/lit/ - Literature

>>18761704
>Everything he says has been said by Nietzsche, Freud and later Deleuze and Guattari.
and yet you omit the most important progenitor of them all, how curious

this nigga claims that despite being an incomplete doctrine, the christian sacraments still have a real effect in the "exoteric domain". wtf does that mean? is that the same as the psychic domain?

>>8502873

Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines by René Guénon

It was written in 1921 but is probably still the best intro for someone new to Hinduism or eastern philosophy in general. The book is mostly about acquainting the reader with the understanding and background knowledge needed to understand Hinduism well when coming from a western background. The book focuses mostly on the metaphysics of Hinduism/eastern thought although it really helps to understand this before studying the religious texts themselves. A quarter of the book is about the actual religious teachings of Hinduism itself and another quarter is about explaining common mistakes and inaccuracies made by westerns in their publications on Hinduism and how its often greatly distorted in their works.

You could dive right into the religious texts or an academic work explaining Hinduism but in my opinion you would be way better off if you read this first and then moved onto the actual stuff because it will help prepare so that you have a good understanding of what you are reading and are on the lookout for any inaccuracies/mistakes made if you read anything by a western author. Despite being a westerner Guénon spoke and could read many languages including Sanskrit and all of the accounts that we have show eastern religious figures praising his work and saying he understood it better then any other westerner.

>The most eminent recognition of value came from oriental authorities. Marco Pallis tells us of the perfect orthodoxy of Guénon’s explanations verified by Tibetans priests; Ramana Maharshi named Guénon the "The Great Sufi"; the true Taoists masters in unison designated Guénon as the only Westerner in the last centuries that was able to capture and to transmit the true spirit of Taoism.

>But, what does Guénon himself have to say? "The whole merit of this work is in the authentic oriental doctrine it contains; my work is just to transmit it in the clearest and most exact manner that I can".