattriyas for the highest knowledge of philosophy, as well as from the disparateness of the Upaniṣad teachings from that of the general doctrines of the Brāhmanas and from the allusions to the existence of philosophical speculations amongst the people in Pāli works, it may be inferred that among the Kṣattriyas in general there existed earnest philosophic enquiries which must be regarded as having exerted an important influence in the formation of the Upaniṣad doctrines. There is thus some probability in the supposition that though the Upaniṣads are found directly incorporated with the Brāhmanas it was not the production of the growth of Brahmanic dogmas alone, but that non-Brahmanic thought as well must have either set the Upaniṣad doctrines afoot, or have rendered fruitful assistance to their formulation and cultivation, though they achieved their culmination in the hands of the Brahmins.

[Anonymous No.23336587]

>>23336561
>if one strives for permanent joy and enlightenment for the sake of entering an eternal and absolute reality one is, in fact, pleasure seeking and attached to this world of delusion.
That's hardly the Buddha's most significant critique of the Atman

[Anonymous No.23336644]

>>23336587
> That's hardly the Buddha's most significant critique of the Atman
That’s sort of the root one held up as an excuse for why it’s supposedly bad. And the other critiques are just as unserious.

[Anonymous No.23336648]

>>23328651
https://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/ad-phil.html

[Anonymous No.23336676]

>>23336578
That whole quote is inaccurate, and it has nothing to do with Buddha.

>It may not be out of place here to mention that from the frequent episodes in the Upaniṣads in which the Brahmins are described as having gone to the Kṣattriyas for the highest knowledge of philosophy
This isn’t true, there is one instance in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of a Brahmin learning from a Kshatriya, not many instances. And in this instance the Kshatriya is portrayed as a member of Vedic society and as presenting ideas that come from the Upanishads/Brahman. Kshatriyas as fellow twice-born also study the Vedas. The Brihadaranyaka presents those same ideas as being passed down from Brahman down through Brahma and others in a chain that includes various Vedic sages and Brahmins. That Upanishad doesn’t suggest anything more than the notion that at some point in time Kshatriyas were a part of this chain of knowledge too.

>as well as from the disparateness of the Upaniṣad teachings from that of the general doctrines of the Brāhmanas
There isn’t disparateness, they don’t disagree on anything and the Upanishads present themselves as agreeing with and originating from the same source as the Vedas. Both the Vedas and the Upanishads say that rituals and meditations lead to heaven and other samsaric boons while knowledge leads to liberation.

It makes no sense to suppose that by Kshatriya the text means Buddha, since the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which mentions the Kshatriya predates the life of Buddha by a century or two. Furthermore there is nothing in the text suggesting that it’s talking about non-Vedic Kshatriyas who dont follow the Vedas.

[Anonymous No.23336688]

>>23336648
The author of that article seems to understand Vivartavarta and Ajati Vada to be two different metaphysical positions, but I think the correct understanding is that for Shankara they are actually basically synonymous and refer to the same thing. It precisely *because* the creation is only an appearance brought about as such by the cause (Vivartavada) that nothing is ever *truly* born into being (Ajati Vada).

[Anonymous No.23336754]

>>23336676
I see you're still inventing. So let's hear your explanation about why Aruni goes to a king to know about rebirth theory and why he says he and his son don't know how rebirth works?
Also isn't it weird that the brahmin Gargya say it's weird for brahmins to take spiritual lessons from Kings?

>1. Śvetaketu, the grandson of Aruṇa, came to the assembly of the Pañcālas.[1] He approached Pravāhaṇa, the son of Jīvala, who was being waited on (by his servants). Seeing him the King addressed him, ‘Boy!’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ ‘Have you been taught by your father?’ He said, ‘Yes.’
>2. ‘Do you know how these people diverge after death?’ ‘No,’ said he. ‘Do you know how they return to this world?’ ‘No,’ said he. ‘Do you know how the other world is never filled by so many people dying thus again and again?’ ‘No,’ said he. ‘Do you know after how many oblations are offered water (the liquid offerings) rises up possessed of a human voice (or under the name of man) and speaks?’ ‘No,’ said he. ‘Do you know the means of access to the way of the gods, or that to the way of the Manes—doing which people attain either the way of the gods or the way of the Manes? We have heard the words of the Mantra: “I have heard of two routes for men, leading to the Manes and the gods. Going along them all this is united. They lie between the father and the mother (earth and heaven).”[3]’ He said, ‘I know not one of them.’


You shouldn't have any problem explaining this since you keep saying you've read the upanishads and the brahmanas and son.

Just in case you didn't know:
>Pravahana Jaivali was a king of Panchala during the Late Vedic period (8th or 7th century BCE), mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (Vi.ii.9-13) and the Chandogya Upanishad (V.4-8).[1] Like King Ajatashatru of Kashi and King Asvapati Kaikeya of Madra, he is depicted as a major Hindu philosopher-king. He was the contemporary of King Janaka of Videha, and is among the most famous kings of Uttara Pañchāla-rattha who ruled from Kampila-nagara, the others being Kraivya, Keśin Dālbhya, Śona Sātrāsāha and Durmukha.[2] He teaches Svetaketu, son of Uddalaka Aruni who was a disciple of Dhaumya Ayoda (Mahabharata I.iii.20), his celebrated Panchagni Vidya i.e. the "Doctrine of the Five Fires" that explains the process of rebirth, which is an upasana. This doctrine is in answer to the five questions of the King.[3][4] And, thus taught the 'two-path doctrine of transmigration', which knowledge had never been in possession of the Brahmins.[5]

and since you keep saying
>
There isn’t disparateness, they don’t disagree on anything and the Upanishads present themselves as agreeing with and originating from the same source as the Vedas

you have no problem tracing this rebirth theory totally organic to the Vedas in the hindu scriptures predating the Upanishads right? Let's hear your exposition on the rebirth and karma theory predating the Upanishads.

[Anonymous No.23336806]

>>23336644
No it's not, the buddhist critique is that an Atman is not directly experienced and does not stand up to reason. There is no Atman that is the collection of the aggregates, one aggregate, or apart from the aggregates.

[Anonymous No.23337181]

>>23336754
>why Aruni goes to a king to know about rebirth theory and why he says he and his son don't know how rebirth works?
That verse is 6.2.2, the Upanishad is saying that the teacher that Aruni studied with had incomplete knowledge, and it presents a Kshatriya as being a part of the same Vedic tradition and as instructing Aruni in the knowledge that Aruni's teacher was lacking. Even before any mention of Aruni or anyone else however the Upanishad already teaches rebirth long before that section such as in verse 4.3.3-4.3.35 which talks about transmigration and compares it to a leech moving between blades of grass. And who is the person who is teaching the doctrine of rebirth in verse 4.3.3? It's the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya teaching rebirth to Janaka, and Yajnavalkya was a Brahmin. So even in the same Upanishad it presents some Brahmins/Vedic sages as knowing about rebirth. Also at the very beginning of the Upanishad it talks about rebirth too when it mentions a meditator from the previous universe being reborn as Brahma.

>you have no problem tracing this rebirth theory totally organic to the Vedas in the hindu scriptures predating the Upanishads right? Let's hear your exposition on the rebirth and karma theory predating the Upanishads.
Yes, rebirth is already found in the pre-Upanishad Vedas such as in the root mantras/sanhitas of the Rig-Veda when a Vedic sage is described as realized his past lives:

“I was aforetime Manu, I was Sūrya (the sun): I am the sage Kakṣīvān, holy singer.”
- Rig-Veda 4-26-1

There are a bunch of other quotes found in the Vedas which speak about one divine entity inhabiting all beings and continuing on to other bodies when their body dies, Coomaraswamy cites many of these passages in his essay "The One and Only Transmigrant", examples include:

"One God indwelling the mind, of old was he born and is even now in the womb" - Arthava Veda 10.8.28
"One as he is in himself, and many as he is in his children" - Shatapatha Brahmana 10.5.2.16

These earlier Vedic layers show knowledge of rebirth was already present in Vedic circles before 1000 BC, it showing up again in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad shows that the knowledge of rebirth was still present in Vedic circles in 800-700 BC, and then Buddha shows up in the 6th century BC after the Vedas and Upanishads were already talking about rebirth for like 400-500 years at least.

[Anonymous No.23337216]

>>23336806
>No it's not, the buddhist critique is that an Atman is not directly experienced and does not stand up to reason.
That argument is made by later Buddhists but not by Buddha, I was just talking about Buddha. Even so, those arguments are also completely unserious and they are impossible to take seriously if you've studied the Upanishads.

The notion that the Atman is not directly experienced is wrong, the Atman is directly know to itself at all times as the self-evident self-disclosure of your own awareness, your awareness always effortlessly and spontaneously knows its own presence as awareness and this is the Atman knowing itself (without splitting into subject and object). The Buddhist claim that the Atman is not known or experienced is simply due to a faulty analysis of experience where they don't realize that the constant self-illumination of awareness by itself is the Atman knowing itself uninterruptedly. When the Buddhist looks for the Atman and says "I don't see it", in that moment there is both (A), the awareness of the Self immediately knowing its own spontaneous presence and (B) the mind grasping the object, the Buddhist makes the mistake of thinking the Self must be an object when they don't realize that it's the (A) knowing itself in a manner that is simultaneous with the mind grasping at an object.

The notion that the Atman doesn't stand up to reason is also unserious. All the Buddhist arguments to the contrary take about 3 seconds to refute, most of them involve fallacies. To say they are pitiful is an understatement. You can copy and paste hundreds of such arguments from the Abhidharma, Yogachara, Madhyamaka in this thread and I can easily refute them all for you.

>There is no Atman that is the collection of the aggregates, one aggregate, or apart from the aggregates.
The Atman is apart from the aggregates as the constant light which reveals them.

[Anonymous No.23337449]

>>23337216
>That argument is made by later Buddhists but not by Buddha, I was just talking about Buddha
The notion that there is no atman among the skandhas or aggregate factors of experience by implication precludes the atman from being experiential.
>the Atman is directly know to itself at all times as the self-evident self-disclosure of your own awareness, your awareness always effortlessly and spontaneously knows its own presence as awareness and this is the Atman knowing itself (without splitting into subject and object)
non-dual awareness does not occur in ordinary experience, your argument that the atman exists comes down to yoga or revelation, which is hardly admissible if we are playing pretend at being logicians

[Anonymous No.23337518]

>>23337449
>The notion that there is no atman among the skandhas or aggregate factors of experience by implication precludes the atman from being experiential.
That's incorrect, this argument is actually a great example of how many Buddhist arguments are fundamentally circular and rely upon the acceptance of other Buddhist axioms which are not accepted by the opponent or by a third party who belongs to neither camp.

Specifically, this argument relies on one accepting as an axiom that all conscious experience is reducible to the skandhas and nothing else, but this is actually an idiosyncratic Buddhist axiom which is not accepted by non-Buddhists and so it's fundamentally circular reasoning to advance arguments which presume and rely upon that being true. If you accept this axiom, then naturally anything that is not one of the skandhas is "outside of experience" and "not experiential".

However, if you are a non-Buddhist, then you have no reason whatsoever to accept that all of experience is reducible to or constituted by the Skandhas. An Atmavadin like a Hindu would say that normal mundane experience involves the Atman as the constant light which reveals all experience while also being responsible for one's own immediate awareness of oneself in any given moment, this "awareness of oneself" is not "non-experiential" but is a basic component of all lived experience and no experience is found without that also being present. So, if you don't accept that Buddhist axiom or dogma, then it's not indubitably true that anything beyond the aggregates is non-experiential because non-Buddhist analyses of experience give examples of things involved/present in experience (and hence which are experiential) but which are not a skandha.

>non-dual awareness does not occur in ordinary experience
Awareness is always non-dual, it doesn't enter into or leave non-duality. Awareness being non-dual doesn't contradict the mind perceiving objects but they are both present simultaneously like how the expanse of space and material objects can inhabit the same area without contradiction.

>your argument that the atman exists comes down to yoga or revelation
That's also true of nearly everything in Buddhism, Buddha having "supramundane insight" of karma and rebirth etc is just a placeholder for revealed scripture and it fulfills the exact same function, it's not any less outlandish or unlikely but it equally involves a mysterious connection between man and the transcendent, it just appeals more to people who are materialist- or atheist-minded than the idea of revealed/emanated scripture does but as a source of knowledge of the supramundane it's no different.

[Anonymous No.23337548]

>>23337518
>debate is not possible because everyone (except me) is dogmatic
at least buddhists have some sort or theory of psychology and how phenomena appear that isn't just jeet jesus having bad dreams about himself

[Anonymous No.23337598]

>>23337548
>>debate is not possible because everyone (except me) is dogmatic
I didn't say that debate is not possible, don't put words in my mouth I never said, that's dishonest of you (honesty is the Buddhist precept which /lit/ Buddhists seem to struggle with the most).

All I did was point out that your argument was circular and that your dismissal of revealed knowledge applies just as much to Buddha's supramundane insight. If you are upset at this, fine, be upset. But don't lie about what I wrote.

>at least buddhists have some sort or theory of psychology and how phenomena appear
The Hindus have their own psychology of the mind and ego and how the mind constructs appearances in relation to Brahman as well, obviously you are ignorant of what their texts say or you wouldn't have written that.
>that isn't just jeet jesus having bad dreams about himself
The mind/intellect of the jiva has the delusion and not the Atman-Brahman.

[Anonymous No.23337610]

>>23337598
>that's dishonest of you
rich stuff from an armchair theologian
anyway, feel free to prove there is a permanent, eternal and unchanging "atman" without recourse to it having been revealed to you in brahman's dream, otherwise you are pretending to be non-dogmatic when nothing could be further from the truth (that is to say, you are lying, or being dishonest)

[Anonymous No.23337685]

>>23337610
>anyway, feel free to prove there is a permanent, eternal and unchanging "atman" without recourse to it having been revealed to you in brahman's dream, oth
Feel free to try to prove anything in Buddhism without recourse to it having been revealed by Buddha's magical superman insight that is totally different from revealed scripture (not really).
>otherwise you are pretending to be non-dogmatic
False, I never said there are no axioms or dogmas in Hinduism, every religion and philosophy including Buddhism has dogmatic axioms and so I was never pretending to be anything. The existence of Atman is a perfectly reasonable axiom that can be defended with recourse to our lived experience.

So far, you have been the only one making circular arguments (the one pointed out above) and writing things that are dishonest (lying about what I wrote), I have done neither.

[Anonymous No.23337838]

>>23337685
>The existence of Atman is a perfectly reasonable axiom that can be defended with recourse to our lived experience.
Uhhhhh
>>23337518
>Awareness is always non-dual, it doesn't enter into or leave non-duality. Awareness being non-dual doesn't contradict the mind perceiving objects but they are both present simultaneously like how the expanse of space and material objects can inhabit the same area without contradiction
What do i need "awareness" for again? If my mind already perceives objects it is "aware" of in external space, where is this permanently blinking "I am I am I am I am I am" that never finishes its sentences? And what use is it? I can account for lived reality without imagining a second layer of mind that has no objects and cannot be demonstrated. And if I add one—nothing changes about any lived experience, which is always subject aware of objects, mediated through senses, thoughts, etc. Not only can you not prove this additional, permanent, objectless mind exists, there is no reason it should exist, because it doesn't accomplish anything.

[Anonymous No.23337846]

>>23337598
>The Hindus
I like how you started out with "the Buddha was a timetraveler who stole everything from Shankara" but are now backtracking and including other schools of Vedanta that think that Shankara was a drooling retard.

[Anonymous No.23337849]

>>23337685
Everything we experience is dependently originated and included in the eighteen dhatus, anything outside of this is speculation.

>The Blessed One said, "What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All. Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range."

[Anonymous No.23337977]

>>23337849
>Everything we experience is dependently originated and included in the eighteen dhatus, anything outside of this is speculation.
That's impossible to prove, whether something is dependently originated or not is not something that can be verified since causality isn't directly experienced but is inferred/assumed. Even when you see something that appears to be causally related or causally dependent on something else there is no way to verify or prove that it actually is so instead of being independent itself, or an appearance of something that is independent.

I asked for something to prove "without recourse to it having been revealed by Buddha's magical superman insight that is totally different from revealed scripture (not really)" but all you just did was recite some statement of Buddha as a dogma without proving it true or explaining how it could be proven.

[Anonymous No.23337987]

>>23337977
why should anyone assume that such thing as Atman exist in the first place if things can perfectly and logically explained without it ?
why should anyone believe in some supposedly revealed scripture ?

[Anonymous No.23337995]

>>23337838
>What do i need "awareness" for again? If my mind already perceives objects it is "aware" of in external space, where is this permanently blinking "I am I am I am I am I am" that never finishes its sentences?
It's the self-aware presence that invariably persists while thoughts and perceptions change, you need it because it being present is what allows the thoughts and perceptions to be experienced, without it there would be no experience. The mind doesn't perceive things on its own but it is only on account of it being invested or illuminated with the light of the Self that it can know things.
>And what use is it?
See above
>I can account for lived reality without imagining a second layer of mind that has no objects and cannot be demonstrated.
You can try but it doesn't hold up because what you'll list off invariably consists of objective phenomena or content that are qualitatively different from awareness.
>And if I add one—nothing changes about any lived experience, which is always subject aware of objects, mediated through senses, thoughts, etc.
Except that then you are speaking about the self-aware presence by whose light all thoughts, sensations, emotions etc occur and without which there is no sentience.

[Anonymous No.23337998]

>>23337977
>Even when you see something that appears to be causally related or causally dependent on something else there is no way to verify or prove that it actually is so
right, it is merely an appearance, it operates conventionally, or well-ebough, and cannot withstand analysis
>instead of being independent itself, or an appearance of something that is independent.
yes you could just completely deny what you've already observed, that things appear to cause other things, and for no reason whatsoever insist that they are actually independent of one another, again for no reason whatsoever, you could certainly do this, but how did you acquire that knowledge?

[Anonymous No.23338003]

>>23337995
>it being present is what allows the thoughts and perceptions to be experienced, without it there would be no experience
So it turns off when you go to sleep or get distracted apparently... Not very eternal, unchanging, impermanent, non-dual!

[Anonymous No.23338007]

>>23337987
>why should anyone assume that such thing as Buddhist dogmas #1 (anatta), #2 (anicca), #3 (anatta), #4 (sunyata), #5 (Buddha's knowledge of rebirth and karma), (hungry ghosts and hellish realms), (etc etc), ad nauseum exist in the first place if things can perfectly and logically explained without it ?
>why should anyone believe in some supposedly magic person (buddha) having an even more magic supernatural insight into how the universe and all existence works?

[Anonymous No.23338021]

>>23337998
>right, it is merely an appearance, it operates conventionally, or well-ebough, and cannot withstand analysis
There is no analysis that conclusively demonstrate or prove that it's empty or dependent though, so in this being unprovable it indeed "withstands analysis".
>yes you could just completely deny what you've already observed, that things appear to cause other things, and for no reason whatsoever insist that they are actually independent of one another, again for no reason whatsoever, you could certainly do this, but how did you acquire that knowledge?
So now you are backpedaling and playing the skeptic card and admitting that you can't actually prove the Buddhist claim true. GG. Thanks for playing. Exactly as I predicted.

[Anonymous No.23338028]

>>23338007
1 through 4 are just denying permutations of the unproven "atman", 5 is pan-jeet cosmology that you also accept in vedanta

[Anonymous No.23338040]

>>23338003
>So it turns off when you go to sleep or get distracted apparently.
This is impossible to demonstrate, since you can't verify that your awareness is absent in sleep (and even when distracted awareness is still present). The absence of awareness is never experienceable or confirmable but can only be speculated about as a hypothetical from the waking state. In reality there is no difference between non-dual awareness in waking or sleep and the only thing that has changed is what the mind has doing. Non-dual awareness abides in itself uninterruptedly during dreaming, dreamless sleep and waking as well as the transition between them.

>Rejecting his position is difficult because one cannot claim direct perception of unconsciousness in deep sleep, and in that case cannot inductively infer unconsciousness either. Rather than viewing deep sleep as the absence of consciousness, Śaṅkara claims there is simply an absence of objects. Consciousness of the absence of objects is not the absence of consciousness. This is akin to having one’s eyes wide open and seeing but in a pitch-black room.

[Anonymous No.23338046]

>>23338040
>This is impossible to demonstrate
>keeps going anyway
lol

[Anonymous No.23338049]

>>23338028
>1 through 4 are just denying permutations of the unproven "atman",
That's not answering the question: "if things can perfectly and logically explained without it?"

[Anonymous No.23338053]

>>23338046
What is impossible to demonstrate is the absence of awareness in sleep, i.e. it's impossible to demonstrate that awareness is not permanently present and fundamentally independent and self-sufficient.

[Anonymous No.23338059]

>>23338021
>There is no analysis that conclusively demonstrate or prove that it's empty or dependent
What is the contrary explanation? People age because they are cursed by evil spirits? Trees don't bear fruit after being watered and receiving sunlight, they bear fruit after being gently caressed and whispered to late at night? If there is no dependence or interdependence or causality we may observe and draw conclusions from, what is there? You have retreated into nihilism to defend your fantastical doctrines, not a surprise.

[Anonymous No.23338072]

>>23338053
>it's impossible to demonstrate that awareness is not permanently present and fundamentally independent and self-sufficient
Yeah it's impossible because there's no experience of it in lived reality
>>23338049
which is why it doesn't help explain anything in lived reality

[Anonymous No.23338078]

>>23338059
>What is the contrary explanation?
There are plenty of alternative models in what inter-causal relations between objects are not real in themselves, Advaita Vedanta, Islamic Occasionalism, F.H. Bradley's idealism and certain interpretations of Hume are just 4 examples that comes to mind. You pleading ignorance as to alternative models doesn't prove Buddhism or its claims to be true.
> If there is no dependence or interdependence or causality we may observe and draw conclusions from, what is there?
Nature, Brahman, God, the One, the answer depends on the alternative model

[Anonymous No.23338091]

>>23338078
agree you can produce any number of alternate models with decreasing efficacy and relevence; Nature, Brahman, God, the One of course are members of the same theological species with subtle variation,

[Anonymous No.23338118]

>>23338072
>Yeah it's impossible because there's no experience of it in lived reality
The experience of it is your awareness that is effortlessly and spontaneously present and self-evident always.
>which is why it doesn't help explain anything in lived reality
The constant continuity of awareness characterizes all experience, so awareness being constant and abiding is actually a view that is closer to empirical experience then the notions of it being momentary and interrupted which come from Buddhist dogmas. You can gripe about Awareness being immortal and undying as being non-empirical, but it's no less non-empirical than Buddha ideas about karma and rebirth etc and the Buddhist is just making special exceptions about what non-empirical claims he doesn't like or likes because of the Buddhist dogmas that form his starting axioms; when it comes to our immediate experience though the Atmavadin is more correct in describing it than Anatta. This is even something that many Buddhists themselves will admit and say "yeah everyone experiences awareness as always present but this is.... *drum rolls*.... *gong sounds*..... LE ILLUSION..... because Buddha's superpowers said so!"

So, if you are talking about eastern worldviews that explain both the mind and existence, one thing that Atmavadings "explain in lived reality" better than Anatta is having a started point that actually agrees without experience without worshipping at the altar of some dogma that is contrary to it.

[Anonymous No.23338123]

>>23338118
*a starting point that actually agrees with experience without worshipping at

[Anonymous No.23338174]

>>23338118
>The experience of it is your awareness that is effortlessly and spontaneously present and self-evident always.
I am aware that my mind is not in constant operation at the same level or baseline and depends on my senses and ideas, awareness absolutely requires concentration and effort to refine the aperture or you would simply be bombarded with everything all at once or perhaps worse be unable to discern anything whatsoever. Similarly my concept of a coherent enduring self is a product of remembered experience, lifestyle, heredity, culture, education, etc. all of which exclude some data and include others as a result of causal factors able to operate because the "self" is not a permanent thing. All its faculties are mutable, and must be mutable, for me to experience life as mine own and not that of other persons. What you are positing is essentially a second mind behind that one to which nothing actually sticks to because it has no objects or thoughts, and you further insist it is eternal, unchanging, non-dual etc., and concede it cannot be demonstrated. It is in fact nobody's awareness, even by your own doctrine. So there is no dogmatism in shrugging off this pointless and non-evident and non-interrelated thing, and it changes nothing about my experience of subject-object awareness, a sense of personality, observation of causality, etc., all can be explained in a satisfactory way without recourse to it, unless you are invested in the soteriology of brahmin-yoga.

[Anonymous No.23338198]

>>23338174
>I am aware that my mind is not in constant operation at the same level or baseline and depends on my senses and ideas,
And yet a basic level of always-present awareness never ceases
>awareness absolutely requires concentration and effort to refine the aperture
This is a kind of mental activity that is being described as a objective experience or content of experience, but all such mental activity is different from awareness which is not an object.
>or you would simply be bombarded with everything all at once or perhaps worse be unable to discern anything whatsoever.
This is conflating concentration (an act of the mind) with awareness (which is partless, immediate, self-illuminating unchanging and not a mental activity)
>Similarly my concept of a coherent enduring self is a product of remembered experience, lifestyle, heredity, culture, education, etc. all of which exclude some data and include others as a result of causal factors able to operate because the "self" is not a permanent thing.
All of these are ideas and sensations and are other than awareness, the Self is awareness itself. Simply because the ideas and sensations that are experienced are a changing multitude does not show that the Self of awareness which uninterruptedly persists in our experience is not permanent.
>All its faculties are mutable, and must be mutable, for me to experience life as mine own and not that of other persons.
This only need be true of the mind and not awareness itself.
>What you are positing is essentially a second mind behind that one to which nothing actually sticks to because it has no objects or thoughts, and you further insist it is eternal, unchanging, non-dual etc., and concede it cannot be demonstrated.
It's self-evident for everyone even though it cannot be demonstrated which is the funny part (unlike Buddhist claims which also cannot be proven but aren't self-evident), you can either be confused about this self-evident constant awareness or not be confused about it but you can't ever not know it even on some non-conceptual level when you mind is tricking by some dogma into thinking otherwise.

[Anonymous No.23338202]

>>23333661
You what's a funny though about that pic. The wife upon hearing a so called prophet say this would immediately figure out Islam is bullshit, but then she'd have to maintain her faith to keep her secret.

[Anonymous No.23338204]

>>23338053
You do not have awareness in deep sleep, the Advaita assertion that you do is completely baseless.

[Anonymous No.23338222]

>>23338204
>You do not have awareness in deep sleep
There is no way to prove that, and if you aren't presupposing an unproven materialist or materialist-adjacent conception of consciousness then there is no strong reason to assume that it vanishes in deep sleep. Since awareness is qualitatively different from everything else that we know including thoughts and perceptions etc and since it only ever has knowledge or the revealing of its presence without any immediate knowledge of its absence then there isn't any direct immediate experiential grounds to suppose its absence simply based on the mind and body behaving differently in sleep, its absence only seems more 'logical' if you lazily and unconsciously slide into having materialist assumptions about consciousness, but to do this is of course not a good argument.

[Anonymous No.23338251]

>>23338198
all of your line responses are just an elaborate agreement with me that the atman is not part of experience; every time I point out this or that element of experience, consciousness, mentation, memory, sense, etc. is mutable and changing, you go "oh that's not the atman, the atman is [schizobabble intensifies]," which is fine, you can keep reciting these unmoored theories with no referent to lived reality or explanatory power for what it is like, such as having a permanent unchanging self-awareness, something nobody can demonstrate he or anyone else has (which you conceded a while ago)... cogito ergo sum does not prove you are blue zeus it proves there is a thought that you are

[Anonymous No.23338255]

>>23338118
What you call self illuminating awareness in Buddhism is just the consciousness aggregate and its clarity aspect. The fault of Vedanta is deifying this clarity into an eternal unchanging substrate.

[Anonymous No.23338267]

>>23338255
He's bashing together three things he can't demonstrate, the first being that there is an eternal unchanging substance, second that this substance is "awareness" without any objects, and third that this "awareness" is the Self taught by the brahmins—the long indigestion of the Sankhya philosophy and certain tendencies of Mahayana Buddhism into Vedanta.

[Anonymous No.23338278]

>>23337598
>The Hindus have their own psychology of the mind
Buddhism even does that better

[Anonymous No.23338298]

>>23335527
Pretend to be Kerelan they eat beef all the time

[Anonymous No.23339109]

>>23338251
> all of your line responses are just an elaborate agreement with me that the atman is not part of experience;
It is, since every experience involves the self-evident self-disclosure of the partless awareness of the Atman. You should just accept that you cant refute it and give it a rest.

[Anonymous No.23339111]

>>23338255
The Buddhists claim that consciousness is a changing dependent aggregate but this is simply wrong and when Buddhists try to give examples of consciousness being dependent and/or changing they invariably end up conflating higher functions of the intellect with awareness, but this is transparently wrong because these functions they describe are all different kinds of objective mental contents which are noticeably qualitatively different from awareness

[Anonymous No.23339114]

>>23338267
> the long indigestion of the Sankhya philosophy and certain tendencies of Mahayana Buddhism into Vedanta.
It’s what the Upanishads say including the early ones predating Sankhya and the life of Buddha

[Anonymous No.23339138]

>>23339111
What's the sanskrit and pali words for awareness?

[Anonymous No.23339140]

>>23339109
if the atman is so self-evident then the brahmins 1/ would not have needed to write all those rituals and mantras talking about the atman
2/ the brahmins would not be riddled with in-fighting 3/ everybody would agree with the brahmins 4/ the brahmins would not have been proven wrong by the buddhists

[Anonymous No.23339149]

>>23339138
also for consciousness. It's not good to throw those words around without explaining them and mentioning the sanskrit

[Anonymous No.23339666]

>>23339111
how are those higher functions of the intellect different from awareness ?
also all what we know on the field of neurology seems to align more with the buddhist's view than with vedanta's

[Anonymous No.23339704]

>>23339140
> the atman is so self-evident then the brahmins 1/ would not have needed to write all those rituals and mantras talking about the atman
That’s a non-sequitur, simply because it’s self-evident doesn’t mean that there is no purpose writing or talking about it, people can still be confused about it and discussing it helps clear up that confusion, as just one example of why writing about it can be helpful. Secondly; most of the mantras and rituals in the Vedas are not about the Atman but they are rather tools for attaining specific ends like cows, sons, heaven etc.

>2/ the brahmins would not be riddled with in-fighting
Also a non-sequitur, just because the Atman is self-evidently known in experience doesn’t prevent people from being confused about it and having disagreements about it, furthermore they can disagree about other things besides the Atman.

>3/ everybody would agree with the brahmins
Also a non-sequitur (see above)

> 4/ the brahmins would not have been proven wrong by the buddhists
The Brahmins were never proven wrong by Buddhists, that’s a complete fantasy

[Anonymous No.23339718]

>>23328651
Do people seriously think there's any value in some street shitter religion

[Anonymous No.23339782]

>>23339109
>every experience involves the self-evident self-disclosure of the partless awareness of the Atman
I thought you said it had no objects it was aware of? How can you have an experience without it being of an object? You are citing mysticism as evidence for the atman now? Good job. I could just as well cite Buddhist mysticism as evidence for a lack of atman. Or again, simply note that it cannot be demonstrated to exist or serve a purpose in explaining phenomena, lived experience, etc. as reason enough to dismiss the claim
>You should just accept that you cant refute it
I have no quarrel with a barren woman's son.

[Anonymous No.23340272]

>>23339666
>how are those higher functions of the intellect different from awareness ?
They change, awareness is unchanging
They are known as objective/phenomenal content, awareness is never its own object
They constitute specific types of mental experiences, awareness is not another mental experience but is the baseline presence that every mental experience presupposes
They are not aware/sentient, only awareness is

>also all what we know on the field of neurology seems to align more with the buddhist's view than with vedanta's
Not really, only if you presuppose that neuronal activity is identical with awareness, but this has never been shown to be the case. Since this is unproven, no amount of brain modulation through surgery or drugs etc constitutes sufficient evidence of awareness changing or being modulated by anything else.

[Anonymous No.23340292]

>>23340272
>sufficient evidence of awareness changing or being modulated by anything else
I'm sure if we retired your body we would be able to show that for all intents and purposes "you" are no longer aware such that there is a sending and receiving information between other "aware" beings.

[Anonymous No.23340329]

What the hell is going on.
Some time ago I was into Taoist teachings, and there were like 3 taoism threads on /lit/ at the time. I got banned off of a dharma fiscussion discord for trolling some commies and being very free and unrestricted but fell out of the daoism thing because I wasn't able to integrate it properly and the teachings appeared illusive and beyond me at times.
I get re-acquainted with spirituality due to a pressing need over youtube, trying out Isha Kriya meditation and develop an interest in Hinduism as a result, go on /lit/ - no daoist threads and several Hinduism threads instead.
Why are we here right now, can anyone explain to me?

[Anonymous No.23340350]

>>23339782
>I thought you said it had no objects it was aware of? How can you have an experience without it being of an object?
Because it’s self-disclosure doesn’t involve awareness becoming its own object. The very basic nature of awareness is the self-disclosure of partless presence, this takes place without any split of subject vs object so it always knows or reveals itself by its very nature, but without becoming its own object. This partless self-shining presence forms the utterly simple, self-evident, spontaneously-present and irreducible light of sentience which enables subject-object distinctions and other dualistic perceptions to occur.

>You are citing mysticism as evidence for the atman now?
No, I just gave a phenomenal or empirical description of how it knows itself without recourse to mysticism.

>Or again, simply note that it cannot be demonstrated to exist or serve a purpose in explaining phenomena, lived experience, etc. as reason enough to dismiss the claim
Again, I’ve already explained that it’s necessary for people’s minds to have any knowledge of anything at all, as well as being responsible for their own self-awareness of themselves. You can disagree with this analysis but it’s just an outright dishonest lie (and not the first lie of yours in this thread) to say that it serves no purpose, you just happen to disagree with the premise of this purpose but that isn’t the same as not having one. Furthermore, it offers an account of awareness that agrees with the experiential fact of awareness being immediate, constant and self-evident yet unobjectifiable and irreducible, a model of awareness which fails to include this simply fails to match our actual lived experience and is incomplete and flawed.

>You should just accept that you cant refute it
>I have no quarrel with a barren woman's son.
Then why are you posting dozens of responses in a thread about Hinduism complaining about it? It sure seems like you have a quarrel. I think that you genuinely suffer from mental illness, especially since the content of roughly 90% of your objections amounts to “it cant be proven” and “you accept it because of the knowledge of sages” and these also apply to all your own Buddhist positions as well which are unprovable and which come from Buddha’s magic insight (aka revealed scripture). When you post a dozen of posts attacking another religion with criticisms that equally apply to your own beliefs all you are doing is making a fool of yourself and showing that you are just irrationally seething.

You do a disservice to most of the Buddhist posters here with such childish behavior, it is to the detriment of /lit/ Buddhists that the most active Buddhist poster here is manifestly mentally-ill, dishonest and petty.

[Anonymous No.23340377]

>>23340292
>I'm sure if we retired your body we would be able to show that for all intents and purposes "you" are no longer aware
This is impossible to prove because awareness is not measurable, it has never been proven to be identical with any brain function. If awareness is metaphysically independent and forms the reality in which space, material and thoughts appear, then awareness would just continue onwards in its own stable existence when the body dies without that necessarily being measurable by some instrument.

[Anonymous No.23340436]

>>23340350
>When you post a dozen of posts attacking another religion with criticisms that equally apply to your own beliefs all you are doing is making a fool of yourself and showing that you are just irrationally seething.
i am not even going to bother throwing up a smug anime girl here, anyone who has been here a few weeks is well aware that vedantists always come into buddhist threads and insist there is an atman, "christ is kang" style, with nothing of substance to say except it must be true because of some schizobabble about being aware of nothing being proof that you are an eternal member of the blue man group
>>23340377
>brain function
we don't need to even get that material here, if all your senses are shut off you lose your "awareness" it's not eternal or primordial or non-dual, it just isn't a thing to begin with, you're inventing extra layers of mind that serve no explanatory purpose beyond verification of the jeetbible

[Anonymous No.23340477]

>>23340436
>anyone who has been here a few weeks is well aware that vedantists always come into buddhist threads and insist there is an atman, "christ is kang" style,
1) That's not even true
2) Even if it were true, that's not a justification for you to act like a retard
3) Even when Hindus argue against Buddhists, they don't stoop to the incredible level of retardation to which you have sunk by having 90% of your objections be ones that also apply equally to your own Buddhist beliefs

>we don't need to even get that material here, if all your senses are shut off you lose your "awareness"
That's completely unproven and it's not experientially confirmable, you are just engaging in blatant question-begging which is a fallacy

[Anonymous No.23340489]

>>23340329
>>Why are we here right now, can anyone explain to me?
I spy on you.

[Anonymous No.23340491]

It is well-known that Shankara is criticized by his opponents as a “Buddhist in disguise” (pracchannabauddha) and his philosophy as Māyāvāda which is but crypto-Buddhism.

Among the Vēdāntins, Bhāskara (750-800) is probably one of the earliest critics against Shankara. He called the Māyāvādin as “one who depends on the doctrine of the Buddhist” (bauddhamatāvalambin), and says that this position has been negated by the author of Brahmasūtra. Afterward, Yāmuna (918-1038), Rāmānuja (1017-1037), Madhva (1197-1276), Vallabha (1473-1531) and other Vēdāntins severely criticized Advaita Vēdānta, pointing out that it is, in essence, nothing but a Buddhist doctrine.

Then, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, Vijñānabhikṣu of the sāmkhya school shows in his Sāmkhyapravacana bhāṣya that the Māyāvāda of the Vēdāntins is of the same standpoint as that of the Vijñānavādin’s and criticizes the Vēdānta school as a whole. In justifying his criticism, he quotes a verse from the Padma Purāṇa which states that the Māyāvāda is an incorrect theory and is Buddhist doctrine.

māyāvādamasacchāstraṁ pracchannaṁ bauddhamēva ca |
māyaiva kathitaṁ dēvi kalau brāhmaṇarūpiṇē ||

Vijnānabhikṣu quotes this verse twice in his Sāmkhyapravacana bhāṣya.

This is true of modern scholars. For example, in his A History of Indian Philosophy, S Dasgupta remarks:

“Shankara and his followers borrowed much of their dialectic form of criticism from the Buddhists. His Brahman was very much like the śūnya of specifically Nāgārjuna. I am led to think that Shankara’s philosophy is largely a compound of Vijnānavāda and śūnyavāda Buddhism with the Upaniṣad notion of the permanence of self superadded”.

Thus, he supports Vijñānabhikṣu’s criticism against Māyāvāda.

Even S Radhakrishnan who asserts that “there is no doubt that Shankara develops his whole system from the Upaniṣads and the Vēdānta sūtra without reference to Buddhism”, says the following:
“We need not say that the Advaita Vēdānta philosophy has been very much influenced by the Mādhyamika doctrine. The nirguṇa Brahman of Shankara and Nāgārjuna’s śūnya have much in common”.

Shankara, however, vehemently attacks Buddhism here and there in his Brahmasūtra bhāṣya, Bṟadāraṇyaka bhāṣya, Upadēśasāhasrī, and his other works. What is Buddhism for him and his philosophy?

Around the fifth century when Vasubandhu (400-480) was active, there were four major schools in Indian Buddhism; they were the Sarvāstivādin, the Sautrāntika, the Mādhyamika, and the Yōgācāra or Vijñānavādin. It was also the common practice in the Indian philosophical schools, in general, to distinguish four Buddhist schools when they treated Buddhism. Shankara however, in his Brahmasūtra bhāṣya (II, 2, 18), criticizes the following three different types of Buddhist propounders:

[Anonymous No.23340493]

>>23340491
Sarvāstitvavādin or one who asserts the real existence of everything.

Vijñānāstitvavādin or one who asserts the real existence of consciousness.

Sarvaśūnyatvavādin or one who asserts the emptiness of everything.

He keeps silent about any other Buddhist propounders but if we are to judge from Vācaspatimiśra’s commentary Bhāmatī on the Brahmasūtra bhāṣya, we can infer that the first propounder points not only to the Sarvāstivādin but also include the Sautrāntika. The second and the third propounders clearly refer to the Vijñānavādin and the Mādhyamika respectively. Therefore, it may be possible for us to see Shankara’s classification corresponding to that made in the general Indian philosophical treatises except for the order of classification.

It is indeed certain that Shankara is well aware of the terms Mādhyamika and Vijñānavādin since he uses these terms in his own works when he surveys Buddhist positions. Nevertheless, why does he use in the above instance of his Brahmasūtra bhāṣya the terms Sarvāstitvavādin, Vijñānāstitvavādin, and Sarvaśūnyatvavādin, other instances of which cannot be found elsewhere? He gives no explanation of these terms at all. Why does he not use such names as Mādhyamika and Vijñānavādin?

It seems that the context where Shankara criticizes other schools including the above Buddhists gives us a clue to solve this problem. Before Shankara begins to criticize the three kinds of Buddhist schools, he takes up the Vaiśēṣika school for his sharp criticism and characterizes it as ardhavaināśika or semi-nihilism. In this connection, he classifies Buddhism as sarvavaināśikarāddhānta or the doctrine which asserts the nihilism of everything, and it is after this that he undertakes the above classification of the Buddhist schools. In other words, in his understanding, the philosophical school which bears the name of Vaiśēṣika is characterized as semi-nihilism, and similarly, in the case of Buddhism, he presents his understanding of Buddhism in general as that doctrine which asserts the nihilism of everything.

From the above observation, we can safely infer that in treating the three types of Buddhist schools, Shankara intended to express the specific character of the particular Buddhist school in a word succinctly as in the case of the vaisheShika school and that for this reason, he did not use the usual names of the schools like Mādhyamika. In short, Shankara is not simply enumerating the names of the Buddhist schools but is making an attempt at critical classification of the doctrines from his own philosophical standpoint.

[Anonymous No.23340495]

>>23340493
It is to be noted here that the description of the characteristics of the three Buddhist schools, terms astitva and śūnyatva which have to do with reality or ontological judgment are employed. Shankara makes his classification based on the criterion of what is asserted as real, or in other words, from his ontological point of view. He applies this criterion to each Buddhist school and in his attempt to present coherent expressions, his use of the terms Sarvāstitvavādin, Vijñānāstitvavādin, and Sarvaśūnyatvavādin are indeed appropriate.

If the same criterion is to be applied to Buddhism as a whole, Buddhism would come down to sarvavaināśikarāddhānta or that doctrine which asserts the nihilism of everything. This is because, not to mention Sarvaśūnyatvavādin, the Vijñānavādin, as well as the Sarvāstitvavādin, asserts the theory of kṣaṇabhaṅga or that of entities having but momentary existence and therefore, in Shankara’s understanding, Buddhism as a whole is a doctrine which asserts total nihilism.

Also, in explaining why there is a plurality of Buddhist positions, Shankara points out the difference in disciples’ innate ability of understanding (pratipattibhēda) and says as follows:

“The doctrine of the reality of the external world (Bāhyārthavāda) was indeed propounded by the Buddha conforming himself to the mental state of some of his disciples whom he perceived to be attached to external things, but it does not represent his own true view (saugatābhiprāya) according to which consciousness alone is real (vijñānaikaskandha)”.

For Shankara, even that Buddhist theory that asserts that consciousness alone is real is nihilistic without a morsel of rationality. Shankara adds that it is not possible to lead one’s ordinary life on the basis of such a nihilistic view.

And finally, he concludes his criticism against the Buddha and Buddhism with the following words:

“No further special discussion is in fact required. Form whatever new points of view the Bauddha system is tested with reference to its probability, it gives way on all sides, like the walks of a well dug in sandy soil. It has, in fact, no foundation whatever to rest upon, and hence the attempts to use it as a practical guide in the practical concerns of life are mere folly. Moreover, Buddha by propounding the three mutually contradictory systems, teaching respectively the reality of the external world, the reality of consciousness alone, and total nihilism, has himself made it clear that he was a man given to making incoherent assertions, or else that hatred of all beings induced him to propound absurd doctrines by accepting which they would become thoroughly confused. Buddha’s doctrine has to be entirely disregarded by all those who have a regard for their own happiness”.

[Anonymous No.23340497]

>>23340495
As I have already mentioned, there appeared many critics against Shankara and his followers. It is very probable that those critics appeared not only after his death but also during his lifetime. In fact, Shankara himself explicitly admits in his Māṇḍūkyōpaniṣad Kārikā-bhāṣya that Buddhism is said to be in close similarity to the Advaita of his Paramaguru Gauḍapāda:

“This knowledge regarding the Ultimate Reality, non-dual and characterized by the absence of the difference of knowledge, object of knowledge and knower, is not the same as that declared by the Buddha. The view of the Buddha which rejects the existence of external objects and asserts the existence of consciousness alone is said to be similar to or very near the truth of non-dual ātman. But this knowledge of the non-dual which is the Ultimate Reality can be attained through Vēdānta alone”.

Here in this passage, Shankara recognizes the Buddhists’ denial of the real existence of the external objects and their acceptance of the real existence of consciousness only as of the points of similarity of Buddhism, which is the doctrine of the Vijnānavādin in this case, to the truth of non-dual ātman of Vēdānta.

On the other hand, critics against Buddhism like Vijñānabhikṣu also criticize as the point of similarity between Advaita and Buddhism that assertion of both schools regarding the non-real existence of the external objects or of the non-reality of the phenomenal world. This view, also called Māyāvāda, is that very point with regard to which Shankara also admits that the Advaita Vēdānta is criticized as similar to Buddhism. This is an important problem which touches on the very basis of the two schools.

It is indeed true as described above that, if both the Advaitins and the Buddhists equally assert the non-reality of the phenomenal world, then nobody can deny that the severe criticism that Advaita is the same as or similar to to the Buddhist doctrine is well-founded. However, Shankara and his followers have rejected their opponents’ criticism, emphasizing their own originality.

In the case of Shankara, as is seen in the above-quoted passage from his Māṇḍūkyōpaniṣat Kārikā-bhāṣya, he finds the Advaitins’ originality in the following two points: firstly the Advaita philosophy expounds the non-dual, Ultimate Reality which, unlike the Vijñānavādin’s vijñāna consisting of three components i.e., knowledge, object of knowledge and knower, does not possess any components like those, and secondly the Advaita philosophy is based on the absolute authority of the Upaniṣads. It is on the same points that Sarvajñātman sees the difference between the Vēdāntins and the Vijñānavādins in his Samkṣēpaśārīraka (II, 27-38).

[Anonymous No.23340501]

>>23340497
When Shankara and his followers attack the Vijñānavādins, ultimately the above two points, especially the point that the Vijñānavādins do not recognize an eternal, unchangeable ātman, are the target of criticism. Likewise in the case of Shankara’s negation of the Mādhyamika philosophy, he shows the difference between the Mādhyamikas and his own position in the fact that the Mādhyamikas do not accept the basis of a reality which is the ātman of the fourth stage and, for this reason, criticizes the doctrine of śūnyatā or emptiness.

Also, Padmapāda (720-770), one of Shankara’s disciples, alludes to the doctrine of śūnyatā in the expression “niradhiṣṭhānādhyāsavādipakṣa” or the standpoint of the propounder who asserts that the superimposition (adhyāsa) has no foundation, and criticizes this point of the doctrine of śūnyatā.

In this way, the attacks against the Mādhyamikas are based on the point that it does not accept an eternal unchangeable reality that lies in the background as the foundation of the phenomenal world. Even those Hīnayana schools which recognize the reality of objects of the external world do not differ from the Mādhyamikas and the Vijñānavādins at all according to Shankara since they do not recognize a permanent substratum as far as they hold the theory of entities having but momentary existence. As such, all Buddhist doctrines are nothing but nihilistic doctrines (vaināśika) “not to be taken into serious consideration by those who are seeking ultimate bliss”.

In this connection, the ālayavijñāna of the Vijñānavādins may come into question. It is the substratum of transmigratory existence assumed by them and corresponds to the unchangeable substratum, that is, the ātman of the fourth stage whose existence is strongly asserted by the Shankara school. Shankara’s critique against this ālayavijñāna is found in his Brahmasūtra bhāṣya:
“In the Vijñānavāda doctrine, the so-called ālayavijñāna is by mistake considered to be the substratum of residual impressions and also being admittedly momentary, this ālayavijñāna is essentially something unstable, and similar to the active consciousness (pravr̥ttivijñāna); it can never be the substratum of residual impressions. This is because unless there exists one persistent entity which is equally connected with the past, the present, and the future, or an absolutely unchangeable (eternal ātman) which cognizes everything, then we are unable to account for daily activities like memory and recognition which are subject to residual impressions dependent on place, time and cause. On the other hand, if you declare your ālayavijñāna to be by nature permanent, you thereby abandon your tenet (of the ālayavijñāna as well as everything else being momentary)”.

[Anonymous No.23340505]

>>23340501
The Vijñānavādins recognize the ālayavijñāna as the substratum of residual impressions, but as they accept its momentariness, Shankara denies the possibility of its being the substratum. In Shankara’s view our daily activities like memory and recognition would presuppose the existence of a continuous entity (anvayin) that persists in all the three times, past, present and future, or else, an unchangeable, permanent (kūṭaśthanitya), quiescent ātman. Therefore, this ātman is essentially different from the ālayavijñāna.

Shankara’s ātman and the Vijñānavādin’s ālayavijñāna each arose from different backgrounds and long historical traditions. Even if they differ in essence, they show mutual similarity in their function that they exercise within each system, and as both of the two systems equally assert the non-reality of the phenomenal world, they both belong to a similar monistic standpoint.

In this context, it is quite interesting to note the following fact. Buddhist philosophers, Shāntarakṣita (725-788) and Kamalaśīla (740-796) point out that there is a “slight mistake” (alpāparādha) in the Advaita, in other words, the difference between their own and the Advaita standpoint, which lies in their understanding of the nature of vijñāna; seen from the side of Buddhism, the difference or the originality of each lies in the understanding of the nature of vijñāna and of ātman, pure consciousness. The Buddhist side criticizes the eternal nature of the ātman while the Vēdānta side attacks the momentariness of vijñāna. This is the last line on which neither side could by any means concede to the other from the theoretical point of view.

Then, how has the Vēdānta school, which is representative of the orthodox Brahminical (āstika) traditions, come to assume close similarities to Buddhism, which is representative of the non-orthodox (nāstika) traditions?

The Vēdāntinization of Buddhism did not start just at the time of Shāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla. As is well known, in the Laṅkāvatārasūtra, which was probably composed around the year 400 A.D., tathāgatagarbha or the matrix-embryo of the tathāgata was not only at times identified with ālayavijñāna, but the definition of this tathāgatagarbha was also very similar to the definition of Brahman in the Vēdānta. Besides, Brahman, Viṣṇu, and īśvara are also used as synonyms of tathāgata and the highest Brahman comes to be regarded as the ultimate state. In the same sūtra, Mahāprajñā Bodhisattva raises the question to the Buddha as to whether the doctrine of the tathāgatagarbha is not the same as the heretical ātman doctrine (tīrthakarātmavāda).

[Anonymous No.23340510]

>>23340505
The question, of course, needs a further detailed investigation, but it seems to me that even though Buddhism had long been taking the doctrinal standpoint of denying the existence of ātman, Buddhism was gradually in the process of moving towards monism, negating pluralism of the Hīnayāna Buddhism, especially the Sarvāstivādins, and included such notions as tathāgatagarbha and ālayavijñāna into the Buddhist doctrines; the inclusion of such notions reveals to us the weakening of Buddhism as a social force and the revival of Brahmanism and the consequent Brahmanization or Vēdāntinization of Buddhism. The tendency towards a monistic way of thinking is one great current that runs through the orthodox line of the history of Indian thought from the time of r̥gvēda.

On the other hand, the Vēdānta school was formed with the Brahmasūtra as its foundation in the fifth century, comparatively later than other philosophical schools including the Buddhist schools. The Vēdānta school established a system of Brahmanic monism based upon the Upaniṣads, and especially in reacting to the then rather influential Sāmkhya school.

However, this realistic monism of the Brahmasūtra was of a character of bhēdābhēda or dualistic monism, as it were. In denying such a standpoint and in the process of developing towards an absolute monism (Advaita), that is, the Upaniṣadic thought of the identity of Brahman and ātman, the realistic monism of the Brahmasūtra was gradually transformed and moved closer and closer to the Buddhism which had a more advanced theoretical system than the Vēdānta. While doing so, this Vēdānta philosophy came to be “Buddhisticized” considerably.

The gradual process of Buddhisticization of the Vēdānta school is reflected in the four chapters of the Māṇḍūkyakārikā of Gauḍapāda (640-690) in the seventh century. This Buddhisticization of the Vēdānta school reached its highest point in the fourth chapter of this work.

What Shankara, born in South India in the eighth century, found before him were: firstly the Mīmāmsā school which was very flourishing with excellent theoreticians like Kumārila (650-700), Prabhākara (700), Maṇḍanamiśra (680-720) and others; secondly, a big wave of popular Hinduism which penetrated in leaps and bounds through the masses, and thirdly, a weakening, esoteric-oriented Buddhism which was the target of strong criticisms of Kumārila and others; fourthly, a thoroughly Buddhisticized Vēdānta school.

[Anonymous No.23340512]

>>23340510
Aiming at the revival of the Vēdānta school from the standpoint of orthodox Brahmanism, Shankara practically almost ignored popular Hinduism which stressed Bhakti, heaped severe criticism against the Mīmāmsā school which had no interest in the knowledge of the Brahman at all, breaking the formerly close relationship between the Mīmāmsā and the Vēdānta schools, and devoted himself to the knowledge of Brahman which is the most important topic of the Upaniṣads. On the other hand, vis-a-vis Buddhism, using his profound knowledge of Buddhism, he transmuted Buddhist doctrines in the Māṇḍūkyakārikā into Advaita; in other words, he re-injected the Upaniṣadic spirit into the extremely Buddhisticized Māṇḍūkyakārikā of his Paramaguru, pouring new life into it as it were, giving it an interpretation that followed the line of Vēdānta school and achieved the re-Vēdāntinization of the Buddhisticized Vēdāntic tradition.

In this way, Buddhist doctrines, which had been absorbed into the pre-Shankaran Vēdānta philosophy and constituted an integral part of the Māṇḍūkyakārikā, were preserved without being removed and were Vēdānticized by Shankara. As the result, the realistic monism of the Brahmasūtra was transformed and developed into an illusionistic non-dualism which, as he himself recognized, closely resembled the Buddhist doctrine.

From the above discussions, it may now be clear that Shankara is neither responsible for the Buddhisticization of the Vēdānta nor is a “Buddhist in disguise”. It might be Gauḍapāda the author of the Māṇḍūkyakārikā, or his predecessors, and not Shankara who can be called a ‘Buddhist in disguise’. For Shankara, Buddhism is an important target to overcome. For this reason, he attacks it very severely in his works. Shankara was an epoch-making reformer in the history of Vēdānta who turned the extremely Buddhisticized tradition of Vēdānta towards the Vēdāntic or Upaniṣadic Vēdānta.

[Anonymous No.23340531]

>>23340491
>Among the Vēdāntins, Bhāskara (750-800) is probably one of the earliest critics against Shankara
Bhaskara misunderstands Shankara as propounding subjective idealism, which Shankara actually refutes in his Brahma Sutra Bhashya. Advaita is rooted in the Upanishads and is not based on Buddhism, the other Vedantist base their theology partially on the Pancharatra unlike Shankara who sticks to the Upanishads so that tactic is just a way to try to delegitimize Shankara for not relying on apocryphal non-Vedic texts like they do.

>Vijñānabhikṣu of the sāmkhya school shows in his Sāmkhyapravacana bhāṣya that the Māyāvāda of the Vēdāntins is of the same standpoint as that of the Vijñānavādin’s
This is incredibly stupid, there are a large number of differences between Advaita and Yogachara, Yogachara is subjective idealism and Advaita isn't, in Advaita there is one single unchanging non-dual partless consciousness and this isn't true in Yogachara.

>“Shankara and his followers borrowed much of their dialectic form of criticism from the Buddhists. His Brahman was very much like the śūnya of specifically Nāgārjuna. I am led to think that Shankara’s philosophy is largely a compound of Vijnānavāda and śūnyavāda Buddhism with the Upaniṣad notion of the permanence of self superadded”.
This quote is also dumb, Dasgupta is correct when he writes in his book that the Vedantic Atman model completely BTFO's Buddhist Anatta but he is wrong about Advaita there. Brahman is not at all like Sunyata but Brahman is 1) metaphysically independent 2) forms its own ultimate reality 3) sentient awareness 4) partless and these are not true of sunyata. All you need to get Advaita is to do a staightforward reading of the early Upanishads that predate Buddhism and all the Advaita doctrines are already stated in them in plain terms.

[Anonymous No.23340564]

>>23340477
>That's completely unproven and it's not experientially confirmable
oh you mean like... the atman?

[Anonymous No.23340567]

>>23340531
>you need to get Advaita is to do a staightforward reading of the early Upanishads that predate Buddhism and all the Advaita doctrines are already stated in them in plain terms.
What took Sneedkara so long to explicate AV if it was always the correct interpretation and adds nothing to the Chuckpanishads? Where did it go for 2000 years?

[Anonymous No.23340583]

>>23340497
>Shankara recognizes the Buddhists’ denial of the real existence of the external objects and their acceptance of the real existence of consciousness only as of the points of similarity of Buddhism, which is the doctrine of the Vijnānavādin in this case, to the truth of non-dual ātman of Vēdānta
He recognizes that there is a partial similarity between the Vedantist who admits the ultimate metaphysical unreality of external objects while affirming that they are still "out there" i.e. as relatively-existing phenomena that is independent of our minds in empirical experience vs the Yogachara Buddhist who denies that there are any external objects (relatively existing or otherwise) independent of the mind; but Shankara goes on to explain in multiple works exactly why this Yogachara position is absurd and unjustifiable unlike his Vedantist position. Even though they both deny that exterior objects have absolute independent existence there is still a large gulf separating these two different metaphysical viewpoints and they have drastically different implications for one's metaphysics and epistemology and even soteriology.

> Advaitins and the Buddhists equally assert the non-reality of the phenomenal world,
False, Advaitins including Shankara assert that it "exists" as a shared medium or plane of interaction in a relative manner as the cosmic illusion which is independent of any particular mind and isn't just one mind's delusion, it is sustained by Brahman. Yogachara Buddhists deny that there is an external world present outside our minds even relatively. These two positions are saying something quite different.

>>23340501
>When Shankara and his followers attack the Vijñānavādins, ultimately the above two points, especially the point that the Vijñānavādins do not recognize an eternal, unchangeable ātman, are the target of criticism.
In Brahma Sutra Bhasya he attacks them explicitly for denying that the exterior world is present as an exterior phenomena that is independent of one's mind.

>As such, all Buddhist doctrines are nothing but nihilistic doctrines (vaināśika) “not to be taken into serious consideration by those who are seeking ultimate bliss”.
based.....

>Then, how has the Vēdānta school, which is representative of the orthodox Brahminical (āstika) traditions, come to assume close similarities to Buddhism, which is representative of the non-orthodox (nāstika) traditions?
It never assumed anything but from the earliest Upanishads including pre-Buddhist ones the Upanishads speak about the unreality of plurality and change. The Buddhists either were influenced by this or come up with tangentially-related ideas on their own but the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya talked about that before Buddha was even born.

[Anonymous No.23340593]

>>23340510
>This Buddhisticization of the Vēdānta school reached its highest point in the fourth chapter of this work.
Gaudapada in that work explicitly distinguishes his ideas from Buddhism, he criticizes Buddhism and says that his ideas come from the Upanishads and he cites the Upanishadic passages which the ideas come from.

> in other words, he re-injected the Upaniṣadic spirit into the extremely Buddhisticized Māṇḍūkyakārikā of his Paramaguru, pouring new life
This mistaken view can only occur to someone who is either completely ignorant of or chooses to ignore the explicitly Upanishadic roots and sources of everything that Gaudapada writes about.

[Anonymous No.23340602]

>>23340593
>Gaudapada in that work explicitly distinguishes his ideas from Buddhism, he criticizes Buddhism and says that his ideas come from the Upanishads and he cites the Upanishadic passages which the ideas come from
Sounds like a similar method as Greeks converting to Christianity and using the Bible as an allegory for their prior platonic theology, if you can frame Buddhistic ideas in Vedic terms then they aren't innovative or heretical anymore!

[Anonymous No.23340608]

>>23340531
Gaudapada was clearly influenced by Nagarjuna.

[Anonymous No.23340622]

>>23340564
>What took Sneedkara so long to explicate AV if it was always the correct interpretation and adds nothing to the Chuckpanishads? Where did it go for 2000 years?
Countless texts are lost because paper didn't arrive in India till the 8th century and before that writings were written on stuff like palm leaves that degraded incredibly easily. We have abundant evidence of an extensive pre-Shankara tradition of Advaita and even multiple strains of it though because there is a huge corpus of pre-Shankara Hindu texts that speak of the identity of the Atman and Brahman and which mention plurality being illusory.

Examples include:
The Major Upanishads
The Minor Upanishads
The Mahabharata including but not limited to the Bhagavad-Gita section
Multiple Puranas
The Brahma Sutras are more ambiguous but there are a few passages that strongly suggest non-dualism
Even the grammarian Bhartrari writes about a form of monism that includes the reality vs illusion distinction

Even the famous "snake and a rope" example predates Shankara and its found in minor Upanishads which already existed and which Shankara cites in his works. There are hundreds of quotes in all these texts talking about Advaita which attest to the existence of a more informalized Advaita that was widespread, Shankara just formalized a tradition which had long existed. The very first Upanishad directly says "Atman is Brahman" and even uses the word "Advaita" before Buddha was born. The idea that hundreds of these quotes all throughout the Upanishads, Puranas, Mahabharata etc perfectly mirroring Shankara's philosophy were written by people who didn't hold the view of Advaita is just completely absurd and unjustifiable.

[Anonymous No.23340628]

>>23340567
see >>23340622

[Anonymous No.23340642]

>>23340608
>Gaudapada was clearly influenced by Nagarjuna.
I disagree, you can try to argue otherwise but the arguments for your side are very weak.

Gaudapada cites Upanishadic passages which say that plurality is illusory and that the unchanging unborn Brahman alone exists, everything he writes stems from the natural extension of what these passages say. The Upanishads already make a distinction between illusion and reality before Buddha even existed much less Nagarjuna. Historically it was first a Hindu Upanishadic idea which was centuries later picked up by both Jains and Buddhists (early Jain authors wrote about it too and not just Nagarjuna).

Gaudapada's conception of the distinction between Absolute reality and the illusion as being in a top-down hierarchal relation has nothing to do with Nagarjuna's model either which disagrees with this.

[Anonymous No.23340649]

>>23340622
>The Major Upanishads
>The Minor Upanishads
>The Mahabharata including but not limited to the Bhagavad-Gita section
>Multiple Puranas
>The Brahma Sutras
These are all just scriptures cited by AV, not attestation to a pre-Shankara school of scholars and pandits producing treatises and educating pupils

[Anonymous No.23340659]

>>23340622
Also
>why did it take so long for Shankara to formalize the doctrine and disseminate that?
Because Brahmins weren't a bunch of equality-obsessed moralfagging basedbois like Buddha and they didn't proselytize to everyone in hopes of gaining converts but for centuries the Upanishadic doctrines was quite literally a SECRET that was only revealed to qualified persons undergoing the requisite training and preparation. The slow emergence of it into a formalized public school is the result of this secretive tradition slowly over the centuries shedding its secrecy and increasingly propounding and defending its ideas in public.

[Anonymous No.23340666]

>>23340649
>These are all just scriptures cited by AV, not attestation to a pre-Shankara school of scholars and pandits producing treatises and educating pupils
You either didn't read or didn't understand the post, I said that the hundreds of quotes found within those texts that unequivocally identify the Atman with Brahman and which say plurality is illusion is evidence of a long tradition of more informalized pre-Shankara Advaita. The other schools don't say that plurality is illusory or that the Atman and Brahman are wholly identical so the fact that hundreds of such quotes can be cited from the Upanishads, Puranas etc is proof of the informalized Advaita since only an Advaitin would write those things.

[Anonymous No.23340683]

>>23340666
I am aware you can produce the interpretation from the texts, I am curious about the lack of interpretors.

[Anonymous No.23340685]

>>23340649
>to a pre-Shankara school of scholars and pandits producing treatises and educating pupils
see >>23340659, it was always an esoteric tradition passed down from initiated master to discipline and was not a academic discipline at first, the Upanishads literally document this already existent tradition by describing it and its secrecy and initiations. It only slowly emerged into a formalized 'academic' school over the centuries. The hundreds of quotes talking about exclusively Advaitic ideas all over the Puranas and Upanishads and other Smritis attest to this tradition. The reason that in the early stages it wasn't producing academic treatises is that these treatises are the product of its later formalization into being "academic" but in the early stages this sort of academic style is not at all natural to an esoteric tradition of secretive initiation.

[Anonymous No.23340747]

>>23340685
>an esoteric tradition of secretive initiation
yes if it got out the brahmins were all crypto-buddhists that would be bad for business

[Anonymous No.23340974]

>>23340747
It's the opposite, Buddhism is crypto-Brahmanism. Advaita is just pure distilled Brahmanism.

>rebirth
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>karma
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>liberation from rebirth
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>all conditioned things are unsatisfactory
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>everything besides the Absolute/Unconditioned is temporary
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>liberation occurs through correcting or overcoming aviyda
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>part of the spiritual quest is removing the false identification with things that are not one's self
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>monasticism is important in the quest for liberation (at least on the direct and not indirect path)
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>Vedic rituals don't produce liberation but only gnosis/spiritual realization does
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>non-violence, truth-telling, austerity
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha

>plurality is illusory
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Mahayana writings

>consciousness is self-luminous
first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Mahayana writings

>prana, subtle bodies and nadirs
first in the Upanishads, and then later Hindu tantric writings and then finally Buddhist tantric writings

[Anonymous No.23340980]

>>23340974
How can they showup in the upanishads if the upanishads weren't written until after the Buddha kicked the bucket?

[Anonymous No.23341014]

>>23340980
>How can they showup in the upanishads if the upanishads weren't written until after the Buddha kicked the bucket?
Your chronology is wrong, it's the rough consensus of most Indology scholars that the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya (which themselves contain all the things just listed) are pre-Buddhist, the Brihadaranyaka being dated around 8th-7th BC and the Chandogya a little later. The middle Upanishads are dated around 600-400 BC roughly contemporaneously with Buddha with some of them being possibly earlier. The name Chandogya is even referenced in some part of the Pali Canon showing that it predates Buddha, I've seen it before but would have to search for it again.

[Anonymous No.23341015]

>>23340974
>Vedic rituals don't produce liberation but only gnosis/spiritual realization does
>first in the Upanishads, then later taught by Buddha
Woah, so the buddhists were crypto-brahmins, but only because those brahmins were themselves esoteric buddhists who didn't believe in the efficacy of the vedas
Now I see... Shankara isn't wrong because he is a crypto-buddhist, he is wrong for not being an esoteric buddhist

[Anonymous No.23341016]

>>23341015
>, but only because those brahmins were themselves esoteric buddhists who didn't believe in the efficacy of the vedas
Wrong, the Vedas themselves declare that liberation happens through gnosis, the Upanishads are part of the Vedas, and both the Upanishads and the earlier Vedas say the same thing about this. The Upanishad concur with the efficiency of the Vedas and agree that Vedic rites are extremely effective at producing the ends to which they are directed like wealth, heaven etc.

"By knowing Brahman one attains immortality here. There is no other way to its attainment" - Taittiriya Aranyaka 6-1-6

"There are but two outstanding paths-first the path of rites, and next monasticism; of these the latter excels" - Taittiriya Aranyaka 10-62-12

[Anonymous No.23341045]

>>23341016
idk not a good look for you as a Vedantist if Vedic rituals have no efficacy, and *checks notes*
>There are but two outstanding paths-first the path of rites, and next monasticism; of these the latter excels
So what is left here, pleading that there is an atman and clinging to that atman is the path to brahman? Apparently, you can dispense with that too and just do monasticism or ascetic life, no need to teach that this or that conception is equivalent to an absolute

[Anonymous No.23341057]

>>23341045
>idk not a good look for you as a Vedantist if Vedic rituals have no efficacy, and *checks notes*
The Upanishad never say the Vedic rituals don't have efficacy, this is a retarded strawman that is not substantiated by anything whatsoever. Both the Vedas and the Upanishads affirm that Vedic rituals have efficacy, the Upanishad simply provide additional clarification that Vedic rituals don't lead to moksha, which is what the pre-Upanishad portions of the Vedas *already stated* in portions like the Taittiriya Aranyaka, so they both repeat the same thing about rituals and moksha.
>Apparently, you can dispense with that too and just do monasticism or ascetic life, no need to teach that this or that conception is equivalent to an absolute
You can try but it's the wrong view and its following an incomplete, flawed and misleading understanding of reality.

[Anonymous No.23341089]

>>23341057
>the Upanishad simply provide additional clarification that Vedic rituals don't lead to moksha
i wonder if there's a different way which excludes all these useless practices and conflicting scriptures
>the wrong view and its following an incomplete, flawed and misleading understanding of reality.
since the vedas openly teach non-liberation there is no reason to rely on them for understanding reality, our only source for an atman being these texts, why should the passages on it be authoritative and those on the benefits of reciting the passages not be? If the Vedas are correct, surely chanting them and lighting fires should be conducive to liberation.

[Anonymous No.23341106]

>>23341089
>i wonder if there's a different way which excludes all these useless practices and conflicting scriptures
They aren't useless and the scriptures don't conflict
>since the vedas openly teach non-liberation there is no reason to rely on them for understanding reality
They teach how to attain different aims in recognition of the fact that humans have varying desires and seek varying ends, for people who desire wealth, heaven etc, the Vedas teach the rituals for that, and for people who seek moksha the Vedas teach the means to that. The Vedas and Upanishads openly point out that liberation is superior but they provide the means to attain either end and leave it up to the individual person to decide what to pursue.
>Why should the passages on it be authoritative and those on the benefits of reciting the passages not be?
Again, as I have said in multiple posts already the passages about attaining specific ends in samsara through rituals are authoritative (because those means do lead to those ends) just as the passages on the nature of absolute reality are authoritative (because ultimate reality really does exist in that way)
>If the Vedas are correct, surely chanting them and lighting fires should be conducive to liberation.
Wrong, this is again that same retarded strawman. Are you genuinely stupid or are you pretending to not understand this point because you want to keep relying on strawman fallacies? The Vedas don't say that chanting and lighting fires produces moksha, they just give different rituals to attain things like sons, wealth, heaven etc without saying any of them lead to moksha. Because of this, you are committing the strawman fallacy by saying that vedic rituals are supposed to lead to moksha and it's some sort of flaw that they don't. Both the Vedas and Upanishads say that moksha happens through knowledge alone.

[Anonymous No.23341130]

>>23341106
>the Vedas and Upanishads say that moksha happens through knowledge alone
Knowledge of what? I thought awareness/atman/etc wasn't an object of experience, so it cannot be something to be known. I believe there ended up being a fire sale on fire spells though in India and the brahmins all had to concede that such rituals were not the most bang for your buck, and that karma and liberation had more to them than chanting the Vedas, which as we've noted does not have any efficacy despite the Vedas apparently containing esoteric liberating knowledge if you know which precise parts work and don't. Hmmm

[Anonymous No.23341167]

>>23341130
>Knowledge of what?
Gaining knowledge of the Brahman-Atman is merely a way of referencing the mind overcoming it's misunderstandings, since the Self is always known and self-evident, when the mind corrects its former delusions and ties that were binding it then the Self continues on being known and self-evident like it was before, but without the mind misrepresenting it as something else anymore (and thus the Self's true nature is not hidden from the mind of the jiva anymore), and without the mind/jiva being reborn in samsara anymore. The Brahman-Atman is forever free and liberated without beginning or end and the spiritual quest pertains only to the jiva (that is an appearance of the Atman-Brahman) and its mind.

>I thought awareness/atman/etc wasn't an object of experience
It's not
>so it cannot be something to be known.
Indeed, I just explained in the above paragraph why it specifically doesn't entail trying to make the Absolute an object of knowledge/experience.

>which as we've noted does not have any efficacy
That's not true, this is the same strawman fallacy I've pointed out 3 or 4 times. The one line you apparently thought supports that merely says that renunciation is superior, and right after calling renunciation and rituals "two outstanding paths" it says nothing about rituals not being efficient or not leading to their ends but merely acknowledges like the Upanishads that moksha through renunciation is better than chasing objects of desire via rituals. Imagine being so BTFO that you can't help but repeating fallacies even after they were explicitly pointed out to you.

[Anonymous No.23341192]

>>23341167
>That's not true, this is the same strawman fallacy I've pointed out 3 or 4 times.
to be explicitly clear before I have to see this dumb strawman fallacy repeated for the 5th time because Im apparently arguing with a braindead NPC

Each section of the Vedas is valid in the sphere to which they refer, you dont have to "pick and choose" what part is true (which is a strawman) because it's all true, i.e. Vedic rituals are like magic that really do produce various ends delimited by time and space while the Upanishads really do reveal the ultimate truth about existence and the Absolute and how to attain moksha. Nothing the Upanishads reveal contradicts anything that the Vedas say, the Vedics never say that rituals lead to moksha but they are consistent with the Upanishads is connecting rituals with specific samsaric goals and connecting the duo of knowledge/renunciation with moksha and "attaining" Brahman.

“We see how people disobey even the scriptures because of an excess of attachment etc. Therefore according to the varying tendencies of people, the scriptures variously teach the particular relations subsisting between the ends and means. In this matter people themselves adopt particular means according to their tastes, and the scriptures simply, remain neutral, like the sun, for instance, or a lamp. Similarly somebody may think the highest goal to be not worth striving after. One chooses one’s goal according to one's knowledge, and wants to adopt corresponding means.” - Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣadbhāṣya 2.1.20

[Anonymous No.23341281]

>>23340980
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad was written and compiled before Buddhism anon

[Anonymous No.23341287]

I recommend you read Introduction to Hinduism by Gavin Flood
I'm just throwing that out there in the case that you aren't an idiotic dilettante who wastes all of his time reading primary sources

[Anonymous No.23341352]

>>23341192
>Vedic rituals are like magic that really do produce various ends delimited by time and space while the Upanishads really do reveal the ultimate truth about existence and the Absolute and how to attain moksha
I mean, that's probably not true, at all. Good to know the other guy thinks these sorts of things, really puts the whole attachment to delusion being the root of suffering and transmigration thing the Buddhists were saying to the other jeets in really vivid context. It's like I am really there. Just as illusions conjured by a sorceror are not real and he avoids becoming allured by them, one should also avoid becoming deluded by verbal illusions.

[Anonymous No.23341453]

[Anonymous No.23341500]

>>23341281
It is not an autochthonous production of the brahmins regardless, they were so ritualistic they were practically irreligious by the 8th century. The religious revolution in India's axial age came from the Ganges delta, in Greater Magadha, and combined Indo-Aryan but non-Vedic culture with indigenous folk traditions and probably some original synthesis that is basically impossible to recover.

[Anonymous No.23341546]

>>23328651
Radhakrishnan & Coomerswamy have extensive large survey books.

[Anonymous No.23341715]

>>23341192
>Each section of the Vedas is valid in the sphere to which they refer, you dont have to "pick and choose" what part is true (which is a strawman) because it's all true, i.e. Vedic rituals are like magic that really do produce various ends delimited by time and space while the Upanishads really do reveal the ultimate truth about existence and the Absolute and how to attain moksha. Nothing the Upanishads reveal contradicts anything that the Vedas say, the Vedics never say that rituals lead to moksha but they are consistent with the Upanishads is connecting rituals with specific samsaric goals and connecting the duo of knowledge/renunciation with moksha and "attaining" Brahman.
And it remains that in both the Chandogya and the brihadaranyaka Upanishads the brahmins say they don't know how karma and rebrith works.

[Anonymous No.23341746]

>>23341715
>the brahmins say they don't know how karma and rebrith works.
There is just one line in the Brihadaranyaka about a Brahmin teacher not knowing it but earlier in the same Upanishad its already being taught by the Brahmin and vedic sage Yajnavalkya and the text (which teaches rebirth in many places) explicitly attributes its own origin to the absolute Brahman. The Chandogya doesn’t say anything about that.

[Anonymous No.23341965]

>>23335860
>In the younger generation it is more common to eat meat - especially chicken and mutton.
Zoomers are nigger tier savages.

[Anonymous No.23342487]

>>23341500
>It is not an autochthonous production of the brahmins regardless
this is pure cope, all the evidence suggests otherwise

[Anonymous No.23343821]

>>23339718
Anon it's an Indo European religion

[Anonymous No.23343995]

Why don't people recommend the whole Mahabharata and instead just shill the Gita?

>Bawww it's le 1000 pages
And yet you read LOTR and it's derivatives, grow up.

[Anonymous No.23344149]

Careful, once you learn about modern India and certain... standards, you will be disillusioned and hope to find a distance between pre-industrualized modern India and all the classical stuff

[Anonymous No.23344654]

>>23343995
It's good for presenting a concise breakdown of Hindu thought for people who otherwise wouldn't have the attention span to read the entire Mahabharata. A lot of people are interested in or open to reading about Hindu philosophy/spirituality but will be intimidated by reading a huge work spanning thousands of pages.

[Anonymous No.23344943]

>>23336644
Not really, the main buddhist critique to the atman is that is a second order ontology, which creates tons of metaphtsical problems and i finite regresses
The idea that striving for tje atman is bad is a psychological and secondary critique

[Anonymous No.23345215]

>>23343995
Probably because the Mahabharata is a long text while the Gita is much more accessible to those with an interest in Hinduism

[Anonymous No.23345553]

>>23343995
The Mahabharata is an adventure story, the Gita is a philosophical text

[Anonymous No.23345613]

>>23342487
Show us that evidence then

[Anonymous No.23345634]

>>23344943
>>Not really, the main buddhist critique to the atman is that is a second order ontology,
the main buddhist critique to the atman is that the brahmins never manged to show this atman to anybody and that their atman cannot be found in the 5 aggregates in any realm of life

[Anonymous No.23345649]

I don't know much about Hinduism, but every single thread dedicated to the topic I've ever been in is just a bunch autists writing walls of text, arguing with each other whether brahamapoopa is true or brahamapeepee whatever that even means. Is this really the fruit of studying Hinduism?

[Anonymous No.23345689]

If a brahmin manages to know his atman, how does he know the other people have their atman too?
Does a brahmin who see his atman sees other people's atman?
if all the atmans are just 1 brahman, how come the atman of one person is not the atman of another person?

[Anonymous No.23345873]

Reminder that brahmins practiced human scarifies like vulgar mayans.

>Purushamedha (or Naramedha) is a Śrauta ritual of human sacrifice. The Vajasaneyi Samhita-Sataphana Brahmana-Katyayana Srauta Sutra sequence of Shukla Yajur Veda texts contains the most details.[1]

>Whether actual human sacrifice was taking place has been debated since Colebrooke brought the issue under attention in 1805. He regarded it as a symbolic ritual.[2] Since there is no inscriptural or other record of Purushamedha ever being performed, some scholars suggest it was invented simply to round out sacrificial possibilities.[1] Asko Parpola suggests actual human sacrifices are described in Vedic texts, while the Brahmanas show the practice diminishing.[note 1] In Shatapatha Brahmana 13.6.2, an ethereal voice intervenes to halt the proceedings.[1] The dhatupatha of Aṣṭādhyāyī by Pāṇini defines the root medha as synergizing the energy to perform something fruitful.

[Anonymous No.23345897]

>>23344943
>he main buddhist critique to the atman is that is a second order ontology, which creates tons of metaphtsical problems and i finite regresses
No, it doesn't create any problems or regress, that's just incorrect. You don't even know what you are talking about.

>>23345613
The Upanishads are overflowing with references to Vedic rituals, specific Vedic strata, Vedic myths and metaphysical Vedic concepts, the two types of characters that show up in their parables are either Vedic gods and/or members of Vedic society engaged in sacrifice and study. They explicitly identify themselves as originating from the same source of the Vedas and as being in continuation from them. All of this is overwhelming evidence that the Upanishads were composed by Brahmins and possibly other upper-level members of Vedic society. All of this knowledge of detailed Vedic minutiae would only have been accessible to someone like a Brahmin who had spent his life immersed in Vedic learning. Furthermore, the Upanishads would only have been added to the recitation of the oral Veda and passed down (as they were IRL) as part of that oral text by the people entrusted with memorizing and passing the text of the Veda down, i.e. Vedic Brahmins.

Every single thing about the Upanishads hence screams Brahminical origins from the top of its lungs, this is why it's more or less the widespread consensus in Indology that the Upanishads originate from them. The idea that they have a non-Brahminical origin is contradicted by every single iota of evidence and it's the last redoubt cope of Buddhists who are upset that the Upanishads come first chronologically, so they want to separate the Upanishads from the Brahmins whom they irrationally seethe at, but unfortunately for those Buddhists that "theory" (it's just cope) is contradicted by all available evidence.

[Anonymous No.23345917]

>>23345634
>the main buddhist critique to the atman is that the brahmins never manged to show this atman to anybody
This is true of endless things in Buddhism, so that's not really a strong or effective critique
>and that their atman cannot be found in the 5 aggregates in any realm of life
The Buddhist analysis of mind is flawed and incorrect, experience is not simply reducible to the 5 aggregates. If you have the right analysis you can realize the Atman is present here and now in experience. When the Buddhist says "it cant be found" he is really just saying "when I impose this dogmatic Buddhist conception of mind onto my experience and decide to view things that way, then I can't find things that go against it" (no shit)

[Anonymous No.23345925]

>>23345689
>If a brahmin manages to know his atman, how does he know the other people have their atman too?
Atman is consciousness, so if something is showing itself to be aware/sentient then that is a sign there is Atman dwelling within it.
>Does a brahmin who see his atman sees other people's atman?
The Atman is not an object of the organs
>if all the atmans are just 1 brahman, how come the atman of one person is not the atman of another person?
The Atman is one person *is* also the Atman of another person, everyone shares the same Atman which is infinite, partless and undivided.

[Anonymous No.23345956]

>>23345917
The Atman is simply the clarity of the consciousness aggregate

[Anonymous No.23345979]

>>23345917
>using relativism/perspectivism to tactically defend an orthodox theological position
lol

[Anonymous No.23345984]

>>23345956
Maybe if you are trying to shoehorn the Hindu teaching into the nearest similar thing in Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.23345989]

>>23345925
>everyone shares the same Atman which is infinite, partless and undivided
How do finite, partite, divided individuals share the same "awareness"?

[Anonymous No.23346017]

>>23345989
> How do finite, partite, divided individuals share the same "awareness"?
How are finite, partite, divided objects on earth illuminated by light from the same sun?

[Anonymous No.23346028]

Probably a one volume text on Hinduism in general. This will give you a big picture idea and introduce you to names and concepts you can follow up on.

Ancient literature is extremely challenging to read, especially in translation. It is pretty foolish to dive right into translated sacred texts without a general introduction to terminology and history.

"Survey of Hinduism" was good, I read the entire thing some years ago.

[Anonymous No.23346543]

What if I don't give a fuck about any of this metaphysics bullshit and only want the tutorials on how to do strange poses and meditate into superpowers? What should I read?

[Anonymous No.23346667]

>>23346017
Not by their own self-nature of sun-ness

[Anonymous No.23346820]

>>23346017
so what'the answer to the question?

[Anonymous No.23347346]

The Advaitafag seems to be the only person who has actually read anything on Eastern spirituality at all period besides the two other anons, The “””Buddhist””” /lit/ posters in here are making their religion look so bad

Imagine attempting to refute the Atman by pointing out that it’s axiomatic/dogmatic like this isn’t something that’s grasped and talked about within basic epistemology

The Munchausen trilemma was minted in 1968, can we get into the actual meat of the differences between Hindu/Buddhist metaphysics versus fruitless shit-slinging over shared dogmatism

[Anonymous No.23347383]

>>23346667
> Not by their own self-nature of sun-ness
Sun-ness resides in the sun as its own nature and not in those illuminated objects which receive its light, just as Atman-ness resides in or comprises the Atman and not in the things which are illuminated by the Atman.

>>23346820
The same infinite awareness of the Self is present as the innermost luminous awareness-presence inside all beings simultaneously like how the expanse of space is both omnipresent and found within all objects. It is directly responsible for the everyone’s immediate, constant, self-evident and non-conceptual awareness of themselves. Its presence also permits the intellect (Buddhi) to be able to perceive and discriminate things when the intellect invested with this light. Different experiences forming the content of different intellects are not different types of awareness, they are just differences inhering on the side of the thing receiving illumination, like two different shaped rocks receiving light from the same sun, so different experiences happening in different beings at the same time doesn’t contradict them having the same underlying root awareness.

[Anonymous No.23347398]

>>23347383
>Atman-ness resides in or comprises the Atman and not in the things which are illuminated by the Atman
Ok well at least the sun is real and actually illuminates things which are then registered by our senses

[Anonymous No.23347399]

>>23347346
Read chapter 9 of Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosha

[Anonymous No.23347402]

>>23347398
Retroactively refuted by Guenon and Shankara (PBUH). The sun is made out of nothing as it's just jiva reflected throught he presence-awareness of the intellect-experience of atman-brahman by virtue of nonduality. Read the Mahamahasrisripeepeepoopoo Upanishad, which Buddha traveled forwards in time to plagiarize.

[Anonymous No.23347489]

>>23347402
The son is menstrual blood, the moon is semen, beings not born from a womb can't see the sun or moon.

[Anonymous No.23347667]

>>23344149
I feel you, brother. I feel the same way... I read all this amazing ancient stuff, then look at modern Indians and wince.

[Anonymous No.23347780]

>>23347667
It's Britain's fault

[Anonymous No.23348189]

>>23347780
People underestimate how destitute India was post-Independence. The average life expectancy was in the mid-30s and the country for most of its history was poorer than Subsaharan Africa. More than that India spent 1000 years fighting Muslims and then had to deal with colonialism, post-partition wars, and terrible economic policies that crippled the country's growth until the mid-90s. It will take 40 years at least for India to be somewhat developed but more like 70

[Anonymous No.23349413]

>>23347780
blame the Mughals

[Anonymous No.23349683]

>>23349413
Blame the Huns

[Anonymous No.23351172]

>>23337216
>That argument is made by later Buddhists but not by Buddha
This argument was indeed made by the buddha, it's all over the majima nikaya
>this argument relies on one accepting as an axiom that all conscious experience is reducible to the skandhas and nothing else, but this is actually an idiosyncratic Buddhist axiom
Not really, is a phenomenomogical, empirical argument, you can only be aware of your awareness of a thing, thinking there's an exterior awareness would need an instant of pure awareness without an object which is empirically impossible thus the idea of something outside the skhandas is mere metaphysical speculation, buddhism doesn't need to prove the existence of feelings, memories or consciousness since all of those things are empirically self evident
>Awareness is always non-dual,
You can't prove that
>since causality isn't directly experienced
If you follow this logic the the uncaused cause that is Brahman can't exist, but that's besides the point dependent origination and causality are not the same thing, Nagarjuna one of the most important buddhist thinkers already refuted causation centuries before Hume
>The experience of it is your awareness that is effortlessly and spontaneously present and self-evident always.
If we follow that logic then every moment of awareness also entails an object of awareness leading us into a paradoxical duality were there's two different substances, one which is aware or pure subjectivity and another the thing or pure objectivity and nothing linking the two, that's why you can't pose awareness as the prime substance, it always create duality
>False, Advaitins including Shankara assert that it "exists" as a shared medium or plane of interaction in a relative manner as the cosmic illusion
If it exist as an "illusion" then it doesn't really exist, so the difference here is shallow, you're just doing a play on words

[Anonymous No.23351228]

>>23347346
Suffering, impermanence and the will and knowledge to overcome it are not dogmatic ideas but observable phenomena, that's the difference, vedanta creates his system from metaphysical speculation, buddhism from practical analisis of the human mind

[Anonymous No.23351232]

>>23346017
Because the light is made of photons, so the light is also made of parts, it's all just parts interacting with parts

[Anonymous No.23351246]

>>23345897
>No, it doesn't create any problems or regress
Yes it does, if you have a unchanging realm and a changing realm both of them can't interact, since the unchangi g can't change a d that which change can't be unichangig is just a contradiction in terms,so a mediation is needed, but this mediated realm can be unchanging(since that would just be the unchanging real) or changing (idem) so it must be different thus the problem repeat itself, new mediators are needed and those will also need more mediations to infinity, the infinite regress is created

[Anonymous No.23352215]

>>23351172
>Not really, is a phenomenomogical, empirical argument, you can only be aware of your awareness of a thing,
In any experience, awareness is directly aware of itself, and then the mind has knowledge of a particular form or object, and every dualistic experience whether waking or dreaming is made of both of these things being present simultaneously. This is even something which Buddhist philosophers admit, just read Yogacharains like Dharmakirti, Dinnaga etc and you'll see that they admit that awareness has direct, immediate, non-conceptual awareness of or access to itself.
>buddhism doesn't need to prove the existence of feelings, memories or consciousness since all of those things are empirically self evident
Whether the Buddhist analysis of mind is correct though is debatable and not self-evident which is the point. What the Buddhist rightly or wrongly labels as X Skandha another analysis belonging to another tradition categorizes it differently, and the Buddhists has no proof that his analysis is the correct one over the other ones. So when you simply say "its le empirical reddit" that's papering over the fact that the root analysis you are calling empirical is itself tenuous and subject to dispute and is not admitted as valid by the opponent or even neutral third parties.
>You can't prove that
So? Practically everything in Buddhism is unproven.
>If you follow this logic the the uncaused cause that is Brahman can't exist
No, that's a non-sequitur which is a fallacy, what you said does not follow from the premise. Simply because you cannot directly observe causality or confirm that it truly exists as such doesn't mean that an uncaused caused cannot exist. The topic of what we have epistemic access to in experience has nothing whatsoever to do with the metaphysical question of the possible existence of something.

If we applied your non-sequitur fallacy which you just used to Buddhism it would result in things like "Paranirvana isn't directly experienced, therefore it cannot exist", or "rebirth isn't directly experienced therefore it cannot exist" or "The heaven and hell realms that Buddha taught are not directly experienced therefore they cannot exist and Buddha is wrong" and "sunyata isn't experienced therefore it doesn't exist". Do you now see the issue with your fallacy?

[Anonymous No.23352220]

>>23351172
>The experience of it is your awareness that is effortlessly and spontaneously present and self-evident always.
>If we follow that logic then every moment of awareness also entails an object of awareness leading us into a paradoxical duality were there's two different substances
It's not true that every moment of awareness also entails an object, since in dreamless sleep awareness persists but without an object, furthermore, the Atman as it really exists in itself in absolute reality or paramarthika is without any object always, it is only on the vyavahara level within samsara that objects appear to be present, someone who has attained final liberation doesn't have objects be presented anymore when their body dies and they stop transmigrating even though their awareness continues without any duality present. So, just speaking on a theoretical or metaphysical level, it's just simply incorrect to say that awareness *always* has an object alongside it leading to a duality because this isn't true in how Vedanta explains things. You can reject this explanation as non-empirical (like much of Buddhism) but that doesn't refute it on a logical level or demonstrate any inconsistency in it. Certainly, a duality that is always present is not something that naturally follows from the Vedantic explanation of things and its a strawman to misrepresent it as saying so in light of the counterexamples I just gave.
>one which is aware or pure subjectivity and another the thing or pure objectivity and nothing linking the two
What links them is that the objectivity is nothing but an illusory appearance generated as such by a power inherent in the non-dual awareness. The objectivity is not another world or another plane of existence that needs linkage to a first world, but it is the same non-dual awareness itself, remaining formless and immutable while falsely appearing as diversified into color, sound, plurality etc through Its inherent ability to appear as such without relying on anything else.

[Anonymous No.23352223]

>>23351172
>False, Advaitins including Shankara assert that it "exists" as a shared medium or plane of interaction in a relative manner as the cosmic illusion
>If it exist as an "illusion" then it doesn't really exist, so the difference here is shallow, you're just doing a play on words
I know, only Brahman has real existence, the point of putting "existence" in quotes was to signify that it meant illusory relative existence or falsity. The difference is not actually shallow because a relatively existing illusion generated by the source of everything is still able to preserve everyone's actions as pertaining to the same world that is independent of any one mind, i.e. minds are interacting with each other and objects formed of the relatively-existing elements, but in the Yogachara model it results in the implication that one's family and friends and even one's teacher are nothing but the figments of one's own mind and not actually "out there" and it makes things like helping others or seeking knowledge from someone completely pointless and even irrational for one to do and there are endless inconsistencies like this that follow but not in the Vedantic explanation where jivas have their own independent minds and are able to interact with and perceive each other within samsara.

[Anonymous No.23352259]

>>23351246
>Yes it does, if you have a unchanging realm and a changing realm both of them can't interact
I know that this is apparently your favorite strawman argument but you'll have to give it up because it's just simply wrong, There is not two separate realms taught by Advaita, There is just the one existent Brahman alone, falsely appearing as diversified into other things through Its ability to do so. The appearance is not a second realm and it has no independent existence but it's just the inherent power of the first and only Reality "in effect" or "in action". Thus, there is not even a question of their interaction since the second is just the virtual display of the first.
>since the unchangi g can't change a d that which change can't be unichangig is just a contradiction in terms,so a mediation is needed
You don't need any 'meditation' besides Brahman's own power since the Reality of Brahman is wholly independent and relies on nothing, It's inherent power/disposition that is non-different from Itself brings about the false appearance directly without relying on anything. You are just engaging in the question-begging fallacy by asserting without justification that an further mediations are needed. The point that the appearance involves change and the Reality is immutable is no contradiction because only the unchanging reality of Brahman has real existence and not the appearence, something that has no existence cannot contradict the existence of something real.

The Advaitic position is that Brahman is wholly independent and relies on nothing and is endowed with an inherent ability to manifest the display of the cosmic illusion as a falsely-appearing diversification of Itself while remaining unchanged.

You can respond to this by:
1) Mispresenting their position and saying that a meditation is needed because nothing links the Reality and the appearance, but this is engaging in the strawman fallacy by falsely mispresenting their stance and ignoring that it is Brahman's power that is the source of the appearance and what 'connects' the appearance with its source in Reality.
2) Claiming that this power isn't enough and that some additional meditation is needed, but this is engaging in the question-begging fallacy by presupposing its own conclusions, in order for this to not be a question-begging fallacy you have to actually show why it's logically necessary why further mediation beyond Brahman's power is needed, but this is something you have never done.

Every response you have ever given to this issue has consisted of one of the two fallacies listed above.

[Anonymous No.23352292]

Yeah but Advaita is not the end all be all of hinduism.

[Anonymous No.23352312]

>>23352292
Even Advaitins don't say that it's the end-all be-all of Hinduism, that's why Advaita recommends karma-yoga and bhakti-yoga for non-monks instead of telling them to practice Advaitin jnana-yoga. They of course consider their own metaphysics to be the most correct, but they fully recognize and agree that their path is only meant for a specially-qualified person and that the masses are actually better off following other religious modes like karma-yoga etc, and that these other religious modes are also valid ways of progressing towards moksha and that they are rooted in scripture just like jnana-yoga, but that they are just not as quick or direct routes as jnana-yoga.

[Anonymous No.23353989]

>>23352215
>In any experience, awareness is directly aware of itself, and then the mind has knowledge of a particular form or object
That's not self evident or how awareness is presented in experience, we are always aware of an object of awareness, a prior pure awareness aware of itself is gnoseological speculation, it's an abstraction of the different moments of the awareness of an object

[Anonymous No.23354699]

>>23352220
>since in dreamless sleep awareness persists but without an object,
Then you have no proof of awareness existing there, since you're not aware of your "pure awareness" or dreamless sleep, you're only speculating that awareness must exist there, because you fill the gap between the moments of awareness while yoy're awake with your lack of awareness when you're sleeping, but you're not really "aware of your lack of awareness of an object" if so, then that would be an object of awareness, you just think that domewhat you should still be aware because you take for granted that you must be aware all the time, so you're question begging
>What links them is that the objectivity is nothing but an illusory appearance generated as such by a power inherent in the non-dual awareness
Again you can't prove that, you're just taking for granted that things must work that way, but you have no argument that explain how that works, so what yoy're saying has no argumentative value, you're just repeating dogma
>There is not two separate realms taught by Advaita, There is just the one existent
That's irrelevant, the infinite regress is logical not ontological, what matter is that you can't explain how you can go from one aspect to another, you're on the changing world so the burden of proof is on you to argument for the existence of an unchanging world, just saying "theres an unchanging world and it has all the powers to solve the contradictions it creates" is not ver logical, the only way to justify an unchanging world is to show which form of mediation it uses to contact/emanate the changing world but that always create an infinite regress and break the chain of causation

[Anonymous No.23354866]

>>23352259
>Brahman's power that is the source of the appearance and what 'connects' the appearance with its source in Reality
If that power can interact with the changing world that means this power changes, since no unchanging thing can interact with a changing world, it wouldn't be able to exist in the moment to moment becoming of change, so this changing power makes brahman also a changing thing, since if brahman doesn't change he wouldn't be able to excercise this power, the power would be independent from him, but then there's no unchanging thing, if the power is changing tben it has no access to brahman, if the power is unchanging then it has no access to maya if the power is neither of them then it doesn't have accees to any of them

[Anonymous No.23355886]

>>23346543
Hello? Someone?

[Anonymous No.23355890]

>>23355886
Samuels, Yoga and Tantra

[Anonymous No.23356395]

>>23355890
This?

[Anonymous No.23356570]

the western man's close relationship with hygiene makes him incapable of understanding any hindu philosophy

[Anonymous No.23356625]

>>23353989
>That's not self evident or how awareness is presented in experience, we are always aware of an object of awareness, a prior pure awareness aware of itself is gnoseological speculation,
It is self-evident, in every experience our own immediate presence as awareness is always self-evident to itself, you never fail to have immediate access to the fact of your sentience. If it wasn't self-evident it leads to a untenable infinite regress because if it's not self-evident to itself than it has to be evident to another consciousness to be known, and this (also not being self-evident) has to be evident to another, and this continues on in a regress that makes it impossible to be aware of or know anything.
>it's an abstraction of the different moments of the awareness of an object
It's not, this is a strawman since in no Vedantic text do they engage in any such abstraction.

>>23354699
>Then you have no proof of awareness existing there, since you're not aware of your "pure awareness" or dreamless sleep, you're only speculating that awareness must exist there,
I'm not speculating about anything but I'm simply stating what the Vedantic doctrine teaches about this. You also equally have no proof that there is an absence of awareness in dreamless sleep.
>so you're question begging
I know that you get confused about this easily because you are ESL, but I'll give you a helpful tip so you can avoid the same mistake: It's not question-begging to simply state what the doctrine of a philosophical or religious school is. It would be question-begging to say "this is true because X school says so", but I never said that so it wasn't question-begging. All I did was point out that a dualism of subject and object both being always present is not something that naturally or logically results from the Vedantic doctrine, and their doctrine actually falsifies that and explains why the object is not always present. You can disagree with their explanation but that doesn't change the fact that what you described about the object always being present is not something that is taught by Vedanta and it's not an implication or a result of it either. It's actively engaging in a strawman fallacy to say that the Vedantic teaching results in a object that is always present since they literally explain why that's not true.

[Anonymous No.23356658]

>>23354866
>If that power can interact with the changing world that means this power changes,
since no unchanging thing can interact with a changing world
No, that's false, the power does not change. The power simply projects or conjures up the illusion of samsara, and that's all that it ever does. There is no logical necessity whatsoever that the power itself has to change itself in any way in order to conjure up that illusion. All change only inheres on the side of the illusion and is itself part of that illusion, the power just does what it always does timelessly, at no point is the power doing anything different from any other point. There are not even any examples of it changing that can be identified.
>it wouldn't be able to exist in the moment to moment becoming of change
Why not?
>so this changing power makes brahman also a changing thing
Neither Brahman nor the power/potency changes
>since if brahman doesn't change he wouldn't be able to excercise this power
It's always being exercised timelessly without beginning or end and so there is no change needed in the first place in order that it be exercised. Time itself is unreal and is part of the illusion that is generated, beyond the illusion there is just the immutable and timeless reality of Brahman that always remains free and Unconditioned while exercising Its power timelessly, no change is present in ultimate reality and it (change) only pertains to the illusion.
>the power would be independent from him
I already said it's not
>if the power is unchanging then it has no access to maya
The illusion of the samsara is nothing but this power made manifest

[Anonymous No.23356681]

>>23356625
>It is self-evident
it isn't

>you never fail to have immediate access to the fact of your sentience.
no one can access that in deep sleep, or under anesthesia or when the parts of the brain related to that function aren't active

>. If it wasn't self-evident it leads to a untenable infinite regress
no, there no way stablish such relation and no reason to believe an "infinite regress" is untenable

>if it's not self-evident to itself than it has to be evident to another consciousness to be known
no, there no reason to believe that

>has to be evident to another
there no reason to believe that to be the case

>makes it impossible to be aware of or know anything.
again, that makes no logical sense

>no Vedantic text do they engage in any such abstraction.
the whole vedanta is base around such abstractions, they are just to ignorant to realize that

[Anonymous No.23356691]

>>23354699
>Then you have no proof of awareness existing there, since you're not aware of your "pure awareness" or dreamless sleep, you're only speculating that awareness must exist there,
Again, I'm not speculating but I'm just stating what the Vedantic doctrine is and also stating the true and incontrovertible fact that, the Advaitic teachings does not teach that the object is always present and nor is that an implication of anything which they teach. You can disagree with their teaching but you are just lying if you say that they teach that the object is always present or that this is a result of anything they teach.
>>What links them is that the objectivity is nothing but an illusory appearance generated as such by a power inherent in the non-dual awareness
>Again you can't prove that, you're just taking for granted that things must work that way, but you have no argument that explain how that works, so what yoy're saying has no argumentative value, you're just repeating dogma
Whether I can prove anything I said there is really irrelevant, since I only mentioned that point to demonstrate that the notion that the object is always present is not taught by Advaita and nor is it a logical implication that follows from anything that they teach. You had earlier wrongly implied that it was so all I was doing was correcting that false statement of yours, but I wasn't claiming to prove their doctrine true or anything.

[Anonymous No.23356695]

>>23354699
>>There is not two separate realms taught by Advaita, There is just the one existent
>That's irrelevant, the infinite regress is logical not ontological
There is no regress unless you are engaging in one of the two fallacies which I pointed out earlier.
>what matter is that you can't explain how you can go from one aspect to another
Yes I can easily, the power of Brahman is inherently able to bring about the virtual and false appearance of plurality and change, all without any real change occurring in Brahman.
>you're on the changing world so the burden of proof is on you to argument for the existence of an unchanging world
No, I don't, I'm just simply stating what the Vedantic doctrine is. I don't have to argue for anything. If you are unable to refute it (you are unable to refute it) that has nothing to do with whether or not Vedantins have arguments in favor of their position. Your inability to refute it and their arguments for their position are independent of each other.
> just saying "theres an unchanging world and it has all the powers to solve the contradictions it creates" is not ver logical
You have not given a single instance of it being illogical or not logical but you have just repeated fallacies.
>the only way to justify an unchanging world is to show which form of mediation it uses to contact/emanate the changing world
The power of generating the illusion is that means
>but that always create an infinite regress and break the chain
False, it actually doesn't. I specifically explained why it doesn't and pointed out that your attempts to insist that there was a regress involved a fallacy. You *still* have not given any logical reason why there is a necessary regress that does not involve a fallacy, so your claim that there is a regress can be dismissed as unserious and self-refuting until you come up with an argument that doesn't involve any fallacy.

[Anonymous No.23356739]

>>23356681
>It is self-evident
>it isn't
It is, but you are hopelessly blinded by ideological dogmas to the point of denying what is obvious, logical and intuitive.
>you never fail to have immediate access to the fact of your sentience.
>no one can access that in deep sleep, or under anesthesia or when the parts of the brain related to that function aren't active
None of the examples you listed are experiential, in each case you are simply inferring that we don't have immediate access to our own sentience in those examples but you cannot actually verify or empirically show that your claim is true. And inferences are fallible and don't refute anything. Certainly when it comes to our waking experienced you never fail to have immediate access to the fact of your sentience.
>. If it wasn't self-evident it leads to a untenable infinite regress
>no, there no way stablish such relation and no reason to believe an "infinite regress" is untenable
There *is* a regress that results from your NPC-tier conception of mind and it is an untenable regress because until knowledge or awareness is made known to something or someone it remains unknown, and if every knowledge/awareness remains unknown and keeps being passed down a chain without ever actually being made known or revealed to anything/anyone then there is no moment when any knowledge ever actually takes place, and when no knowledge ever takes place there is no empirical experience ever.
>if it's not self-evident to itself than it has to be evident to another consciousness to be known
>no, there no reason to believe that
False, there are strong reasons to believe that. "Evident to" here means "revealed to" or "made known", so all that sentence is saying is "if a consciousness isn't known to itself then it has to be known by another in order that experience can take place", otherwise, nothing is able to have any knowledge of consciousness or sense-data/thoughts and there is no experience at all. If consciousness isn't known either by itself or by another consciousness, then there is no knowledge of consciousness at all, and if there is "no knowledge of consciousness at all" you are then talking about something insentient and unliving like a rock. Many Buddhist philosophers (Dharmakirti, Dinnaga, Shantaraksita, Kamalashila, Mipham etc) all completely BTFO your position on this BTW and they all say that your view is irrational and completely retarded, you should actually try reading Buddhists for once, you'd be surprised.

[Anonymous No.23356743]

>>23356681
>has to be evident to another
>there no reason to believe that to be the case
False, if it's not known to either itself or another then there is no knowledge or experience of consciousness at all, but we do have awareness of being conscious so that's obviously not true of how our experience takes place.
>makes it impossible to be aware of or know anything.
>again, that makes no logical sense
Try reading it again slowly, I explained how the regress occurs already.
>no Vedantic text do they engage in any such abstraction.
>the whole vedanta is base around such abstractions, they are just to ignorant to realize that
There is no text in which they engage in that process of abstracting from particulars, you are just lying if you say otherwise. To say that they are doing it even when there is no actual examples of them doing so is just cope and not a real argument.

[Anonymous No.23356936]

>>23356625
> have immediate access to the fact of your sentience
It's not immediate, is mediated by the object of percpetion, in order for a immediate moment of awareness to be self evident you should be aware of a moment of pure awareness without any object, but that's impossible, you're just speculating that such moment must exist because you abstract the particular moments of "awareness of an object" into the abstract idea of "awareness itself" but even then you're not really aware of your immediate awarenes but yoyr abstract idea of a "pure form of awareness"

[Anonymous No.23356957]

>>23356625
> It's not question-begging to simply state what the doctrine of a philosophical or religious school is
That's exactly what question begging is, you're using dogma to explain how something is "self evident" which is a contradiction in terms, we're talking about how something contradictory (unchanging and changing)can operate, if your only answer is to rely on dogma then that's question begging, you should be able to defend ypur point with logic and not by taking for granted that brahman exist or that he has powers that let him overcome the contradiction of his existence

[Anonymous No.23356990]

>>23356658
> There is no logical necessity whatsoever that the power itself has to change itself in any way in order to conjure up that illusion.
Then this power can't interact with the changing realm and thus is not a power at all
>the notion that the object is always present is not taught by Advaita and nor is it a logical implication that follows from anything that they teach.
Of course they don't teach that, if they do they would be aware of the contradictions in their system, this is not what advaita teaches, but how those teachings measure up with logic and reality, the fact that advaita can't explain how to you can go from the unchanging realm to the changing realm without falling into a regress, or how can defend pure awareness without relying on abstraction just show the holes on their system
>You have not given a single instance of it being illogical or not logical but you have just repeated fallacies.
I did, unchanging and changing are both opposite, a thing possesing the two would break the law of non contradiction, but saying that you can go from one to another break the law of the excluded middle since you need something that conects the two logically (not onyologically, this is what i think you get wrong, saying that one doesn't really exist doesn't help your point since you can't still answer how you can go from one to other gnoselogically and since we live in the realm of becoming and change the burden of proof is on you to explain how the unchanging exist, if only one exist it must be the realm of becoming since its existence is self evident to my experience) so or the two aspect can't relate each other in which case brahman can't use its mediator power to emanate maya or they relation with each other break every law of logic

[Anonymous No.23357000]

>>23356743
> but we do have awareness of being conscious
Not really, we're aware of things/objects of existence which in turn inform us of our own existence which we understand as being conscious, we're never just aware of awareness, we're "aware that we're aware of something"

[Anonymous No.23357017]

>>23356739
>Many Buddhist philosophers (Dharmakirti, Dinnaga, Shantaraksita, Kamalashila, Mipham etc)
Not true at all, to all of them this form of awareness is emptiness, is what let the act of awareness happens, so is not really a "thing" you're aware of, but an action, a relational aspect of reality, so is completly different to the atman, is in fact the opposite

[Anonymous No.23357954]

Read the Shiva Rahasya Purana. It's the shaivite Bhagavad Gita. It's even got a similar type of paragraph about how shiva is the moon among stars. Really nice work.

[Anonymous No.23358817]

>>23356936
> It's not immediate, is mediated by the object of percpetion
At the moment in which perceptions occur you are already self-evidently aware of yourself being present as awareness, in’s not actually mediated by them but is inherent in awareness itself. When perceptions change and are replaced by one another, one’s awareness of one’s presence as awareness continues without any sort of deviation, if it was based on the changing perceptions then there would presumably be constant ruptures in waking experience when the perception that a moment of awareness was based on itself ends, and also multiple centers of awareness based on the multiple perceptions of different types, but experience takes place in the exact opposite manner that we would expect if awareness was based on changing multiple perceptions, namely, there is only one center of awareness and it remains continuously present without interruption and aware of its own presence in waking experience even though mental contents and perceptions rise and fall in contrast to awareness. The fact that all changes in what action mind is doing and perceptions are all made immediately known at once when they occur shows that there is a revealing awareness standing aloof from all of them. The individual perception of sound has no perception of color or smell, so that there is an aware presence for whom all these disparate sources of information are immediately presented in one smooth and united continuum is a extremely strong indication that all these sensations and perceptions are integrated in a awareness that precedes and proceeds them.

>in order for a immediate moment of awareness to be self evident you should be aware of a moment of pure awareness without any object, but that's impossible
False, this is actually a strawman fallacy. There is actually no reason at all that what Im saying should necessitate that we should know a pure awareness independent of anything else in waking experience. According to the Advaitic model awareness pervades all psycho-physical states equally and the mind is continually active during the waking and dream state. Because the mind is continually active, its activity always occurs and is immediately revealed by awareness during the waking and dream states, since the mind is continually active, there is no instance or reason that during the waking or dream state awareness should be isolated from any object expect maybe in samadhi (which is indeed what people claim about it), but the fact of the mind being continuously active alongside awareness actually agrees with the Advaitic model instead of contradicting it, so your argument here is essentially a strawman fallacy.


, you're just speculating that such moment must exist because you abstract the particular moments of "awareness of an object" into the abstract idea of "awareness itself" but even then you're not really aware of your immediate awarenes but yoyr abstract idea of a "pure form of awareness"

[Anonymous No.23358843]

>>23358817
you still haven't defined awareness nor said what sanskrit word you translate as awareness

[Anonymous No.23359255]

>>23346543
The Meditation Module from Dr K's Guide to Mental Health.

[Anonymous No.23359732]

>>23356957
>That's exactly what question begging is, you're using dogma to explain how something is "self evident" which is a contradiction in terms,
Wrong, now you are lying once again, I never said that anything about Brahman's power is self-evident. Stop being dishonest!
>we're talking about how something contradictory (unchanging and changing)can operate
You either misunderstood what I wrote or this is a strawman, I didnt say that anything was both unchanging and changing. The power is unchanging, the illusion that emerges from or is projected by it is changing. Advaita doesn't say that anything is both changing and unchanging.
>if your only answer is to rely on dogma then that's question begging
False, it's only question begging to make an argument that tries to prove a point true in a way that presupposes what it sets out to prove or argue in favor of. I'm not trying to prove the Advaitic doctrine true but I'm simply stating what it is and then pointing out how your arguments fail to refute or demonstrate any inconsistency in it because your arguments involve various fallacies. Simply stating the factual matter of "X school teaches Y doctrine" and "your argument against Y doctrine involve this fallacy" does not involve any question-begging.
>you should be able to defend ypur point with logic
I am by pointing out that all your attempts to refute it involve fallacies and are self-refuting
>and not by taking for granted that brahman exist or that he has powers that let him overcome the contradiction of his existence
There is no contradiction in Brahman's existence.

[Anonymous No.23359777]

>>23356990
>Then this power can't interact with the changing realm and thus is not a power at all
That's a non-sequitur fallacy, you didn't explain the logical leap from "the power doesn't have to change in order to unchangingly project the illusion" to your conclusion of "then it cant interact with the changing realm", and since you didn't explain this unjustified logical leap which does not follow naturally from the starting premise it's just a non-sequitur fallacy and it's not an actual argument.
>Of course they don't teach that, if they do they would be aware of the contradictions in their system, this is not what advaita teaches, but how those teachings measure up with logic and reality
There are no contradictions in Advaita. It's not true that when you "measure up with logic and reality" that there is a duality of awareness and the object being always present because this involves the subject matter of dreamless sleep and bodily death and what the question of what awareness and the object of awareness does in those instances is not verifiable, so it's not verifiable that anything which Advaita says about this is wrong. If you are pretending that your fallible and unprovable inferences about what awareness does in sleep or after death etc is "facts and reality" that's literally question-begging.
> the fact that advaita can't explain how to you can go from the unchanging realm to the changing realm without falling into a regress
There is no regress and nor is there a logical justification of why there would be one, all of your attempts to allege a regress have involved fallacies. The power that projects the illusion timelessly manifests its nature of doing so without beginning or end in an unchanging manner, the power doesn't have to "shift" or "change itself" in order to make this happen but it is just one timeless function that has no start or stop. Because the created illusion is unreal and not an existing thing there is no real emergence of any actual existing thing that involves any real change but there is just a beginningless image. An object can undergo 0 change/alteration and still cast a shadow or an image in a pond surface.
>how can defend pure awareness without relying on abstraction
strawman fallacy again

[Anonymous No.23359784]

>>23357000
>Not really, we're aware of things/objects of existence which in turn inform us of our own existence
This is wrong and illogical, because the very act of the first grasp of anything already reveals that an awareness is present (since the act of grasping involves and necessitates the presence of awareness and cannot occur without it), so you don't have to subsequently then infer your own existence "in turn" but it's already self-evident in the very act of any perception being known.

"Yet when I am, say, aware of a tree, no inferential path leads from the fact that over there stands a tree to the fact that I am conscious of it. I could only “infer” this from the fact that the tree is given to me – yet this is actually no longer an inference, since the givenness-to-me is my very consciousness of it, i.e. precisely what is supposed to be inferred. Thus, what tells me that I am conscious is not what I am conscious of, but rather nothing but my consciousness itself – consciousness involves its own revealedness."

[Anonymous No.23359803]

>>23357017
>Not true at all,
Yes it is, they BTFO your view and they explain the illogical and untenable consequences of denying that awareness is self-evident to itself. I can post quotes of their arguments demonstrating this if you want. You are adhering to a fringe theory of mind that a lot of prominent Buddhist philosophers reject as retarded, your view comes from putting Buddhist dogmas over actual experience, Buddhist thinkers who don't put dogma first generally conclude that awareness is self-evident to itself.
>to all of them this form of awareness is emptiness, is what let the act of awareness happens, so is not really a "thing" you're aware of, but an action, a relational aspect of reality, so is completly different to the atman, is in fact the opposite
Nothing you wrote contradicts anything I've said, I never denied that they considered awareness to be empty in line with Buddhist dogmas about emptiness, I merely correctly stated that they all considered and argued for the fact that awareness is self-evident to itself, and they provide logical arguments explaining why the contrary view (yours) is illogical and involves issues like an untenable regress. They don't consider the acceptance of awareness as being immediately self-evident to itself to be something that contradicts emptiness, even though a few other Buddhist thinkers disagree.

You still dodged answering the correct argument that your NPC theory of mind about awareness not being self-evident leads to an untenable regress btw (even Buddhists like Dharmakirti etc argue this about your view).

[Anonymous No.23360063]

Imagine being an ESL poster who read Tsongkhapa once and then thought that was all of Buddhism and then autistically argued for years online with dozens of posts in the some threads that awareness isn't self-evident to itself because you think that's just the view of Vedanta, all the while being totally ignorant of the fact that this is the mainstream view of both Yogachara and Yogachara-Madhyamaka synthesis, and that most Tibetan schools agree with this and that Tsongkhapa/Gelug is the extreme outlier who was btfo by other schools on this which is partly why the Gelugs tried to forcibly shut down the other schools and burn their texts. All the while accusing your own opponent of not understanding Buddhism while yourself being oblivious to this important debate on theory of mind within the Buddhist tradition.

[Anonymous No.23360350]

>>23358843
One Sanskrit word for awareness or consciousness used often in Vedānta and other Indian schools is चित् or Cit.

https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/cit

Advaita Vedanta rejects that there is any complete and exhaustive definition of awareness, in part because awareness is itself the ineffable Absolute that transcends speech and thought. They give a broad account of how they understand awareness as a model but without affirming that this model is exhaustive or that it objectifies awareness (which is unobjectifiable). They affirm that awareness is partless, undivided, immediate(ly known), self-evident, self-revealing/disclosing, uncaused, unconditioned, unaffected, desireless, non-intentional, fearless, non-conceptual, immutable and that it is effortlessly and spontaneously present while being unaffected and untainted by any of the delusions of one's mind. For them, awareness is not a bare subject that engages in the referential activity of self-knowing, but awareness is non-dual and transcends subjectivity and objectivity and its most basic nature consists of the non-differential and non-conceptual self-disclosure of conscious presence to itself, and since what is disclosed is presence and since presence consists of abiding self-disclosure, "self-disclosure" and "presence" amount to the same thing, "self-disclosure of presence" hence refers to nothing involving any plurality but is a verbal device to signify and to enable someone to comprehend something that is absolutely simplex.

How this awareness is related to other things in experience involves a process of the intellect (Buddhi) and mind (Manas) of the jiva (soul or living being), which are essentially the higher (Buddhi) and lower (Manas) components of the same thing, being 'illuminated' by the awareness that is the Atman, and that when illuminated, irradiated or invested with this light the intellect-mind is able to have object-directed experiences, the exact details of how this occurs is its own detailed conversation.

[Anonymous No.23360356]

>>23360350
>>23358843

There are many varied theories of mind in Buddhism and there is no one Buddhist theory of mind. One major point of debate is between proponents of representationalism realist vs idealist models of perception, another major point of debate is between reflexive (awareness or mental states know itself/themselves itself) vs non-reflexive theories of mind.

The Abhidharma school that emerged early was generally representationalist and contains factions that accepted that mental states know themselves reflexively (Mahasamghika) and other factions like Sarvastivada and Sautrantika who instead argue that the mind only knows itself in respect of past mental moment or through an image of them instead of the mind directly knowing itself reflexively. The early Madhyamaka school generally seems to argue against reflexive awareness although some later Tibetans interpret them rightly or wrongly as only arguing against reflexive awareness existing absolutely with own-being (svabhava). The Yogachara school uniformly argues in favor of reflexive awareness, although there are differences between their model and the earlier Abhidharma formulation of it, one of these being that the Yogachara model is idealist and not representationalist. Later on in India a Yogachara-Madhyamaka school/movement emerges that synthesis the two together, but in a way that accepts reflexive awareness/mental states like earlier Yogachara. In Tibetan Buddhism, all of the schools synthesize Yogachara and Madhyamaka as well although without being identical with the earliar Indian synthesis. The Gelug school denies that awareness is reflexive, while the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and I believe also the Jonang schools accept it in one form or another. There is also debate on this matter in Chinese Buddhism but I'm not as familiar with the details.

From the perspective of an Advaitin, all of the above Buddhist schools and their theories of minds all have their own problems or contradictions in their models of awareness, either something that contradicts how experience actually takes place, or something that is illogical and has irrational/untenable consequences, or both of these in combination. The reasons why an Advaitin would reject each of these views is a separate complicated discussion with regard to each school.

Unfortunately, a real problem on /lit/ is that Buddhists here generally don't argue for or consistently make effortposts about any one consistent Buddhist model of awareness. They will instead just defend an amorphous and vague blob using shifting and at times contradictory reasoning without specifying what Buddhist model they are arguing for and defending even though these models are mutually exclusive because of how they contradict each other (and they do this with other topics besides awareness). There is no Buddhist "Yogachara effortposter" or "Nyingma effortposter" known here.

[Anonymous No.23360422]

>>23360356
>There is no Buddhist "Yogachara effortposter" or "Nyingma effortposter" known here.
Based.

[Anonymous No.23360634]

>>23359803
>e fact that awareness is self-evident to itsel
Awareness as a priori thing that exist beyond phenomena is in no school of buddhism, self-evident to itself,on the other hand, the emptiness that let experience manifest it is in some schools, so the point remains, you can't use buddhist awareness to defend your point since they're two different opposite things

[Anonymous No.23360652]

>>23359784
>This is wrong and illogical
How is illogical? What rule of logic is it breaking?

[Anonymous No.23360671]

>>23358817
>At the moment in which perceptions occur you are already self-evidently aware of yourself being present as awareness, in’s not actually mediated by them but is inherent in awareness itself. When perceptions change and are replaced by one another, one’s awareness of one’s presence as awareness continues without any sort of deviation,
You don't know that, that's not how is it presented in the experience, you're only aware of an object, you're just taking for granted that awareness should work that way, but in experience you're always aware of something, awareness never present as a thing on itself, only as one of many qualities of experience, is just as evident as any object, using your logic the objects of experience should also be a substance since there's always a quality of objectivity in experience, so your logic end up in a contradictory dualism
>I never said that anything about Brahman's power is self-evident
Then you can't explain how brahman can overcome the contradictions of his existence
> pure awareness independent of anything else in waking experience.
Then you can't prove that awareness is an a-priori from experience, is just another quality of experience

[Anonymous No.23360691]

Can I read this version as long as I ignore the commentary?

[Anonymous No.23360695]

>>23360652
>What rule of logic is it breaking?
What is illogical in supposing that your consciousness is inferred from the known objects or "informed" by them is that this supposes you are dealing with something which is supposed to be inferred or informed due to it not being evident but in fact it is already evident so there is no logical basis for why it would then need to be inferred or informed as though it wasn't evident. The fact of the object being given to you in experience is already a demonstration (you are conscious) of what is supposed to be inferred. Also, if awareness isn't self-knowing there is an untenable infinite regress as has already been explained, which is illogical.

>>23360634
> self-evident to itself,on the other hand, the emptiness that let experience manifest it is in some schools, so the point remains, you can't use buddhist awareness to defend your point since they're two different opposite things
The same arguments still apply regardless of the position of the person making them, to say otherwise is just coping. Dharmakirti and Dinnaga were not Madhyamakas and they don't even agree with Sunyata and they still make the same regress argument about awareness being necessarily self-knowing that Buddhists who accept Madhyamaka like Shantaraksita and Mipham also make, and that's because the point of the argument doesn't depend on one's metaphysics. Most Tibetan schools consider the theory of mind you subscribe to as having been conclusively refuted already.

[Anonymous No.23360697]

>>23359777
>That's a non-sequitur fallacy, you didn't explain the logical leap from "the power doesn't have to change in order to unchangingly project the illusio
I did, an unchanging thing can exist in the moment to moment existence of the changing thing, it wouldn't be able to adapt to the new moment and must remain unchanged in the prior moment, justlike something that doesn't move can interact with something that move in a relative moment between the lications of the two

[Anonymous No.23360699]

>>23360691
Even his translation of the root verses at misleading at times, don't bother unless you are highly curious about that specific later-medieval era sect or are trying to read one from every school/tradition.

[Anonymous No.23360729]

>>23360697
>I did, an unchanging thing can exist in the moment to moment existence of the changing thing, it wouldn't be able to adapt to the new moment
It doesn't have to "adapt" to anything but it itself remains unchanged and unaffected by the illusory image appearing timelessly via that power. The power isn't subject to the limiting conditions that characterize the appearance since those conditions themselves spring forth from that power and they have no effect upon their source.

[Anonymous No.23360741]

Either cognitions are like objects experienced by cognitions that are different from them, or cognitions are self-experienced. Dignāga rules out the first option (in the Pramāṇasamuccaya) because he claims that it leads to infinite regress:

PS(V): Let there be the following [objection]: Like color and the like, cognition,
too, is experienced through another cognition.—This is also incorrect.
Because:
PS 1.12ab1: When [cognition] is experienced through another cognition, there is
no end.
PS(V): There is no end—when the cognition of this [color and the like] is
experienced through another cognition. Why?
PS 1.12b2: Because there is also memory of that [cognition of the cognition].
PS(V): That is to say, when the cognition [C1 of color and the like] is experienced
through a cognition [C2], then one observes that for that [C2], too, there is
memory at a later time. Therefore, when this [C2] is [then] experienced by
another cognition, there would be no end. (Kellner 2010, 215)

He argues that the view that cognition, like color, is experienced through another cognition is mistaken. Such a claim results in infinite regress, for we can always remember a second-order cognition and that will require that it be cognized by a third-order cognition, and so on. Dignāga (PS 1.12 cd) draws attention to yet another counterintuitive consequence of getting started on the regress of cognitions: if cognition requires another cognition in order to be cognised, cognition could never move to a new object, but we know that that is not the case; cognitions must therefore be self-experienced.

[Anonymous No.23360798]

>>23360729
Then it can't create or emanate the changing thing, since it never adapts or establish change/motion
You end up in a non seqitur, change is just created from the unchanged an opposite form of existence, if we follow that logic the change can just be self-created since the conditions for change to happen are non-existent, brahman becomes useless

[Anonymous No.23360825]

>>23360695
>consciousness is inferred from the known objects or "informed" by
Inference is a logical articulation, not a gnoselogical one, you can infer a general awareness, but as Kant showed with is trascendental principle of aperception, that doesn't imply that such a thing exist by itself, only that is a quality of experience, when you're aware you're always aware of something, this establish awareness as a quality not a thing, so saying that the general quality of awareness is partless and unchanging is a non-sequitur since awareness never present itself in experience like that, there's no unchanging awareness but awareness of a moment, not such thing as partless awareness but awareness of a thing, this is how awareness is presented in the experience, the fact tbat when you're aware of something there's always awareness present is irrelevant because there's also always something to be aware of, you're not an ever present awareness but awareness of moment A and awareness of moment B and so on and so on, in order for awareness to be self-evident beyond the moments of awareness of something, you should be able to show a moment of pure awareness but like the atman tjat's impossible, you can only speculate or rely on scriptures

[Anonymous No.23360844]

>>23360741
Cognition and awareness are two different things, cognition is an action of the mind, what all yogacharins believe is that the mind can think itself, which is a way of saying that the mind doesn't need an atman or primordial awareness that work as a uncaused cause of the mental proccess, what he's saying is that the mind has the cognitive power to think itself and doesn't need pure awareness/atman to function, so is the exact opposite of advaita reflexive awareness

[Anonymous No.23360922]

>>23360798
>Then it can't create or emanate the changing thing, since it never adapts or establish change/motion
You are just repeating the same mistake here which I already answered in the previous post: the power doesn't have to adapt or establish anything because both of those are acts within time and the power or ability to project the illusion is inherent to the absolute reality that is beyond time (which is merely an appearance), so there is one timeless, beginningless and endless manifestation of the image of samsara and so since this capability to reflect samsara like an image in a mirror without being changed (like a mirror doesn't change when a reflection does) is inherent to the very nature of reality itself it is natural and does not ever have to "adapt" or "establish" anything to always be taking place since it's an automatic consequences of Reality existing in the way that it does.

>You end up in a non seqitur, change is just created from the unchanged an opposite form of existence
Wrong, that's a strawman and has nothing to do with their actual positions which is that only Brahman exists and that the image exists in a liminal state of illusion without having any independent existence, at no point is anything ever emerging into having real existence since real existence is unchanging, eternal and unborn, this is the whole point of the ajativada (unborn) doctrine. Since change is unreal and is merely an image it's appearance as the image is a beginningless consequence of the image-power being inherent to Reality, since it's beginningless and an unreal appearance there is no logical reason why the power that generates the image has to itself ever change. If it has the inherent ability to reflect this beginningless image and has always done so no change is occurring in reality and all change only pertains to and inheres in what is false and part of the displayed image.

[Anonymous No.23360958]

>>23360844
>Cognition and awareness are two different things, cognition is an action of the mind, what all yogacharins believe is that the mind can think itself
For Dharmakirti and Dinnaga the mental acts consist of both the form or content being known like color or anger and on the other hand the grasping awareness in a united complex that knows itself. All their arguments about awareness necessarily knowing itself apply to the grasping awareness which is like the internal subject in contrast to the objectness of the form. So, even though their theory of mind is different, they are agreeing with Advaitins that the innermost awareness has to be self-knowing or there is a an untenable regress, since for those two Buddhist authors this innermost self-luminous awareness is just the subject-awareness that accompanies the form of each mental act and which reveals both itself (knowing itself reflexively as awareness, which they say is the only thing that makes memory possible) as well as the object-form of the mental act in the same moment. Even though the Advaitin innermost awareness is different from this, their argument about awareness being self-knowing or there is a regress applies to what is the innermost awareness in both of their models.

So, the same argument still applies, you follow a fringe NPC-tier theory of mind where you deny that awareness is self-evident to itself, but this leads to an untenable regress as both some Buddhists and some Hindus have pointed out many times. You have no good rebuttal to this so you move the goalposts about how they arn't affirming Atman (which I never asserted and which my argument doesn't depend upon).

[Anonymous No.23360970]

>>23360825
>when you're aware you're always aware of something, this establish awareness as a quality not a thing, so saying that the general quality of awareness is partless and unchanging is a non-sequitur since awareness never present itself in experience like that
Yes it does, the only things observed in experience that change are objective, unaware mental contents (and the exterior things they convey knowledge of) that are noticeably different from the awareness to whom they are given (one is given to the other, the other has a presence to which things are given). Similarly with parts, all parts that can be detected or observed or known in any way are unaware, objective (opposed to the subject) mental contents that are noticeably different from awareness. Awareness is constant and remains present while knowing itself in a self-evident manner, because it's remaining present without itself demonstrating parts or change, that *is* actually "presenting itself in experience" as partless and unchanging.

[Anonymous No.23361248]

>>23360970
The particular object just like the particular moments of awareness change, but the phenomena itself, the space in which particular objects manifest, objectivity doesn't change, is always permanent, there's always an object such as there's always a moments of awareness

[Anonymous No.23361255]

>>23360922
>without having any independent existence
Then it must exist in brahman, so brahman is unchanging but pisses change in him, which is contradictory, and if maya is casted "outside" of him, that means there's a substratum in which both brahman and the illusion reside, making brahman no longer the substratum of reality

[Anonymous No.23361389]

>>23345634
So Buddhists are just Fedora tippers? They certainly act like Redditors judging by this thread.

[Anonymous No.23361468]

>>23360958
> All their arguments about awareness necessarily knowing itself apply to the grasping awareness which is like the internal subject in contrast to the objectness of the form
Wrong both dignana and dharmakirti followed the yogachara system in which subject and object don't exist, that's why the difference between cognition and awareness is so important, they never said that awareness is self revealing, since that imply a self revealing subject that has to co-exist with the revealed object, making cognicion impossible since there would be two different things manifesting at the same time, what is self revealed is a cognition, an action of the mind, subjective in the sense that only a mind can create but objective in tje sense that is an object of the mind(an idea/nous) what dignana is saying is that with such a form of mental composition, awareness:being cognicient of this cognition, is impossible since that would imply an infinity regress, or as the yogachara say: the mind think itself(that is, no knower/atman is needed)

[Anonymous No.23361482]

>>23361389
>>So Buddhists are just Fedora tippers?
the buddhists exhausted all that the realms had to offer and they found nirvana contrary to the brahmins who are still fantasizing that consciousness is eternal

[Anonymous No.23361545]

>>23328651
>>23336381
This.
The buddha already refuted the hindus, both past and future. The history of indian thought can be divided into the earlier ooga booga vedic era and following post-buddhist copings of the brahmins trying to salvage and reconcile their doctrines after being brutally mogged by Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.23361555]

>>23361545

[Anonymous No.23361569]

>>23361482
You don't find enlightenment retard. Shows how much you know.

[Anonymous No.23363053]

>>23361255
>Then it must exist in brahman
It doesn't have any real existence, only Brahman exists.
>so brahman is unchanging but pisses change in him
Incorrect, there is no change existing in absolute reality, instead reality provides a substratum for the false appearance of change which actually doesn't exist.

[Anonymous No.23363056]

>>23361248
>The particular object just like the particular moments of awareness change
Any claim of awareness changing is pure speculation and is not substantiable with regard to experience.

[Anonymous No.23363081]

>>23361468
>Wrong both dignana and dharmakirti followed the yogachara system in which subject and object don't exist
You are misunderstanding the point, it's not an ontological claim about independently-existing subjects which of course they reject, it's a phenomenological point about how experience takes place. For Dinnaga and Dharmakirti each mental-moment is Janus-faced, each one is characterized by a dual-polarization that includes a subjective component which is the grasping awareness and the objective component which is the grasped form. Ontologically they classify this as one single momentary entity that is a mind moment but phenomenologically the recognize that its split into a dual aspect.

>On this perspective, each instance of cognitive awareness has a dual aspect: that of a subjective appearance (svābhāsa) and that of an objective appearance (viṣayābhāsa) (see Collection on Valid Cognition, PS I, k9a; Hattori 1968, 28). The subjective aspect (grāhakākāra) denotes the sense of intimation that accompanies each cognitive event, while the objective aspect (grāhyākāra) captures the intentional character of cognition or its object-directedness. This dual aspect theory of cognitive awareness endorses the existence of a meta-cognitive level of analysis, which explains why cognition does not happen “in the dark”; rather, it is always accompanied by self-intimation, by an experience of “what it is like” to be apprehending a given object (cf. Ganeri 1999).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/

When Dinnaga and Dharmakirti make their regress arguments about awareness being necessarily self-knowing, it primarily applies to the subjective aspect of grāhakākāra and sometimes by extension to the subjective aspect and objective aspect in unison. This is the whole point of their memory argument for reflexive awareness, that memory involves specifically the qualia or what it is like for you to have experienced that past event, and that this is only possible through your awareness having reflexive awareness of itself as awareness when that past even happened. So, even though they reject Atmans, Dinnaga and Dharmakirti are agreeing with Advaitins that the knowing-awareness or the revealing-awareness in any theory of mind has to necessarily be self-revealing or there is an infinite regress.

[Anonymous No.23363336]

>>23363056
Is a phenomrnological fact, you can't deny there's moments of awareness, you're aware of this moment, thus this is a moment of awareness for you, is an empirical fact, but to say that these moments of awareness belong to an a-priori pure awareness, that is not revealed in experience since you never experience this unchanging pure awareness without any object, so the burden of proof is on you, you're the one who's speculating

[Anonymous No.23363390]

>>23363336
>Is a phenomrnological fact, you can't deny there's moments of awareness,
Distinct moments are a mental abstraction. "Moments of awareness" are just imagined abstractions being superimposed onto what is an uninterrupted, constant and timeless.

[Anonymous No.23363429]

>>23363081
>Dinnaga and Dharmakirti are agreeing with Advaitins that the knowing-awareness or the revealing-awareness in any theory of mind has to necessarily be self-revealing or there is an infinite regress.
Not at all, because for them is the atman what creates the regress, whst they're saying is tbst if there's a knower besides the knowing, the that knower would then have to "know the knowing" into an infinite regress, the act of knowing must be self-revealing and self-sufficient, that's whh when talking about svasamvedana (self revealing) there's a distinction between manasa-pratyaska(mental perceptions) and mano-vijñana(mental faculties) you're not aware of your awareness as you're aware of a dog, it's a different kind of cognitive activity which by deffinition lack substance (if not it would be the object of another form of awareness to infinity) thus it can't exist as thing on itself, it is what let the things be/manifest

[Anonymous No.23363479]

>>23363429
>Not at all, because for them is the atman what creates the regress
The object of the critique is mainly earlier types of non-reflexive Abhidharma models of mind who posit that each mental moment is only known by subsequent ones either directly or as an image instead of having the subjective experience or knowing of themselves take place in the exact moment in which they occur. The Yogacharins and other Buddhist authors point out that if a mental moment has to be known by another in a series, and if that 2nd is also not self-illuminating and requires itself be known by the third, then there is an untenable regress. Dinnaga also points out another consequence, namely one would never be able to switch the object of one's cognition. Mipham makes similar observations and arguments among others when he refutes Tsongkhapa's non-reflexive theory of mind.

[Anonymous No.23364263]

>>23363390
On the contrary, a mental abstraction is something outside of time, so only an abstract unchanging awareness could be that, the "moment" of awareness is not given to you by your mental representation but by time itself,i don't need to defend the idea that a moment of awareness exist because both of them are self evident, you're aware and you're existing in a moment in space and time, the moment of awareness is given to you by the moments which you can't deny exist unless you take for granted something "outside of time" but that would be circular reasoning, since you're take for granted that an awareness outside of time exist as the basis for your argument about why time doesn't exist or how awareness can exist outside of time as something else beyond moments of awareness

[Anonymous No.23364328]

>>23336554
Maximine-pilled

[Anonymous No.23364372]

>>23364263
>>On the contrary, a mental abstraction is something outside of time,
all abstractions are mental, ie a mind-object ie they don't exist outside of the mind producing them, let alone outside of time

[Anonymous No.23364376]

Just came to say BG 10.28 is my go to mantra. I've probably chanted it hundreds, if not thousands of times. I've sung it, i've used it in my moments of panic to calm down.
I memorized it using the method of loci I had learned in Moonwalking with Einstein. It still astounds every Indian I meet IRL ROFL
4 x 4
AAVJ
DAKD
PCKP
SAVS
Ayudham Aham VaJram
Denuman Asmi KamaDhuk
Prajanas Casmi KanderPah
Sarpanum Asmi VaSuki

or

An Aadvark Vaccinating Joker!
DevilApplyingKantDoctor!
PamelaCooKPancakes!
SeinfeldAlwaysVacuumS!

Then you just imagine the images, in four different rooms.

So I imagine AAVJ in my kitchen etc, DAKD in the bathroom.

When i need to remember, what was that mantra again? oh yeah! I just imagine my kitchen, and what was in that kitchen? An Aadvark Vaccinating Joker!

Easy right?

captcha: AHAR

[Anonymous No.23364696]

>>23364372
>they don't exist outside of the mind producing them
If that the case then things like math or language wouldn't be possible

[Anonymous No.23364700]

>>23363390
By that logic then the object of awareness is also constant since there's no moment to moment change, so maya is also unchanging and partless

[Anonymous No.23364727]

>>23328651
"Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God" by Joseph Campbell is a good primer.

Remember Hinduism isn't just dirty, but historically it's been marred by human sacrifice (until the brits ended it in 1835), and that this disregard of human life was supported by their religious texts (the Gita compares death to removing clothing to put on new clothing)

[Anonymous No.23364736]

>>23328708
Thank you for this post, had been looking for something like it re: shankara

[Anonymous No.23364850]

>>23328708
>ADI SHANKARA

Thank you for this, so fascinating. I'm reading the wiki and just nodding my head in agreement, fuck rituals involving sacrifice, and basically memorize the core texts and meditate on them? I'm so down. I'm >>23364376
btw I HAVE SEEN KRISHNA ON four hits of acid on a shroom chocolate
but it blew my brain out and i had to take meds

[Anonymous No.23364987]

>>23360691
Even die-hard Prabhupada devotees would tell you to not read that version - it has over 5000 edits (there are sites that autistically compare both versions) compared to the original 1972 MacMillan edition. Get that one - it's free online and very cheap in hardcover and paperback (https://krishnastore.com/bhagavad-gita-as-it-is-deluxe-large-1972-macmillan-edition-hardcover-with-dustjacket-h-krishna-10272.html).).

The edits were done in unauthorized fashion mostly by Jews - look it up - tons of the early Hare Krishna people in NYC and coastal CA were unfortunately Jews, who turned the whole thing into a cesspit of paedophilia, financial laundering schemes, and sexual and spiritual abuse.

[Anonymous No.23365230]

>>23364263
> mental abstraction is something outside of time
No, abstraction is a mental act taking place within time, as another poster already noted this is not independent of either time or the mind.
> the "moment" of awareness is not given to you by your mental representation but by time itself
Anything given to you in experience is by default objective and awareness is never an object of itself, so it’s impossible that a “moment of awareness” can be given to you in experience because awareness is never given to anything else but awareness is itself precisely to what other things are given.
>you're aware and you're existing in a moment in space and time
That’s describing two different things, one pertaining to awareness and the other to non-aware objective contents, but you have not provided any logical or epistemic steps establishing how one of these things pertains to or has any bearing upon the other.
>the moment of awareness is given to you by the moments
As already explained, it’s wrong to say that they are given to you by the moments because they aren’t, awareness only knows its own constant presence and it doesn’t know moments of itself, the idea of a distinct “moment” of awareness is a conceptual abstraction that consists of taking conceptual or perceptional data, abstracting the idea of a slice of time from that data, and then superimposing that conceptual notion onto awareness, but awareness itself is not characterized by that abstraction and its not directly found in experience since awareness remains continually and self-evidently present without any breaks denoting the separation of one moment from another. The limits denoting the end of one moment and the start of another can only be established with regard to things which are other than awareness like thoughts and perceptions.

>>23364696
> If that the case then things like math or language wouldn't be possible
Not at all, mental abstractions can correspond to and be derived from things which are present externally in the world as well as faulty or inaccurate abstractions which don’t do this.

[Anonymous No.23365244]

>>23364700
> By that logic then the object of awareness is also constant since there's no moment to moment change
Incorrect, time occurs as a part of the illusion although awareness itself is timeless. The mistaken notion of moments of awareness involves taking the mental abstraction of distinct and discrete moments of time (time is not actually formed of discrete units as Zeno shows) and then superimposing that notion onto awareness which is timeless.

So, there are changes in the empirical world of the cosmic illusion and the object of awareness is not unchanging. Furthermore there is no perception of any object in dreamless sleep, in mahapralaya, in samadhi and for a liberated man whose body has died, so it’s not true that an object is always present alongside awareness.

[Anonymous No.23366229]

>>23365244
>time occurs as a part of the illusion although awareness itself is timeless
Is not self evident that the object is an illusion, you're question begging, you're using advaita metaphisic instead of logic as part of you argument for the validity of advaita meyaphysics

[Anonymous No.23366256]

>>>23365230
>abstraction is a mental act taking place within time,
A mental abstraction like the number 8 is outside of time, you thinking about the number 8 or making an equation involving the number 8 is a cognitive action happening in time
>awareness only knows its own constant presence
That's question begging again, you're using as an argument in favor of self-revealung awareness, that awareness is self revealing, that's like saying that bad things are bad because they're bad, your only argument against the ontological existence of moments of awareness is that they must be illusory but your only argument for this ontological form of illusory existence is that awareness is different to the object of awareness because it's constant and not momentary, and how do you prove that? By relying in the self-revealing nature of awareness that then needs the illusiory nature of the world to be explained, you'te falling into circular reasoning

[Anonymous No.23366531]

>>23366229
>Is not self evident that the object is an illusion
I never said that it was lol, and none of my arguments have depended on that being self-evident.

>>23366256
>>awareness only knows its own constant presence
>That's question begging again
No, it's actually a basic feature of all experience, awareness only knows its own presence and never knows its own absence, it's impossible to point to any instance of awareness knowing it own absence.
>ou're using as an argument in favor of self-revealung awareness, that awareness is self revealing
I have already established that awareness is self-revealing by explaining that the alternative involves an untenable infinite regress, this self-revealing quality can also be shown using various analysis of experience as well but these but the regress argument is the most direct and concise demonstration of this.
>your only argument against the ontological existence of moments of awareness is that they must be illusory
That's not true, you just lied. My argument was not that "they must be illusory" but that they are never actually encountered or experienced and they are a conceptual construction devised after the fact and don't reflect the way that time and awareness actually takes place, you asserted that awareness-moments are given to us in experience and I refuted this by pointing out that it's incorrect and absurd because awareness is unobjectifiable and is never given to anything else but awareness is what everything is given to.

[Anonymous No.23366704]

>>23366531
>I have already established that awareness is self-revealing by explaining that the alternative involves an untenable infinite regress
This infinite regress only happen in a subject/object model, for example Hegel solve this by articulating cognition as negation, and this is just one of different mofels that resolve this problem without without the "two awareness model" do your model is not self evident and is not exhaustive and as pointed before, buddhist models of self revealing cognition work as arguments against a knower/atman/brahman so defending self-revealig awareness doesn't even help you validate the advaita system

[Anonymous No.23366756]

>>23366531
>but that they are never actually encountered
The fact that you're responding me is proof enough moments exist, since there was a moment in which you read the post and another in which you responded
>the regress argument is the most direct and concise demonstration of this.
Nah in this context the regress only proves that cognition is a quality of the mental experience, it doesn't lead to the existence of the atman/brahman, it reveals the existence of a quality not a being different from phenomena, or as kant say it, it a trascendental quality not a trascendent thing, which is what we're really discussing
>that they are never actually encountered or experienced and they are a conceptual construction devised after the fact
If the world is not made of moments then is partless and unchanging, which is not how is presented in the experience, since movement and multiplicity exist in tbe world, the fact that you're readying all these multiple letters show it

[Anonymous No.23366773]

>>23365244
>Furthermore there is no perception of any object in dreamless sleep
Two answers, 1then awareness doesn't exist there 2 the bodybis aware of the phisiological and deep mental processess of the brain
>in mahapralaya, in samadhi and for a liberated man whose body has died, so it’s not true that an object is always present alongside awareness.
You can't prove any of that

[Anonymous No.23366793]

>>23365230
>awareness only knows its own constant presence and it doesn’t know moments of itself
>taking conceptual or perceptional data, abstracting the idea of a slice of time from that data,
How can you "take" that data if awareness only knows itself?

[Anonymous No.23367420]

>>23366531
>" but that they are never actually encountered or experienced and they are a conceptual construction devised after the fact
>After
You just establish a before and after, thus two different moments, so even in your model awareness needs two different moments to fool itself