/lit/ - Literature

>>14513428
and I can't believe pajeets managed to plagiarized 90% of his writings

Reminder that Shankara has been called a crypto-Buddhist by other Hindus for over a thousand years, and most mainstream scholars agree with this assessment. Everything in Shankara's system he plagiarized from the Buddhists and then read back into the Upanishads.

Reminder that "but muh Upanishads mention monism kinda!" is not a response to this. Shankara not only appropriated the whole framework of Nagarjuna's Buddhism, his "teacher's teacher," the earliest recorded Advaitin, Gaudapada, is widely considered to have outright PLAGIARIZED Nagarjuna. The Upanishads mention many things (including dualism and various forms of materialism and realism), as they are massive and unsystematic.

Shankara preemptively refuted himself by basing his entire system on Buddhist idealism

>tfw even hindus think shankara is ripping off buddhism

Posting as reference in case any Advaitins show up

>>14325078
>guenonfag still trying to get people to reply to some analytic philosophy article from 1957

>Guénon's initial evaluation of Buddhism was plagued by an astonishing lack of understanding. This evaluation was suppressed in the English edition of Orient et Occident(Paris, 1924); Guénon later modified it in part, by making some concessions to a "Brahmanic" version of Buddhism, which is truly a Buddhism evirated of the specific and valid elements it possessed at its inception. These specific elements concerned an autonomous way of realization. In this realization, the action of a qualified individual who strives to attain the Unconditioned, even by means of violent efforts is the necessary counterpart of the descent of a force from above, which does not need "initiatory bureaucracies." What Guénon had to say in an unfortunate essay concerning "The Need for a Traditional Exotericism," must also be rejected, since it offers dangerous incentives and alibis to a reactionary and petty-bourgeois conformism. The pedantic representatives of Guénonian scholasticism should rather strive to reach a deeper understanding of the true meaning of the Way of the Left Hand, which is not any less traditional than the Way of Right Hand, and which has the advantage of emphasizing the transcendent dimension proper of every truly initiatory realization and aspiration.

reminder

>>14287151
this, shankara's advaita philosophy developed out of centuries of buddhist monism

>>14272509
>The key tenets of Buddhism all predate the life of Buddha and are found in the earliest Upanishads which almost all academics say are pre-Buddhist

Painfully untrue. What scholars actually think happened is that Buddhism (and Jainism) developed out of the same intellectual ferment that produced the Upanishads, which was in fact a reaction against centuries of Brahmanic ritualism. The Upanishads were significantly shaped and influenced by non-Brahman discourses, traditions, and castes (like Kshatriya), which is very unusual in the light of the Brahmanas. (There may also have been relatively continuous internal rebellions against Brahmanic stultification from within the Brahmanic milieu, for example in the Aranyakas questioning the value of the rituals.) It was only later on that the Brahmans codified the whole body of Vedic literature and reasserted their status as its keepers, and by this time, any traditions that didn't fit well under the brahmanic orthodoxy naturally left it completely, if they had not already done so.

In fact, heavily "vedantic" (mainly focused on the Upanishads, rather than the earlier Vedas as revealed injunctions) versions of Hinduism are often considered unorthodox by more mainstream devotional Hindus, precisely because the Upanishads still have many strange things in them, even despite their later purification and codification by Brahmans.

The debate over whether Buddhism or Hinduism precedes one another is idiotic and is only engaged in by uneducated nationalists shit-flinging on the Internet. Just Indian boomers, the equivalent of American bible belt evangelicals.

Of course it's true that the principal elements of Buddhism (like moksha) appear in some form in the Upanishads. This is because both Buddhism and the sages and discussions whose ideas are (partially) represented in the Upanishads sprang from the same intellectual context, the steady breakdown of Brahmanic ritualism. We can't even date what happened during this period with accuracy measured in centuries, so it's not like anyone can trace exact genealogies of thought.

Daily reminder that Shankara was heavily influenced by Nagarjuna, and his radical monism was considered essentially Buddhistic and heretical by Hindus at the time and since.

>>14258794
>So is Shankara good or not?

Daily reminder that Shankara was heavily influenced by Nagarjuna, and his radical monism was considered essentially Buddhistic and heretical by Hindus at the time and since.

You shouldn't begin reading the Upanishads through Shankara. He is writing 1500+ years after they were written, and he is heavily influenced by Buddhism which skews his perspective. Most of Shankara's Hindu contemporaries called him a "crypto-Buddhist." Shankara is especially popular today with neo-Vedantists who are heavily influenced by Western thought, like Radhakrishnan and Vivekananda. The direct influence of Theosophists is very heavy in India, with personal acquaintances of Annie Besant being major policymakers until well after Indian independence.

As a result, if you want to read the Upanishads or the Gita, you should try to get as unbiased a perspective as possible. Starting with a heavily propagandized crypto-Buddhist like Shankara is probably a bad idea, but nor should you start with Ramanuja or Madhva. You should instead read up-to-date, critical accounts of the composition of Vedas written by scholars.

Otherwise you will be misled by Hindu nationalists, who mostly make fools of themselves by claiming that their heavily Theosophy-influenced, Westernized neo-Vedanta is thousands of years old.

This should clear it up.

>>14229990
>Adi Shankara
>Buddhist

Yup, exactly.

Reminder that advaita vedanta is 9th century AD crypto-Buddhist ripoff of Nagarjuna, and even most Hindus feel this way

>>14212780
Don't forget the part where guenonfag carries on entire conversations with himself, repeating the same neo-vedanta talking points to himself every day.