/lit/ - Literature

>>21385199
>Why did Shankara disagree with the teachings of the Buddha?

For petty and vain reasons. Too many Hindus were leaving and converting to Buddhism, so he decided to own the Buddhists by conceding everything to them and telling himself it's the Buddhists and not his made up interpretation that's been BTFO'd.

>>21385199
>Why did Shankara disagree with the teachings of the Buddha?
He didn't, only certain interpretations given by later schools.

>>21385199
no one gives a fuck about this pajeet bullshit. even these shitheads had no idea what they were talking about. please stop assigning meaning to it.

>>21385199
>>/lit/thread/13713771

>>21385199
>what is existence?
>how do we perceive existence?
>how is a conscious mind related?
>what does the consciousness entail?
Thats the question these two asks.

>buddhists
Existence is illusory, like a mirage. Perception is done through conscious mind. Mind is merely a physical function of the brain. Consciousness is merely awareness of events. There's 6 consciousness. 5 physical senses and the physical mind. Eye-conscious, ear-conscious, mouth conscious, ... mind conscious, etc. There's no united single consciousness. The external sensory consciousness are temporal/event based. Even the mind consciousness is physical/temporal/event based. Mind consciousness acts as organizers/giving meta consciousness abilities, where as other external sensory consciousness acts as instantaenous consciousness of the events. There's no "soul"/self/atman in any of the consciousness. The mind consciousness can enter a state of stillness for experienced meditations whereby control is exerted over other forms of consciousness to not disturb the mind. Thats enlightenment/nirvana.

>Advaita
Existence is illusion. We're all part of greater brahman. Like small rain drops that eventually meet the greater ocean. Because existence/reality of others are illusion, and all there is is the big ocean of atman. When you meditate/reach deep insight, you reach consciousness which is pure/still that is the state of pure atman. Pure atman is part of the big universal atman.

>>21386106
Seems like the difference is Buddhists still cling to concepts while the Non-Duality bros do away with them completely to experience the ultimate reality beyond the mind. The fact it cannot be conceptualized is probably what filters midwits and leads them to Buddhism.

>>21386106
>Mind is merely a physical function of the brain.
This is not a Buddhist doctrine. You're confusing the idea that the mind is the sixth sense organ (common to most traditional doctrines, including even Aristotle) with the idea that it is a physical function. According to Buddhist texts, mind is far more than just some physical process, and according to Vedanta the mind is the root of the other senses into which they all recede after bodily death (ie, the sense bases exist apart form the body considered as such). According to the Dhammapada:

"Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought." 1:1

"Dwelling in the cave of the heart, without form, the mind wanders far and moves alone. Those who subdue this mind are liberated from the bonds of Mara." 3:37

>>21386580
That’s because he completely misrepresented the ‘Buddhist position’ by mixing and matching doctrines from different schools.

>>21386600
No, mind is basically the physical function of the brain in Buddhism. The notion of mind is different from the physical brain because its a amalgam of different functions within the brain. A buddhist definition of the mind is something which memorizes, thinks, has attention that can be controlled, conceptualizes, cognizes, is conscious/aware of things, embed with karma/habits/personalities, etc. Its basically what the physical brain does. Ofcourse Buddhist dont say it has blood vessels, neurons, partitioned by different regions, etc. But what it does state is, its all physical and tied to the body, subject to time/change/death.

>>21386655
Wrong

>>21386683
>No, mind is basically the physical function of the brain in Buddhism.
No support in any texts or teachings for this statement. It's basically your opinion against doctrine at this stage; not worth entertaining any further.

>>21386106
Is atman = Brahman?

>>21386954
Yes. That's what advaita claims. More so, they claim the consciousness is atman is Brahman. It's stupid.

>>21386828
You don't know enough. The entire premise of Buddhism is everything is tied to the physical body and not some fairy tale called Atman or any other special entity other than the body.

>>21387185
So the material world is illusory but only the material is real, is that your retarded belief? I think it's you that doesn't understand your own religion.

>>21387205
Nominal perceptual reality is illusory. Physical world is real. Nominal perceptual reality is reality colored by fetters, chiefly the binding fetters tied to the notion of self entities and binding relations built around it.

>>21387293
>>21387205
At first, mountains were mountains
Later on, mountains were not mountains
Finally, mountains were mountains

Something something koan

>>21386683
You’re mistaken, friend. You seem to be reading modern materialist assumptions back into the ancient texts. In ancient India they believed in the existence of a subtle mind stuff separate from the body, which nonetheless was “material” in the sense of non eternal, subject to change and destructible, but not in the same way as gross material (“physical” if you will) substances. Both Hindus and Buddhists take the existence of such mind stuff for granted. They only differ in the framing.

>>21387293
If this is your idea of enlightenment you are a retard. A tree is not the word, so profound.

>>21387293
> Nominal perceptual reality is illusory. Physical world is real.
You could make the case that that’s what original Buddhism (not to be confused with Theravada) taught, yes, based on a certain interpretation of the oldest texts (Pali canon) alone (I happen to believe that. To me Buddha was more like an Epicurus in that he accepted the reality of elementary things and preached the non reality of everything else, but the doctrine got changed and interpreted to deny even the reality of the elementary particles). But I don’t think any contemporary Buddhist school or sect teaches that.

>>21387350
>Buddha was like an Epicurus... Reality of elementary...
Nope. Buddha didn't teach about everything being illusion, only the fetters of the mind. The greatest of the fetter is the delusion about atman for which he believes creates the distorted view of reality and thus leads to suffering. He didn't seek to deny reality, he sought to clear the mind so we can see reality as it is. That's what the enlightenment is. It's not buddha, but virtually every notable Buddhist throughout understood this from every part of the world.
The problem was Advaita either misunderstood Buddhism or misapplied the notion of the fetters to reality as whole, thusby denying reality. Shankaras goal was to advance Atman and Brahman from a theological standpont. He didn't care about reality, it was a disposable convenience for him.

So once again, don't confuse Buddhism for Advaita. Even though they both use the illusion metaphor, the concepts are completely different.

>>21387392
You're confusing me with another anon. I'm not advacing any opinions on Advaitar. I tangentially touched upon the subject of original Buddhism, but that had nothing to do with the discussion you two were having.
I happen to believe that Buddha originally taught that we and all things lack a self nature in the same sense that a cart lacks a "cart nature": it can be decomposed into smaller parts, and these in their turn can be further decomposed, and so on, and the "cart nature" is nowhere to be found (this simile of the cart is used in the Pali Canon if I'm not mistaken). Similarly we humans think we have a self, but we can be analyzed into psychological and physiological components. But it doesn't go on forever: the analysis stopped short more or less at the level of the elementary things or dharmas isted in the abhidharma, and these were really real.
I think that - mutatis mutandi! -- Buddha was similar to Epicurus in how he taught how to live well in the face of that (you lacking a personal, immortal self; only atoms and the void really existing, etc.).
BTW I don't believe the Buddha originally taught that the world was an illusion in the sense of a simulation or virtual reality (aside from similes). I don't know where you got that I said that.

>>21387442
>>21387350

>Preached the non reality of everything else

>>21387442
>Elementary Dharmas
Some early schools held that view but it's imo wrong road to take. Atomistic route gets you to wrong conclusions. Nagarjuna fixed that with his fundamental verses of the middle path. There's plenty of problems with elementary dharma argument that later Buddhist exploit.

>>21387448
Non reality is a shorthand term for lacking self nature.
>>21387476
Yes, I believe the teaching of Nagarjuna is more radical, perhaps more thorough development. But I believe what Buddha originally taught was something like that. That's what I get from a critical reading of the Pali texts, without sectarian assumptions. But that is just my opinion.

>>21387501
Pali texts are post hundreds of years after Buddha and refined a bit. Ahdhidhamma, while great for systematic insight is, after all, a post Buddha analysis. So don't take everything pali canon says to be true. Even some suttas themselves are suspect as well. So the whole atomistic Buddha is not Buddha's teachings but later Buddhist additions to make sense of dharma. Particularly as a means to elevate Buddha's words as eternal/the truth. It was an unnecessary addition that may have caused fractures within the Buddhist community.

>>21387514
Yes, I'm aware that the Pali texts have been written down after the time of the Buddha proper, and the Abhidharma is the latest portion of the canon. But linguistic analysis suggest that teachings found therein may go back much further, even to the time of the Buddha. Their repetitive, mnemonic style suggests that they have been memorized and recited long before they have been commited to paper.
As for the Abhidharma, it's certainly a later systematization, but such listing of elements was not against the spirit of the times in the Buddha's time. We know that Buddha studied under many Samanna and was acquainted with many Brahamanic and Samannic teachings of his day. We also know that Jaininism and Samkhya were contemporary with if not predated Buddhism and they had their own lists of elemental things.
Pic related: the Dravya of Jainism. Jain consider the Dravya to be eternal, non created elementary things or substances. All complex or composed substance are less real than these because they are ultimately analysed into these.
Buddhist list of six sense bases, six sense organs, etc., seems to take not a little from the Samkhya list.
It's not hard to imagine that these and other similar systems existed during the time of the Buddha and that he, having studied them, came up with one of his own. Yes, the abhidharma maybe a later systematization, but a systematization of contents that were already present in the teachings.

>>21387599
Buddha did not teach atomism. Pali suttas don't say it. The atomism is a later addition due to cultural nexus. Later on Buddhism/jain/hindu would accept the tantric addition as well due to cultural (current thing).
It's important to keep in mind that suttas > ahbidhhama. Suttas themselves may have certain additions and classification differences, but that's widely believed to be the straightforward Buddha's teachings. Suttas don't teach atomism, even if atomism was a thing during Buddha time. He didn't go that route.

>>21387185
Why would it be stupid to claim that atman is equal to brahman if their cosmological and metaphysical view is centered around the idea that the self is also god and god is also the self, everything is Brahman.

>>21387599
You don’t understand, the Buddha was using skillful means to advance his hidden understanding of reality. Luckily the Madhyamika and Yogacara masters taught us how to discover the truth of the doctrine, otherwise we would have been as foolish as a Hinayana practitioner.

>>21387713
Yet you have no understanding of reality beyond the average atheist retard.

>>21387722
I was being facetious, have you not reached the stage on the cultivation path which enables you to take a joke?

>>21387732
Buddhists are so full of themselves it's hard to tell if they are larping or being serious.

>>21385199
How many moRE FUXKING TIMES DO I HAVE TO SEE THIS FUCKING PICTURE? 2 billion fucking pajeets and chinks and every single one has to ask the same weird literally-who-cares vedanta question. The fuck even is vedanta???? No, don't answer, nobody cares. Go search in an archive, the question has been asked enough times. Or go to a chinkchan, Jesus fucking Christ.

>>21387713
>>21387722
>>21387732
>>21387738
>>21387740
Shitpost

It's the same shit, told in different conceptual languages. The journey and destination are the same, but the scenery is described differently.

t. perennialist

>>21387674
It's not stupid

>>21386106
>We're all part of greater brahman.
>Pure atman is part of the big universal atman.
Incorrect. According to Advaita the Atman is partless and without a second. There is no "pure atman" besides the universal Atman. You are confusing Advaita and Vishishtadvaita

>>21385199
>Can someone explain to me what is the original divide between Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism?
Unlike Buddhism as presented by Buddha in the Pali Canon and unlike Buddhism as presented by the medieval Indian Buddhist schools, the traditional Advaita of Shankara unequivocally affirms:

1) the existence of an undying Self (Atman) at the core of the living being

2) that this supra-individual Self is the Absolute

3) that the truth about said Absolute is revealed by the Sruti scripture which is supernaturally revealed by the Brahman-Atman and it is accordingly an infallible source of knowledge about ultimate reality

4) that Vedic rituals (including ones that kill animals) can produce (spiritually) beneficial results and valuable objects within the realm of the relative (vyavahara) even if these rituals cannot produce enlightenment

5) that the caste system or Varnashrama-dharma is valid and beneficial for mankind

6) that liberation does not consist of some "release" or "unbinding" or "subduing" of one's mental habits and urges but that it is instead the natural and eternal state of the Self (Atman) or of one's true nature already, even when the mind is not aware of this

7) that consciousness is intrinsically free, peaceful, pure, independent, unconditioned, partless, unaffected by anything and complete in itself (it's not Dukkha, i.e. it's totally devoid of suffering and dissatisfaction)

8) that the entire world of experience/samsara would not and could not appear at all, were it not for Brahman-Atman being the basis of it

>>21389016
Based.
Buddhism BTFO (yet again).

>>21389016
>Unlike Buddhism … the traditional Advaita of Shankara unequivocally affirms
You could have simply left it at that.

I mean to me Buddhism doesn’t bring anything new that post-modernity doesn’t already have
>disregard for rituals
Yeah like I’m totally spiritchul and not religius or whatever… Check.
>disregard for authority
Yeah like I totally disregard my dad’s authority, just not the authority of globohomo multinational corporations and transnational organizations because they uuuh are for the environment or whatever and I totally support that. Check.
>radical decontructionism
Yeah I too went to art school in LA and read like Derrida and Foucault or whatever. I love Zen koans they are like so irrational lol! Check.

>>21389016
Incredible answer, thank you. I have a few questions if you dont mind me asking since its evident that you know what youre talking about
>Are Atman and Brahman the same?
>What would you say are the key elements or ideas were both Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta become almost one and the same?
>Does the idea of the illusory world form part of both doctrines?
>Were should one start with Advaita Vedanta? Is it the Upanishads with the Shankara commentary?
Thanks once again

>>21389598
>I have a few questions if you dont mind me asking since its evident that you know what youre talking about
I don't mind brotha!
>>Are Atman and Brahman the same?
Adi Shankara and his Advaita Vedanta school say yes, that they are completely the same without any sort of difference between them. The other types of Vedanta schools (like Vishishtadvaita etc) disagree and each describe the relation between Brahman and Atman as being different in their own idiosyncratic way
>>What would you say are the key elements or ideas were both Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta become almost one and the same?
A lot of the similarities are 'Upanishadic' or 'dharmic' ideas generally that apply to Jainism and the other schools of Hinduism too like liberation, samsara, transmigration (of some sort). It's hard to pin down differences where it's more closer to Advaita specifically because it's not clear exactly Buddha's positions were on a lot of things and which later Buddhist school is closer to his actual intended teaching. As one sort of example there is a greater emphasis on monastic renunciation in Advaita compared to other types of Hinduism (just like in original Buddhism this was a big emphasis), but even in the other Hindu schools where ascetic renunciation is not required or isn't seen as the main spiritual path (like in Advaita) it's still typically seen as a respected thing that a minority of adherents of that school engages in regardless.
>>Does the idea of the illusory world form part of both doctrines?
It's not clear in what way Buddha meant to say the world is illusory or possibly that our perception/view of it is, some Buddhist schools interpret him as saying so but others disagree. The notion does play an important role in Advaita
>>Were should one start with Advaita Vedanta? Is it the Upanishads with the Shankara commentary?
Yes. Shankara's Upanishad commentaries explain how to interpret them and what they teach, and all his other writings and commentaries on other texts are derived from and are intimately related to this understanding expressed in his Upanishad commentaries (pic related is a guide to read Shankara). Reading through all of his main commentaries (his other works are good but optional) is the best way to understand Advaita as an autodidact or student or whatever, and then this understanding can be build on further with the many other Advaita texts by other authors. I don't think you need any other sort of author to "interpret" Shankara for you or guide how you understand him, but I think he explains himself very well and lucidly, however I do recommend nonetheless starting with 1 or 2 of the intro books in this picture just so you properly understand the words and concepts he refers to in his commentaries

>>21389809
>Reading through all of his main commentaries (his other works are good but optional)
to clarify, his mandatory works are:

10 Upanishad commentaries (which includes the Mandukya Karika Bhasya in Gambhirananda's translation of "8 Upanishads")
Bhagavad-Gita commentary
Brahma-Sutra commentary
Upadesasahasri

Everything else allegedly by Shankara is optional (for understanding Advaita) and is of uncertain authenticity, but it is often still enjoyable and illuminating to read regardless

>>21389598
NTA
What most in this thread have so far missed (to my extreme surprise) is that Shankara is accused not of appropriating Buddhism generally but of appropriating the views of the Yogacarins specifically.
Vasubandhu, the Buddhist who wrote the initial philosophical treatises of the Yogacara school, argued that 'external dharmas', a class of objects which depending on the school could include atoms or gross objects such as apples, did not really exist in a mind-external way. With regards to mind-external objects, the Yogacara school has an identical position to the Advaita Vedanta school. All non-Yogacara schools that I know of either argue that mind-external objects exist or that the Yogacara position is insufficiently radical.

Reminder that both Buddha and Shankara preached seemingly atheistic doctrines to confound the demons, but they actually paved the path to theism
>Technically Lord Buddha’s philosophy is called atheistic because there is no acceptance of the Supreme Lord and because that system of philosophy denied the authority of the Vedas. But that is an act of camouflage by the Lord. Lord Buddha is the incarnation of Godhead. As such, he is the original propounder of Vedic knowledge. He therefore cannot reject Vedic philosophy. But he rejected it outwardly because the sura-dviṣa, or the demons who are always envious of the devotees of Godhead, try to support cow-killing or animal-killing from the pages of the Vedas, and this is now being done by the modernized sannyāsīs. Lord Buddha had to reject the authority of the Vedas altogether. This is simply technical, and had it not been so he would not have been so accepted as the incarnation of Godhead. Nor would he have been worshiped in the transcendental songs of the poet Jayadeva, who is a Vaiṣṇava ācārya. Lord Buddha preached the preliminary principles of the Vedas in a manner suitable for the time, (and so also did Śaṅkarācārya) to establish the authority of the Vedas. Therefore both Lord Buddha and Ācārya Śaṅkara paved the path of theism, and Vaiṣṇava ācāryas, specifically Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, led the people on the path towards a realization of going back to Godhead.

>>21389809
Very interesting anon, thank you so much for such an elaborate response. Im currently reading The Doctrine of Awakening and im part 2 or "practice". What is the equivalent of practice in Advaita Vedanta? Apart from the liberaion through gnosis what sort of practices form part of the Advaita Vedanta tradition? Is there a form of meditation or what? What would you advise?

>>21389883
>What most in this thread have so far missed (to my extreme surprise) is that Shankara is accused not of appropriating Buddhism generally but of appropriating the views of the Yogacarins specifically.
The reason that nobody bothers mentioning this is because it is really quite a silly and uninformed accusation. Shankara specifically addresses the Yogachara position in some detail in his writings and he patiently explains why he thinks it is wrong/illogical and he highlights why Advaita is different. Even before Shankara came along Gaudapada was already criticizing the doctrines of the Yogacharins a few centuries earlier, and in Shankara's commentary on Gaudapada's text he unpacks these criticisms of Yogachara in greater detail. Shankara does not hold to Yogachara positions, he criticizes them instead.

>Vasubandhu, the Buddhist who wrote the initial philosophical treatises of the Yogacara school, argued that 'external dharmas', a class of objects which depending on the school could include atoms or gross objects such as apples, did not really exist in a mind-external way. With regards to mind-external objects, the Yogacara school has an identical position to the Advaita Vedanta school.
No, that's incorrect, Yogachara does not "have an identical position" to Advaita. Shankara criticizes Vasubandhu's/Dinnaga's/Dharmakirti's position with regard to external objects in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya and he calls their position illogical. According to Shankara, objects exist conventionally in a mind-independent way and he says there is no rational grounds for denying that they are mind-independent. Shankara only accepts the dream-analogy to the extent that it can be used to undermine belief that the waking world is itself the actual true reality (instead of Brahman being reality) but he does *not* accept it as a valid basis for rejecting the independence of exterior objects from the mind and he instead calls this irrational.

"Consequently, Sankara’s attempt is not to show that Vasnbnndhu is wrong in rejecting proof of externality, for Sankara himself accepts that rejection. To say that Sankara’s argument does not prove that externality exists would be to miss the point His attempt, rather, is to show that Vasubandhu is wrong to reject the assumption of externality in any account of experience. So, the argument is over whether a coherent account of experience can be given while rejecting the externality of objects‘ i.e., without referring to objects as extrinsic to cognition. Vasubandhu holds that that is possible and right, Sankara disagrees.
- Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-Realism, page 64

>>21389918
>What is the equivalent of practice in Advaita Vedanta?
There is no "practice" per se. Once initiated into an Advaita monastic order you are told the truth about your true Self and so on, and then you study Shankara's works (sometimes other works too) and teachings under the close guidance of a teacher. If someone is ready to fully grasp the teaching then liberation and enlightenment will just naturally dawn on them at some point during this process, and if it doesn't happen that is just because they didn't cultivate the necessary qualities first or didn't study and focus long enough until they overcame their own misunderstanding.

There are lists in the Advaita writings of certain qualities and things like self-control and purity of intention etc that someone is supposed to cultivate first before even being qualified to pursue liberation as a monk. The normal steps in the process of arriving at liberation are held to be Sravana (listening to the teacher or teaching), Manana (reflecting on the teaching and grasping its meaning) and Nidihyasana (focusing on or meditating on the core truth of the teaching to the exclusion of all else or directly intuiting it), but these can all occur just in a normal session of studying Shankara's writings with a teacher or listening to their verbal teaching by a riverside etc somewhere. Sometimes, a particular lineage of teaching Advaita will teach a certain mantra to recite or meditation to perform that will a supplementary practice that one can do when not studying Advaita texts, but this differs by lineage and it's never taught to be what produces liberation itself (which happens via knowledge and not an act) but it is only supplementary.

>Apart from the liberaion through gnosis what sort of practices form part of the Advaita Vedanta tradition?
They will do things like hatha yoga or worship deities. There are ones that roam around and are semi- or completely homeless like the Naga monks and they will spend more time outside in the sun meditating or doing yoga etc while there are also orders of Advaita monks that mainly live in temple complexes or teaching centers (mathas) and spend their time performing rituals and giving talks to temple visitors etc. Their have their own philosophical or scholarly tradition and so some Advaita monks will spend much of their lives studying and teaching other monks and writing different texts and commentaries and engaging with other Hindu schools etc while other monks are more reclusive.

>Is there a form of meditation or what?
Shankara mentions different kinds of meditations in his works, and further differences in types of meditations are found in different teaching lineages of Advaita, but none of these are held to be especially important or necessary aside compared to the main task of the Advaita monk

>>21389918
>What would you advise?
Swami Sarvapriyananda has tons of videos on youtube talking about practical Advaita lessons you can implement in everyday life, I would check those out in addition to reading Shankara if that's something thing you are looking for.

If you are not going to become a monk it's almost impossible to be liberated while in a human body anyway according to Shankara, so unless you will become an Advaita monk (which traditionally, only upper castes were accepted as) then you don't even need to worry about "how do I be liberated in x manner according to the traditional process" because it's a pointless worry for you to spend time worrying about that. Instead, you can just go about your life or even practice other religions and spiritual teachings while still appreciating and benefiting from the wisdom offered by Advaita. Some people find that studying Advaita changes their life and produces lasting peace and happiness even without becoming a monk and without otherwise altering their external behavior.

According to Advaita anyway people who are unenlightened but yet who spend their lives engaging in spiritual contemplation and meditation/yoga (like many practicing Hindus of non-Advaita schools), when they die they will either have a very good rebirth or they go to Brahmaloka (a heaven lasting billions of years that you have an opportunity to reach liberation from before your stay there ends and you start being reborn again): and either of these options are good and bring you "closer" to liberation in a sense. Some people agree with Advaita but they live as non-monks with careers and homes and wives etc and the actual spiritual practice they do from day-to-day comes from Tantra, or Buddhism, or Sufism or whatever.

The main point is that you should just power through some intro books and then dive into Shankara's works, they are fascinating and rewarding reads for their own sake, and one can benefit greatly from reading them even without any sort of formal "application" of their ideas into any context. You may at some future point decide that you DO want to integrate some teaching of Advaita into your live in a "formal" way, either on its own, or in conjunction with Tantric Shaivism or Vajrayana Buddhist practices or whatever, but you won't even be really qualified to work out all the details of that yourself until you've already read through Shankara's works anyways so you don't have to worry about now, or you can just watch the relatively simplified content on youtube like from Sarvapriyananda or from Arsha Bodha, which maybe doesn't do full justice to all the nuances and subtleties of the traditional position on certain matters, but which may have good practical advice anyway

>>21390200
Does Advaita say atman doesn't reincarnate since or does it reincarnate? In Buddhism consciousness is a byproduct of physical body/brain thus a new rebirth creates new "you". Is this same in Advaita too?

>>21390357
>Does Advaita say atman doesn't reincarnate since or does it reincarnate?
Advaita says that the subtle body (which is what thoughts and sense-perceptions take place in and which is not the Atman) is what transmigrates from one physical body to another physical body, while on the other hand, the Atman is all-pervasive like space and devoid of any movement or modification
>Is this same in Advaita too?
Advaita starts from a different basis from Buddhism since Advaita says that everyone's innermost/foundational consciousness is the true self and that it's not a byproduct of anything because that consciousness exists as independent and uncreated, however Advaita would say that when the subtle body does travel from one human to another human (or animal etc) that a separate ego (i.e. a mentally-constructed sense of "me-ness" as a person or entity with distinct traits like cleverness or brashness etc) arises in conjunction with that particular life and that a new one of these is produced each time the subtle body enters into a new host, this is similar to what you are calling "consciousness".

>>21390423
So we have a "subtle body" + atman + consciousness that is produced by the "subtle body" + the physical body all being separate entities? How does that work now?

Also if consciousness is created by "subtle body", then how do we know we have atman? I thought atman was supposed to be the consciousness filler in advaita.

>>21389995
>According to Shankara, objects exist conventionally in a mind-independent way and he says there is no rational grounds for denying that they are mind-independen
I was about to point this out myself, thankfully you've done the work for me. I was going to cite Upadesa Sahasri, where Shankara also explicitly refutes this type of idealism.

>>21390487
So Advaita isn't non-dualism? Its plain old dualism?

>>21390489
It's non-dualism, it's just not idealism.

>>21390492
So mind/consciousness/atman/physical things are same thing?

>>21390443
>>21390489

Anon is very well read but not enlightened so it’s possible he himself is stuck in duality and doesn’t have the final understanding.

>>21385199
Why don't you start with the 'Jeets instead of lurking /lit/ and checking Wikipedia? Shankara is a proponent of orthodox Hindu theology so of course he rejects Buddhism. By the time he is writing, Buddhist bulls have done so much brahmin breaking that the Hindus are forced to actually explain—or attempt to explain—their scriptures instead of just charging fees for sacrificing animals and reciting spells. Shankara combines this with attempts to refute several Buddhist schools but nowhere can he demonstrate an eternal self let alone that it is equal to some absolute reality, so even when there are issues, from his perspective, with what a Buddhist is saying, his own position itself is heavily dogmatic. Buddhism is not without dogma either, but generally grants that authority to mystical experience rather than adherence scripture, so much so that historically they just kept adding new scriptures as doctrines and practices evolved in dialog with both Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources. There's no strict analog to the Vedas where you have this totally closed canon of divinely produced syllables.

>>21390494
Yes.

>>21390502
Then why are things different? If its all same? Seems like nonsense to me. Why argue there's any distinctions between atman/subtle bodies/consciousness/physical things?

>>21390512
Also the quote is the reference
>According to Shankara, objects exist conventionally in a mind-independent way and he says there is no rational grounds for denying that they are mind-independen

>>21390512
All are expressions of the unmanifest in which these manifestations ultimately reside.

>>21390494
Fundamental reality is non-dual, they are not "the same thing" because there are no differences to begin with, so to make a comparison between what is non-dual to begin with is already a logical error. To say fundamental reality is the mind (idealism, which Shankara refutes) and that there are no external objects would still be a kind of dualism because there is still a fundamental distinction being made between what would constitute a mental object and what would constitute an external object (even if only to reject the reality of the external object, a la idealism). This is why *a-*dvaita uses this expression, and not "ekam": "one" or "monism." Monism still presupposes a fundamental duality of a sort, which is why there is so much philosophical dispute in modern philosophical schools about monism and dualism (which is justified). Non-dualism transcends all dichotomies like this through its Infinity (Brahman=Atman).

>>21390520
>>21390519
If somethings are mind independent, then its dualism. If they're products of as mind, then its non-dualism. If the mind made, then its idealism. If mind and "mind independent" are of same, then its non-dualism.

Whatever dance you do, if its ultimately same thing, then the differences don't matter and its same as nihilism. If its all same thing, then parts are also false, thus change is not possible. If change isn't possible, then its eternalism at play. Which means nothing happens, nothing could happen, nothing will happen, etc.

Ultimately, the ideology is one of reality denial and digging deeper doesn't get you out of the hole.

>>21390443
>How does that work now?
You keep adding layers. Incidentally Yogacara had the same problem. First in the pre-Mahayana or nikaya Buddhism there were six sensory consciousnesses (including the mind as basically "sensing" thoughts on top of the five obvious senses). Then you get another two eventually added in India to contain the ones before them, and then in China and Korea they add a ninth! From the Buddhist perspective this can only really be solved by taking emptiness as the nature of consciousness because then it doesn't matter if there are six or sixty, but then it becomes a debate about emptiness.

>>21390541
Pure Yogacara didn't survive for reason. It was an unteneable position, any monism is untenable. While Yogacara did provide great insights into consciousness, its must ultimately reaffirm the reality and not try to shy away from it like the Advaitas did. Advaita adopting Yogacara is its weak point.

>>21390539
>If somethings are mind independent, then its dualism.
No, things are neither mind independent nor mind dependent. This is what you don't understand, and this is Shankara's position: there is no duality. If we speak "conventionally" (which is what the other anon was suggesting), then there are external objects and mental objects, but only because each of these appears to us as such, not because they ARE that way in reality. In reality there is no distinction, partly because the mind is not fundamental reality, and neither is physical or "external" reality, both of them are illusory.

>>21390547
It's as if the brahmins who converted to Buddhism wanted to keep brahmining really. Agree there are useful insights, and historically Yogacara ends up pollinating other schools of Buddhism and enriching their own presentations of doctrine, literature, etc.

>>21390443
>So we have a "subtle body" + atman + consciousness that is produced by the "subtle body" + the physical body all being separate entities?
No, Atman and consciousness are the exact same thing. Consciousness aka Atman exists independently and is not produced by anything, not by the subtle body nor by anything else. Thoughts and sense-perceptions, which are not consciousness, are acts or functions that the subtle body engages in. The subtle body and the Atman are two "entities" if we are using the abstract and metaphysically non-committed sense of entity as in "two things that can be spoken about in any sense whatsoever", but if you mean entity as in "what actually exists" then the Atman alone actually exists and is the only entity. In this latter sense of 'entity' the subtle body and the physical (gross aka non-subtle) body are both equally non-entities since only the Atman is one.

>Also if consciousness is created by "subtle body", then how do we know we have atman?
Thoughts and sight etc take place in the subtle body. Your question asking about knowing the Atman in addition to this is like asking "how do we know that we have a separate abiding awareness, through whose presence occurs the knowledge of thoughts and sight etc?" Well, that's easy—It's shown by how you and everyone refer to themselves thinking about something as "I (the subject) knew X (thought as your object)" instead of referring to themselves as having their subjectness or identity as the knower inhering in that thought that was known at that one point. It's self-evident to everybody already that the knower is separate from the known thought or perceived auditory or visual sensation and this is reflected in their speech and how people behave. That all of our sensory data and thoughts etc are integrated into a united display that is immediately "given to" and lit up by the the presence of awareness shows that there is this separate knowing presence, since one of the items within the display isn't capable of being a part of the display and thereby display objective (opposed to the subject) qualities while also standing aside separately from the display at the same time as the knower.

>>21390550
But we're talking about the mind dependent in the first place, even if they're not fundamentally mind-dependent, the fact that we can talk about this and perceive them only as such must mean they're the fundamental, even if we can try to logically argue out of it, its still there. We could logically say nothing "nondualism" and emptiness, but emptiness can ONLY point towards the mind-dependent things we perceive and nothing else beyond. The Buddhist got this one right.
I don't get how Shankara's insight supercedes Buddhist take.

>>21390550
>reality has no distinctions
>objects merely appear to exist
that's just madhyamaka but you've tacked on the formula that "the atman is brahman" to the end of it to maintain Hindu orthodoxy

>>21390423
>a new one of these is produced each time the subtle body enters into a new host, this is similar to what you are calling "consciousness".
This post disagrees with your take that consciousness = atman. He's(or you're) saying consciousness is produced by the "subtle body"? Whatever the case, a person can be knocked unconscious easily and have consciousness be restarted by reviving that person back. I'm sure you're not talking about that consciousness, so what is the "consciousness" that you're talking about? Maybe you're confusing atman with consciousness because of Hindu theology requires Atman to be made relevant to the body somehow? Otherwise, with the standard physical/temporal consciousness, your atman would have no use and the atman=brahman is irrelevant to the discussion of reality/human life.

>>21390560
>>21390423
>a new one of these is produced each time the subtle body enters into a new host, this is similar to what you are calling "consciousness".
This post disagrees with your take that consciousness = atman. He's(or you're) saying consciousness is produced by the "subtle body"? Whatever the case, a person can be knocked unconscious easily and have consciousness be restarted by reviving that person back. I'm sure you're not talking about that consciousness, so what is the "consciousness" that you're talking about? Maybe you're confusing atman with consciousness because of Hindu theology requires Atman to be made relevant to the body somehow? Otherwise, with the standard physical/temporal consciousness, your atman would have no use and the atman=brahman is irrelevant to the discussion of reality/human life.

>>21390539
>If somethings are mind independent, then its dualism.
Dualism means that there are two realities or that reality is comprised of two things.

To make the two simultaneous claims that

1) Absolute reality (Brahman) is partless and devoid itself of multiplicity/duality
2) visual forms and thoughts etc instead of existing belong to maya and are thereby non-identical with the invisible and formless Supreme Brahman that alone exists

Is not to say that two things exist, it is also not saying there are two realitys or that reality is comprised of two things. It's saying none of these things and it's not dualism in any of these senses.

>>21385199
I don't know much about advaita/Vedanta.
I will say this though: Buddhism is not concerned with whether the self is real or not and such big metaphysical questions. They are only concerned with reaching enlightenment. It's much more of a technician's manual approach.

>>21390613
>2)
If visible forms/thoughts are not part of Brahman, then where do they come from? You said they're maya, but is maya not Brahman? If its not brahman, then its dualism. And thus Brahman cannot be absolute.

>>21390578
>Whatever the case, a person can be knocked unconscious easily and have consciousness be restarted by reviving that person back.
It's impossible to prove that's true, since consciousness cannot be directly measured by any known instrument (instead they only measure things they hypothesize are related to it somehow) and it has not yet been established/proven whether consciousness is physical or whether it has non-physical existence or some other unanticipated possibility and so because of these reasons and others it's impossible to confirm that consciousness ends when a person's brain gets knocked out or when somebody dies etc and you can't violate its absence yourself when you get knocked out because if you can validate it then you were actually conscious! If you are not starting from an a priori commitment to some sort of pro-materialist bias and other biases that are adjacent to this then you have absolutely no solid grounds to assume that consciousness ends or stops when the body dies or is knocked out.

>>21385199
Mostly trivial. They're both getting away from empty ritual observances to hodge podge gods. This more or less >>21385247

>>21386106
>There's no "soul"/self/atman in any of the consciousness.
Anatta appears as a noun less than a handful of times in the Pali Canon. It is neti neti, via negativa, "this, not that." This is a post-schismatic canard. Gotama calling his teaching (he was loath to name it) "Brahmayana" should point you in the right direction.

>>21390566
>the fact that we can talk about this and perceive them only as such must mean they're the fundamental,
No. This is like saying that because we perceive red and blue as distinct colors, red and blue must be fundamental. But when we notice that red and blue can be combined to form other colors, as well as an indefinitely large quantity of intermediate shades, it turns out that all of them are equally fundamental because they are all distinct from each other. Because they are all equally fundamental, none of them are, or at least each is only fundamental taken from a certain illusory perspective. The same applies to the mind/body dichotomy.
>>21390568
It's always been Advaita doctrine. It's what is known as "maya." This concept appears in the Upanishads, and so predates Madhyamaka.

>>21390633
Consciousness is awareness. If there's no awareness they're not conscious. Thats simple as that. If you want to say thats not the case, then you can argue that a table/chairs are conscious we just dont know it. Its nonsense. By trying to obfuscate the definition, you're not helping your case.

>>21390626
>f visible forms/thoughts are not part of Brahman, then where do they come from? You said they're maya, but is maya not Brahman?
maya is not Brahman
>If its not brahman, then its dualism.
This is completely meaningless as an objection and lacks any philosophical value (it's not even an argument) unless you specify what you mean by "dualism" and why it's bad. Advaita says that maya does not exist because it doesn't belong to the category of "existence" that Brahman alone does (only things which belongs to this category exists). Because of this, Advaita is rejecting the idea that two things exist, that reality is comprised of two things, or that there are two realities. It cannot reasonably be accused of being a dualism in any of these three ways unless someone is stupid (and confused because of their stupidity) or instead engaged in low-effort trolling. If you mean that Advaita is a dualism in some other, yet unexplained sense of the word, then you should explain what exactly you mean by "dualism" if you want a serious response.

>>21390643
>Consciousness is awareness.
I agree
>If there's no awareness they're not conscious. Thats simple as that.
I agree, but the whole point of the post which you maybe didn't pick up on was that it's impossible to verify if someone's inner awareness goes out or stops when the body is knocked out or dies instead of it just continuing onwards peacefully and existing everywhere like space, someone else's awareness is not accessible to you or measurable by you and the self-verification of the absence of one's own awareness is logical impossible
>If you want to say thats not the case, then you can argue that a table/chairs are conscious we just dont know it. Its nonsense.
That literally has nothing to do with what I'm saying and is just a red herring
>By trying to obfuscate the definition, you're not helping your case.
What do you think I've obfuscated and how? From the very beginning I've clearly said that consciousness is Atman and that thoughts and sense perceptions are not consciousness.

>>21390640
>This is like saying that because we perceive red and blue as distinct colors, red and blue must be fundamental
We perceive red/blue as distinct colors, and can discuss them being perceived as such. That is the fundamental. Not red/blue being distinct as fundamental but rather only the perception of such is because thats the whole of reality that we experience. Both advaita/buddhist argue that the perception is wrong, but difference is Buddhist claim that's the fundamental reality. Advaita/you seems to claim there's an absolute reality beyond this and furthermore claims the reality of ordinary experience is is not fundamental reality. Buddhist disagree for obvious reason, we live in this "not fundamental reality." The emptiness itself is empty is buddhist term here. While you seem to reify the emptiness as some God/brahman/absolute

>>21390663
If you're knocked unconscious, you dont have consciousness/awareness. Simple as that. You cant confirm it yourself, you cant ask others of it. So who can verify it? No one. That same as claiming chairs/table have consciousness. They cant confirm it. We can't confirm it. So maybe it has consciousness? When you drag the definition of conscious as something that cannot be verified, then everything could be conscious. Chair/tablet/etc.

>>21390651
If thoughts/forms are maya, and maya is not brahman, and maya doesn't exist because only brahman exist, then its non-dualism, sure. But in that route, you give up every distinction, reality that people know it. How do you account for reality that doesn't exist? Its a nonsense philosophical stance to take. The problem of non-dualism is the inability to properly explain away the reality away. In your case, you're trying to erase reality to bring the importance of some ideal state of reality.

>>21390665
>That is the fundamental.
Perception is not fundamental at all. Perceiving red and blue distinctly is just a contingent (see: non-fundamental) activity. Some people cannot perceive red and blue distinctly. Some people don't perceive any colors at all.
>Not red/blue being distinct as fundamental but rather only the perception of such is because thats the whole of reality that we experience.
That's incorrect, what we "experience" is by no means fundamental. "Experience" is such a broad and meaningless term that anything embodied by it cannot be fundamental. To claim otherwise you would have to definitively prove that some sort of abstract human experience is fundamental, which is virtually impossible on multiple levels. Ergo perceptual experience is not fundamental.
> Both advaita/buddhist argue that the perception is wrong, but difference is Buddhist claim that's the fundamental reality.
"Buddhists" do not claim that at all, only particular Buddhist schools.

>>21390692
No one can wake you from the dream, if you think it’s real then that’s your problem and yours alone.

>>21390676
>If you're knocked unconscious, you dont have consciousness/awareness.
this is impossible to validate or show so it lacks any force as an argument against Advaita, someone who isn't a materialist or a "certain kind" of Buddhist will laugh in your face for claiming this with any seriousness, as if it were an assured fact (spoiler: it's not)

>You cant confirm it yourself, you cant ask others of it. So who can verify it? No one. That same as claiming chairs/table have consciousness.
No, that literally has nothing to do with claiming that chairs/tables are conscious, that's what's known as a red herring fallacy, more specifically a red herring in the form of a false equivalency that claims the Advaita rejection of consciousness being modified by anything that happens to the body is someone like claiming chairs are conscious even though these are not related at all and Advaita doesn't say that chair are conscious so it doesn't even make sense to bring that up as an argument. What you are doing is cringe

>They cant confirm it. We can't confirm it. So maybe it has consciousness?
this speculation has nothing to do with what Advaita teaches it, just because you cannot personally validate or confirm something that would contradict what Advaita says about Advaita doesn't mean that Advaita doesn't endorse even hypothetical about anything that can't be verified, in what world does that make sense?

>When you drag the definition of conscious as something that cannot be verified, then everything could be conscious.
In addition to the red herring, this is another fallacy known as the strawman, nowhere did I define consciousness this way but that's your own false summation of what I said, consciousness doesn't need to be verified because it's always self-evident to us and you don't have reason to seek verify what is self-evident, that's why people generally think about the future, past, other people etc instead of wondering "am I actually unconscious?" since to even wonder about stuff in the first place means it's self-evident you are conscious.

>>21390716
*doesn't mean that Advaita endorses every hypothetical

>>21389387
Room temperature iq

>>21390714
A person seeing a red rose will say they saw a red rose. A person seeing a red rose that looks like Shankara or Jesus Christ or Buddha will say thats what they saw/experienced. Thats the fundamental. Fundamental doesn't mean the red rose or jesus rose is objective reality or reality for all, fundamental means whats perceived/experienced by the person/people. The broad range of experience is the only fundamental reality we have. There's no reality of brahman hidden, or otherwise. People who have working eyes, color blind, blind cannot see/experience brahman. What they experience is the nominal reality they experience.

Your search for hidden nihilistic brahman leads nowhere but delusion

>>21390748
What you're doing is saying, "this is all I have" (perceptual experience) and expecting me to treat that subjective claim seriously. If you don't have any arguments to proffer, I don't see what value there is in continuing this discussion. If you want to believe that perceptual experience is fundamental, that's fine, but you have to admit it's just a belief with no justification apart from gut instinct.

>>21390768
Are you claiming, there's reality outside subjective experience? LMAO

>>21390768
Its funny because Hindus claim "muh consciousness" = brahman, but then it the ends dont suit their orthodoxy, they claim its consciousness is irrelevant.

LMAO

>>21385199
This is the difference. Advaita is Like Neo exiting the Matrix but realising he is God. Buddhism is not realising the Matrix even exists but pretending it does.

This is why Non-Dualists seem incomprehensible and Buddhism attracts the same retards that find atheism fascinating, it denies anything existing outside the Matrix and instead claims it is the one true reality.

>>21390692
>If thoughts/forms are maya, and maya is not brahman, and maya doesn't exist because only brahman exist, then its non-dualism, sure. But in that route, you give up every distinction, reality that people know it.
So? All distinctions are only accepted anyway insofar as they lead to a liberating gnosis that that transcends any sort of formula or binding verbal description, and if no other knowledge associated with any distinction is a happyness or perfection on par with the supreme happyness and freedom that is provided by this gnosis that transcends verbal distinctions, then what is the harm in finally giving up all distinctions at the crucial moment of realization of non-dual awareness/Self? It doesn't bind you to accept them as pointers or starting points and then give them up
>How do you account for reality that doesn't exist?
By accounting for it as many Advaitins do by saying that the relative world is projected by Brahman like an immortal magician casting a non-existent illusory display while himself abiding in eternal liberation peacefully. The Upanishads and other Hindu texts mention Brahman casting the world like an illusion or display,
>Its a nonsense philosophical stance to take.
No, it's actually quite logical. It's non-realism (towards everything constituted by the 3 gunas ie all visible forms and mental distinctions) means that it doesn't have the faults of realist worldviews like Nyaya or physicalism, but it's identification of reality with Brahman actually gives you an explanation for how there can be the appearance of samsara at all (its cast by Brahman) without it bottoming out in a paradoxical regress like other forms of non/anti-realism and Buddhism do when trying to account for samsara/experience, at least when they aren't saying "we have no position on accounting for it", which is less bad than openly accepting the paradox but this second Buddhist position of inconsistent partial skepticism is still worse than the Advaita position, which is free from the whole issue, serenely floating above it like a lotus on the surface of the waters

>>21390798
>>21390788
See what I mean, they don't even know how lost they are.

>>21390799
>immortal magician
>projection of brahman
LMAO

>>21390801
Yeah... They're pretty retarded. Hilariously so.

>>21390798
Advaita is like Neo exiting the Matrix and thinking he dreamed up the Matrix and Matrix is fake and he's fake and God is all there is, which he's part of.

Buddhism is like Neo realizing matrix is a delusional reality create by himself and others's wishful thoughts, the matrix even if its made of false delusions are all there is, there's no Zion to escape to, no god that hides outside of Matrix, he's not God, gods are part of the matrix as well, and so on

>>21385199
I don't know much about advaita/Vedanta.

>>21391054
>>21391054
>>I don't know much about advaita/Vedanta.
nobody does because it's just the repeat ad nauseam of the dogma that brahman and atman exit. They don't even have a method to reach their alleged super knowledge kek

>>21391081
MUH SCRIPTURES!!!

>>21391081
You can't teach an old dog new tricks and you can't give a soul to an NPC. It's like trying to convince a deaf man that music exists.

>>21390541
>From the Buddhist perspective this can only really be solved by taking emptiness as the nature of consciousness because then it doesn't matter if there are six or sixty, but then it becomes a debate about emptiness.
emptiness is not what the buddha taught. and consciousnesses has no nature at all in buddhism. There is not true nature of anything. The only there is is the 3 characteristics of the sensual world.

>>21391177
The funny thing is he can't argue against this either because Buddhists believe themselves to be soulless NPC's.

>>21389893
>Lord Buddha is the incarnation of Godhead.
This is completely false lol.

It's the usual cope by brahmins to pass buddhism as Vedism.
The official dogmatic hindu propaganda is that suffering, rebirth, karma, meditation are inherently part of the hindu teaching since time immemorial, and that it's the jewel of the teaching, the most important thing a human can hear over his whole life, and that it's the jains and buddhists who stole everything from them lol...
Now the harsh reality for the Poojeets is that their narrative it's factually wrong.
-Hindus can't explain why their Vedas are so different from their late texts starting with their Upanishads
-Hindus can't explain why they had to wait until late antiquity to get Patanjali to write a precise & systematic manual on meditation (which is totally organic and super important to their teaching lol), instead of some vague one-liner like ''meditate on me, Brahman'' (that literally is the entire dogmatic direction to the brahmin lol)
-Hindus can't explain while the Buddha has no problem talking about the brahmins and their Vedas, he never talks about their Upanishads
-Hindus can't explain why the systematic & detailed meditation (and rebirth and karma) which was totally stolen by the buddha is not found in their texts before the buddha actually talks precisely about meditation and spread it, along with rebirth and karma, all over the place in his suttas
-Hindus can't explain why it's only during the post-buddha era that the hindus scatter meditation and rebirth all over their texts, whereas it is supposed to be their most important teachings of all time
-Hindus can't explain why their meditation by Patanjali is a copy of the buddhist meditation

>>21389016>>21389077

yep lots of dogmas getting normies to applaud

>>21391252
>doesn't have a soul
>thinks he can be born again

Buddhism is a cult of despair, darkness, nihilism, sophistry, materialism that is non different from atheism and causes anxiety.
Advaita is the pure doctrine of hope, light, fullness, philosophy, spirituality that is the cure to atheism and destroys anxiety.
Om shanti shanti shanti!

>>21391252
You lie. Hinduism came before Buddhism.

>>21391288
BASED

>>21391288
Yep

>>21391288
>om shanti
lel

>>21391260
Since beginningless time one mental state replaces another. There is nothing beyond this.

>>21391416
So profound master, tell me, in what do these mental states reside, thank you.

>>21390634
>the religion of reason

So you're saying that

Buddhism

is

le

SCIENCE??????????

OMG I S2 LE SCIENCE

I LOVE LE BOODHSIM

PLS UPBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT

for anyone interested in a detailed answer beyond the retarded trolling itt
http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2015/10/dzogchen-vs-advaita-conventional-and.html

>>21390640
>It's always been Advaita doctrine
Too bad advaita emerges after widespread brahmin breaking. Yes, I know you can exegete it from the even older texts, but why hadn't anyone bothered until after Buddhism?

>>21390798
>illiterate pop culture analogy
>thing i agree with good
>thing i disagree with bad
ok retard

>>21391235
>the hecking buddarino didn't actually say that so it doesn't count
protestant bias, also it's what most Buddhists believe outside of Sri Lanka and Thailand so I am not wrong in presenting it as a Buddhist doctrine

>>21391492
Also, join us on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AwakeningToReality/

>>21391288
>nothing exists except the smell of my own farts
>no you're the nihilist

>>21391492
>In Buddhism, each mind has its own nature
>>21391235
>consciousnesses has no nature at all in buddhism. There is not true nature of anything.
Oh the duality of man.

>>21389016
>4) that Vedic rituals (including ones that kill animals) can produce (spiritually) beneficial results and valuable objects within the realm of the relative (vyavahara) even if these rituals cannot produce enlightenment
Disgusting. I don't understand how Schopenhauer could have liked the Upanishads when it had such creepy accounts of sacrificial rituals.

>>21391492
>muh safe space
>>21391519
>join us on Reddit.
Oosh.

>>21389016
>4) that Vedic rituals (including ones that kill animals) can produce (spiritually) beneficial results and valuable objects within the realm of the relative (vyavahara) even if these rituals cannot produce enlightenment
Don't forget that Shankara still argued against using these rituals, because the entire point of Advaita is becoming free from actions and their reactions.

>>21391552
how very crypto-buddhist of him

>>21391492
>awakening to reality
LMAO

Cant handle criticism of muh atman nonsense?

>>21391235
>consciousness is empty of nature
>NOOOO!!! consciousnesses has no nature at all in buddhism!! emptiness is not what buddha taught

Retard

SHUT UP YOU RETARDS! BUDDHA WAS BASED!

HE WAS THE MOST ENLIGHTENED MAN ALIVE!

HOW CAN HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITIES BE WRONG!? HOW?!

https://archive.org/details/MisconceptionsAboutSankara_201804/page/n3/mode/2up

>>21385199
https://discord.gg/vwnmJahn

great thread

>>21386683
>>No, mind is basically the physical function of the brain in Buddhism.
>No support in any texts or teachings for this statement. It's basically your opinion against doctrine at this stage; not worth entertaining any further.
The Buddha isn’t Daniel Dennett, how does the teaching of reincarnation mesh with this form of eliminative materialism? There’s supramaterial or immaterial tendencies which reincarnate (the sambhogakaya and dharmakaya, specifically, per the trikaya (three-bodies) teaching, corresponding to the subtle and causal bodies of Vedanta (the sukshmasharira and karanasharira)), although they deny a self even to these subtler aspects of the human being. Analogously, they claim it is like fire from one candle being used to start another candle, the fire has no abiding and underlying “self”, always being in a flux, but nevertheless conventionally seems to pass from one candle to another.

The teachings of Vedanta that there is a self seem more intuitively obvious and easier to grasp than Buddhism, but then again, this isn’t always a good logical or philosophical argument, as many things which are indeed true are very counterintuitive. But, again, on its face. It makes much more sense, and waves away many of the dilemmas of Buddhism and questions commonly posed to Buddhists which are difficult to answer except with logical contortions and strange logic (“What reincarnates if there is no self?” “Who is there to be enlightened, to experience nirvana or samsara?”).

Mahayana Buddhism even had to take a detour away from strict anatta (no-self) teachings with the “Buddha-nature”, the tathāgatagarbha (embryo (garbha) of the tathāgata (lit. “thus-gone”, or the Buddha)). Historically, the phrase dharmakaya (body of truth, the unmanifested immaterial substratum of the Buddha out of which Buddhas arise and to which they return) has also conventionally been used as a “higher self” or “source of enlightenment” to understand, return to, and abide in.

>>21392013
Anon, it must be true if it doesn't make sense. It just seems complex because we are but mere mortals.

>>21392032
I mean, ironic comments aside, fluid dynamics is difficult to understand but apparently does correspond to how fluids (both liquids and gases) work and has real-life practical applications. When talking about the nature of selfhood, consciousness, being, the ultimate nature (or lack of one) of reality, and the proper way to live one’s life and regulate one’s body and psyche, why shouldn’t there be some complexity?

>>21391552
>Don't forget that Shankara still argued against using these rituals
He only argued against the notion that rituals produce liberation (moksha) and he says the monk doing jnana-yoga has no reason to perform any ritual (unlike non-monks) but aside from this point Vedic rituals receive Shankara's enthusiastic endorsement in his writings, he says that the right Vedic rituals when done properly can grant access to heaven, future riches and that they can also purify one's heart and thereby serve as a powerful preliminary practice before an eventual entry into monasticism.

>>21391535
>Disgusting. I don't understand how Schopenhauer could have liked the Upanishads when it had such creepy accounts of sacrificial rituals.
First off, the Upanishads rarely talk about sacrifices and when they do they don't give any sort of detailed or gory description of killing animals, the instructions related to animals come from the earlier non-Upanishad part of the Vedas and not from the Upanishads, it seems like you are pretending to have read the Upanishads with your remembering of non-existent passages.

Also, a city of humans in most eras and places throughout history, have feasted on a mountain of slaughtered animal corpses every single day. Does it really make a huge difference if one or a few of the animals in that mountain or corpses was sacrificed instead of being mindlessly slaughtered for food like the rest? Is that fate so different from the fate that would often befall them in the wild anyway with leopards, hyenas, tigers, wolves etc?

>>21392013
>Buddha isn't Dennett
Who said so? Buddha isn't doing eliminative materialism. Early Buddhist used eliminative materialism as means of systemizing Buddhism. That includes a good chunk of systemization of Abdhidhamma. As well as other non-theravadan Abhidhammas who had different materialistic/atomistic notions of Buddhism. This semi-materialistic/atheistic form was well established within Nalanda even during the height of Mahayana.

>Trikaya
Trikaya was a Yogacara project to spin a positive light on the process of becoming a Buddha. The potential to become a Buddha carried through by past karma, the process of becoming enlightened (the clear mind) and the state of nirvana(the final body process). Aside from that, its just fancy word dressing.

For example, the notion of Buddha-nature, isn't to affirm "something" exists within everyone, but rather its trying to re-contextualize the nature of emptiness, the potential for people to become Buddhas. The three kayas for example are dharmakaya (emptiness/potential), sambhogakaya (luminous mind/enlightened mind), and nirmanakaya (nirvana/end of body)

Dont get too confused. If the basics are warped, the higher levels can confuse you tremendously.

>>21386106
>>21386683
>>21387185
>>21387293
I dont think you really get Buddhism, and your interpreation only comes from modern western athiests who imposed their views on Buddhism.
You are looking for Charvaka atheism. Ancient Buddhists regularly argued against Athiests (Charvaka).

>>21392285
You're a retard. Just saying

>>21392271
>For example, the notion of Buddha-nature, isn't to affirm "something" exists within everyone, but rather its trying to re-contextualize the nature of emptiness, the potential for people to become Buddhas
not that anon, but that response implies a unity of intent across all the Buddhist texts that talk about this, but this does not seem to be the case as there are several published studies of the Tathagatagarbha sutra type literature that detail how they explain it in different conflicting ways in different texts, sometimes trying to reconcile it with emptiness while at other times claiming to supersede a more typical Buddhist-type conception of self-emptiness. Some Buddhist texts and tantras explicitly reject the idea of viewing it only as a virtual possibility that awaits to be developed without it actually being present

>>21392295
seething

Funny when retarded Buddhists can't even agree to what the fuck Buddha was talking about.

>>21392310
The united intent is to read into the Buddhas dharma accurately and be consistent as possible, affirmed by their own personal development. Flaws popup sometimes when they go too far and other Buddhist schools reign them in. As you see with yogacara going too far or older Buddhist schools going too atomistic/eternalistic or nihilistic. This was helped by the fact that India was a hotbed of Buddhist development and communications/learning centers were open to all. So a united effort was taking place.

However once Buddhism fell out due to various historical reasons, it remained forever separated and individuals developed Buddhism through their own reading of Buddhism guided by their past teachers, the dharmas, and the personal developments. They did get limited amount of pushback from various mini-Buddhist traditions within the geological fractured Buddhist world. Tibetans had half a dozen different schools competing against each other. China had half a dozen Buddhist schools competing against each other. SEA had a mix of theravada/mahayana/tantrayana mixed together. Sri Lanka had theravada/tantrayana/mahayana all together, but due to mahayana/tantrayana schools losing support from India, it perished in time within Sri Lanka (but the historical remains still exists).

It's pretty clear that non-duality cannot be compared to buddhism which is just another organized religion with masses of followers and people who want to seem enlightened by association yet not able to comprehend any of the texts into any sort of clarity.

>>21392271
>>21392336
>Who said so? Buddha isn't doing eliminative materialism. Early Buddhist used eliminative materialism as means of systemizing Buddhism. That includes a good chunk of systemization of Abdhidhamma.
In some ways they’re strangely close, which is in fact one of the reasons I brought it up, but the belief in transmigration adds something far too “metaphysical” for the tastes of modern scientism, although, as you point out, many facets of its psychological teachings, meditation practices, and a systematized psychological catalogue like the Abhidharma can indeed be reconciled with modern neuroscience, if you want to make a Westernized Sam-Harris-type version of Buddhism (which I’m saying without trying to give either positive or negative connotation to it, as I’m far from a Buddhist Puritan).

Thanks for the systematized answer, I’m far from a great scholar on Buddhism either and it blows my mind when I think about how vast “Buddhism” is and how it’s all-too-easily put under one umbrella by people who don’t recognize its complexity and multifacetedness.

I’m curious, as someone who seems pretty knowledgeable on Buddhism, do you have a preferred sect, school or interpretation of it to approach it from, or is it too massive and complex to give a straightforward answer?

>>21392611
Transmigration within Buddhism is fairly complex topic and difficult to cover. There are lots of take, but I think the simplest are the Buddha's own metaphors about fire being lit from one candle to another. Its not that fire has "transmigrated" from one candle to another, it just sets up the initial conditions for the next fire on the candle to light up. The "condition" that gets "lit" is the nature of debate within Buddhism. There are various takes on it, some being pseudo-materialistic and others being pseudo-supernaturalistic and most taking a middle path in between.

I am non-secterian. I consider most buddhist schools to be valid, but I personally try to simplify most of the buddhist takes for personal digestions and discussions. Still learning new things time time/debates/etc

Buddhism is for midwits without a soul.

>it makes sense i swear
>the thing
>it's like the candle and the flame err
>it represents.....some-thing

>>21392211
I've only read the introduction of the Upanisads by Patrick Olivelle. I've put it on the side to read some other stuff right now, but I will get back to it.
However, he did describe the sacrificial room as having two large fires where there are singers of hymns and the instructor on the proper protocol. The man who is to benefit from the sacrifice is situated to the right of the northern fire whereas his wife sits to the bottom near the southern fire. At the northern fire, the sacrificer does look into the organs, bones, and parts of the unfortunate animal, seeing them as homologous of cosmic process. It does generally sound "Lovecraftian" if I may be blunt.
I don't like the idea of sacrificing mammals or birds. I think the ancient Japanese approach of largely eating fish is the best. I think pescetarianism is the best compromise for the spiritual path.
This is a problem now that the oceans are contaminated with mercury and nuclear spillover...
The idea of sacrificing human beings repulses me less than innocent cute mammals or birds. Just look at the face of this nuthatch. This nuthatch is already a manifestation of the Absolute and must be cherished with ahimsa.

>>21392731
>yeah of course i believe in [dogmatic claim] that's why [criticism of it] is wrong and if you disagree you're not smart like me

>>21392731
You suck at reading and displayed your own pettiness, that post was favoring Hindu teachings over Buddhism but simply restating a popular Buddhist allegory, and I said I believe Hinduism has a better response to such questions, although between talking to a Buddhist or reading Buddhist literature, and discussing something with YOU, I would go with the Buddhist any day, as at least they have interesting things to say and some depth of thought over “Eastern religions bad”.

>>21392731
>>21393256
I thought you were talking about this earlier post of mine where I also brought up the candle analogy >>21392013 but now see this was even closer in time to your post, >>21392673 which is even more offensively stupid because that poster knows his stuff even more than I do. I almost want to become icchantika-poster over how petty people are on anonymous online imageboards about traditions with far more depth, history, richness and wisdom than they could ever comprehend, which ironically is rather un-Buddhist of me, with the possible exception of historical Zen monks known to have thrown rocks at and shouted at students trying to approach them with their dubious, selfish motives, desires to debate and show off their cleverness, and so forth.

>>21393256
>>21393301
Keep crying faggot, neither of you idiots could even address the point made but instead choose to be whiny emotional retards.

bump

does being disputatious about speculative metaphysics lead to spiritual attainment asking for a friend

>>21391293
I think anons point escaped you anon

>>21392828
vegetarianism is completely fine for the spiritual path, there is no need to even go to the fish step

one of the most important point about non-meat diet is not about karma, but is that it improves meditation

>>21391081
Filtered
>method
Read, The Method of the Vedanta: A Critical Account of the Advaita Tradition
>>21390520
>Fundamental reality is non-dual, they are not "the same thing" because there are no differences to begin with, so to make a comparison between what is non-dual to begin with is already a logical error. To say fundamental reality is the mind (idealism, which Shankara refutes) and that there are no external objects would still be a kind of dualism because there is still a fundamental distinction being made between what would constitute a mental object and what would constitute an external object (even if only to reject the reality of the external object, a la idealism).
Correct so its pointless to even speak of dependence, independence an inside or an outside.
>>21389995
>Even before Shankara came along Gaudapada was already criticizing the doctrines of the Yogacharins a few centuries earlier, and in Shankara's commentary on Gaudapada's text he unpacks these criticisms of Yogachara in greater detail. Shankara does not hold to Yogachara positions, he criticizes them instead.
>No, that's incorrect, Yogachara does not "have an identical position" to Advaita. Shankara criticizes Vasubandhu's/Dinnaga's/Dharmakirti's position with regard to external objects in his Brahma Sutra Bhasya and he calls their position illogical. According to Shankara, objects exist conventionally in a mind-independent way and he says there is no rational grounds for denying that they are mind-independent.
Would the buddhist position, of the "mind-independent objects" being neither existent nor non-existent, not be the equivalent proposition? To shankara affirming that objects exist "conventionally" in a mind independent way (which implies shankaras neither existent nor non-existent, absolute existence) however, does shankara really ultimately affirm meaningfully "conventional existence" I thought he only accepted (Absolute) Existence, doesnt shankara himself declare that he is neither existent nor non-existent, nor existent and non-existent, but alone existent? Afterall the denial of a conventional which you consider erroneous of the buddhists, does not necessarily imply the correlative acceptance of mind-dependant object nor the rejection and denial of existence, that the mental objects are not not-existent, does not deny their (absolute) existence nor affirm their conventional existence, That you are speaking of some sort of mind-independence creates a dualism of relationship, the "mind-independent objects" dont exist relatively, but they truly exist, without conscious labels, or superimposition through ignorance, as empty essence (neither existing nor not-existing).
You should further clarify what you mean exactly by "independence, " if shankara does reject supposed proofs for the dependence of exterior objects on the mind, does that mean he does accept the independence of exterior objects of the mind, obviously not as Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad says.

>>21395434
Is all this not to say that shankara is simply making it clear to neither accept nor reject, the framing of conciousness as exterior, interior, dependent or independent?
So what he is he refuting exactly?

>>21395439
Apart from there being no rational proof, or does shankara give a proof then for his position of there actually being Mind-independent objects? To what extent? I though shankara apriori accepts an ineffable absolute, all you are saying he is doing it seems is just freeing this Absolute from both proof and no-proof, by mental apprehension, or are you rather trying to say that he is imbuing in existence a hierarchy of conventional depdendence and independence?

>>21395439
He's fighting against the backdrop of Buddhist conventionality = ultimate. Since he adopts the convention/ultimate dichotomy of Buddhists, but wants to distinguish himself to uphold only the ultimate since that fits with Hindu doctrine. So the reason for his non-acceptance of any stance is a way to weasel out of his/buddhist's earlier argument about the nature of mind-independent and mind-dependent reality. For Buddhist, they establish external reality and the internal reality. To them, thats not a fundamental issue. The distinction is real. To a Hindu like Shankara, the distinction cannot be allowed to be affirmed because that would violate the Hindu's absoluteness of Brahman.

>>21395494
> To a Hindu like Shankara, the distinction cannot be allowed to be affirmed because that would violate the Hindu's absoluteness of Brahman.
I thought it was the reverse actually, the anon above is saying shankara really accepts difference as apparently he does not view the acceptance of empirical conventional reality to be a problem (according to the anon) , as the other anon seems to suggest, the buddhists completely deny it on the one hand and imply that yeah difference cannot be accepted because it is real so there is all the more reason to do away with it, so it is false, whereas yeah the hindus (and to my understanding not even shankara really accepts this) are saying difference implies non-difference anyway, so there is no contradiction between the acceptance of the empirical existence and the absolute, anyway on this subject I would say shankara is in the end more buddhist than buddhists realize.

>>21395554
Shankara's main point is to establish the hierachy of nondual. That is to say there's non-dual, but also absolute is the only reality. Thus the conventionality, of it is not just conventional, but is discarded away as non-existent. Such that they cannot accept that conventionality has any existence as that would go against the absoluteness of the Brahman. He's making an absolute distinction to elevate the existence of an absolute. Thats the key difference.

Buddhists seem to want to claim conventional reality that is perceived is the ultimate reality because behind the conventionality lies the dependence origination and the emptiness of all phenomenas which allows/gives rise to all things. The positive language on emptiness is what confuses the Hindu and allows them to adopt the Buddhist line of rational to argue that the emptiness is the REAL and ONLY ultimate truth that matters. Which the Buddhist themselves warn against.

>>21395596
If a man has a soul he will come to know this as his eternal self, if a man has no soul he will defend his temporary existence as the only true existence and vehemently deny any claims he is just an illusion.

In other words the NPC denies he exists outside the game software and the real player knows it's just a game. Both are equally true.

>>21395762
If you claim the temporary existence doesnt matter, then so too does your soul don't matter because the distinct soul is conventional in Advaita. At the end of route, only ultimate is the Brahman. No game, no soul, just Brahman.

>>21395792
I abide in the formless while he writhes like a fish caught in a net.

Only he who is without is concerned with the having of.

>>21393301
Zen monks aren't monastics, lol. By who were they ordained, the Tooth Fairy? Keep anime religion in /a/ please.

>Ctrl + f "avasthas" 0/0

yeah, it seems no one here knows anything about advaita

>>21390802
LMAO is not an argument. You may have some personal distaste for terms like "magician" because of how they imply a "personification" (a personification which doesn't apply to Brahman anyway which is beyond change and without mind/thoughts etc) but it's still a perfectly consistent and reasonable position and one which avoids the issues with a paradoxical regress that would otherwise be present.

>>21395434
>Would the buddhist position, of the "mind-independent objects" being neither existent nor non-existent, not be the equivalent proposition?
No, as far as I can tell it's not equivalent. Yogacharins say that the apparent nature of objects as being exterior to us or exterior to the mind is solely imputed by one's subjective imagination and that objects lack any sort of extra-mental existence "out there" in a shared world that we can both interact with and so on. Madhyamakins sometimes also say that "things neither exist nor don't exist" but when they say this they are just denying independent and absolute existence to any object and they are instead just affirming that all objects etc exists in a relative and empty way. Now, an Advaitin might agree with the Madhyamakin claim that the visible objects and phenomena of the world exist only relatively, but the Advaitin would says that Brahman still has absolute and independent existence which the Buddhists reject.

>To shankara affirming that objects exist "conventionally" in a mind independent way (which implies shankaras neither existent nor non-existent, absolute existence) however, does shankara really ultimately affirm meaningfully "conventional existence" I thought he only accepted (Absolute) Existence, doesnt shankara himself declare that he is neither existent nor non-existent, nor existent and non-existent, but alone existent?
Shankara teaches that there is the absolute transcendental existence of Brahman, which alone is the true and actual existence, and then on the other hand the relative/conditional existence of things within the illusion of maya/samsara, which accounts for their appearance in our experience. There are many places throughout his work where he refers to things "existing conventionally". I'm not sure what you mean by him "ultimately affirming" it, does he say this conventional existence has a more than relative existence? No, because that would be contradictory.

>>21390618
What do you think enlightenment is you retard?

>>21395434
>That you are speaking of some sort of mind-independence creates a dualism of relationship, the "mind-independent objects" dont exist relatively, but they truly exist, without conscious labels, or superimposition through ignorance, as empty essence
It only creates that if you read implications into my post which I didn't endorse and which don't automatically follow as a consequence of what was said. Shankara denies, in disagreement with Yogacara, that the mental object lacks extra-mental existence, however he never says that they instead enjoy truly independent and unconditioned existence, as all objects are just permutations of prakriti-maya which is itself contingent upon Brahman. Objects lack independence existence for Shankara because their relative existence depends upon Brahman, but the relative existence of any one object or group of object occurs irrespective of (ie not in dependence upon) any one particular mind (which is itself just another dependent object comprised of prakriti-maya).

>if shankara does reject supposed proofs for the dependence of exterior objects on the mind, does that mean he does accept the independence of exterior objects of the mind, obviously not as Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad says.
Shankara *DOES* accept that the conventional existence of phenomena occurs independent of one's mind (he isn't a subjective idealist), even though he denies that their existence is fully independent (of anything) in the unqualified sense like Brahman's independent existence is unqualified. The whole point in his criticism of Yogachara is that in Shankara's view there is no rational and consistent way to give a coherent account of experience and how it comes about while denying that objects are extra-mental and that the Yogachara enterprise is flawed for this reason, among others. When Ram-Prasad says ""Consequently, Sankara’s attempt is not to show that Vasubandhu is wrong in rejecting proof of externality, for Sankara himself accepts that rejection." he means that Shankara rejects any sort of proof that would attempt to establish that the extra-mental world is true reality (and not Brahman). In the earlier context of arguing with Yogachara idealists, people would try to say "no, the exterior world exists and IS the actual reality" and would come at Yogacharins with various arguments for this; Shankara would disagree with all of these people's arguments on the basis of them arguing that the exterior world is the metaphysical reality, even though he concedes that the rational option is to assume that when it comes to the conventional existence of objects, that there is a shared world of extra-mental objects that is independent of our mind.

The most informative discussion of the similarities and differences between Yogachara and Advaita are in the chapters on Gaudapada and Shankara in Sharma's book "The Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy". The chapter in Prasad's book which covers Yogachara and Advaita is good too.

Why is Shankara deemed the only authority on Advaita but Buddhists pluck ideas from wherever is convenient to make Buddha not look like a retard?

>>21395439
>Is all this not to say that shankara is simply making it clear to neither accept nor reject, the framing of consciousness as exterior, interior, dependent or independent?
Shankara accepts that consciousness (Brahman) has independent existence and he says as much. The objection to this that, the independent vs dependent dichotomy, as a mental concept, "only appears from the perspective of the vyavahara", while true, fails to overturn the fact that Brahman's existence is still independent all the same (not in dependence upon anything), even if we can only mentally envision this and talk about this concept of independence within the realm of "plato's cave", that fact doesn't make it untrue that Brahman actually is independent in the literal meaning of the word all the same.

>>21396473
>a Zen monk is not a Zen monk
They would be the first to agree.

>>21395468
>Apart from there being no rational proof, or does shankara give a proof then for his position of there actually being Mind-independent objects?
No, he gives reasons why it's the most reasonable assumption but he doesn't try to establish proof because it's not important for him to give this proof and so he is indifferent to it; what he does instead is reject the Yogachara denial of the extra-mental existence of objects and he says this denial of theirs is illogical and completely unwarranted. Rejecting the Yogachara denial of the extra-mental existence of objects doesn't require that Shankara himself provide some proof of their externality. Shankara thinks that it's self-evident that they are external (to one's individual mind) just because of how they appear to us and that Yogachara is engaging in extreme logical gymnastics in an attempt (which Shankara thinks ultimately doesn't work) to explain away what is natural and self-evident. Shankara doesn't feel compelled to provide some proof for the extra-mental existence of objects, both because his doctrine doesn't rest on proving such a claim, and because his goal is achieved simply by pointing out how the Yogachara position is illogical and something to be rejected for that reason.

>To what extent? I though shankara apriori accepts an ineffable absolute
He does, but he also says that all doctrines should be subjected to the test of reason and doctrines and teachings that are found to be lacking, logically contradictory etc should be rejected as wrong

>all you are saying he is doing it seems is just freeing this Absolute from both proof and no-proof, by mental apprehension, or are you rather trying to say that he is imbuing in existence a hierarchy of conventional depdendence and independence?
There is no hierarchy within the absolute existence of Brahman which is without parts that can be in a hierarchy, however within the maya-realm or samsara there is certainly a hierarchy where some things depend on other things. All individual objects depend for their instantiation on the medium of which they are a part, and the medium itself (prakriti-maya) depends on Brahman. Some parts of the medium are independent relative to other parts of the medium, i.e. the part of the medium that includes the sun, for example, existed conventionally before one individual's mind perceived it (the sun existed independently of that one individual's mind)

>>21396603
>you guys are talking about advaita without exclusively talking about it within the bounds of the 2 or 3 talking point that my favorite secondary source repeats over and over? leave me out of it.....

>>21396768
Because Buddhist ideas are built up over time and medically, while Shankara plucks yogacara ideas and inserts Brahman where emptiness lies and makes some changes to the relation between ultimate and the conventional.

>>21396877
Was Buddhu not enlightened? It's usually bullshit that needs more bullshit to cover up the initial bullshit idea.

>>21396743
> Madhyamakins sometimes also say that "things neither exist nor don't exist" but when they say this they are just denying independent and absolute existence to any object and they are instead just affirming that all objects etc exists in a relative and empty way. Now, an Advaitin might agree with the Madhyamakin claim that the visible objects and phenomena of the world exist only relatively, but the Advaitin would says that Brahman still has absolute and independent existence which the Buddhists reject.
Okay it seems maybe I am just misreading the buddhist texts I am probably interpolating based upon my reading of advaita, when the madhyamakins say mind neither exists nor does not exist, and that things neither exist nor not-exist I took that as a statement of there just being absolute existence, "unborn awareness" nondual existence and thats it, emptiness does not = brahman, but phenomenalogically indicates it, just as brahman itself does.
>Now, an Advaitin might agree with the Madhyamakin claim that the visible objects and phenomena of the world exist only relatively, but the Advaitin would says that Brahman still has absolute and independent existence which the Buddhists reject.
I am having trouble understanding by independent do you just mean without superimposition?
> does he say this conventional existence has a more than relative existence?
No he doesnt obviously, so why does he disagree with the buddhists, is relative existence really? Is not all that is absolute existence?
What does this debate even prove, is my point.
> Shankara teaches that there is the absolute transcendental existence of Brahman, which alone is the true and actual existence, and then on the other hand the relative/conditional existence of things within the illusion of maya/samsara, which accounts for their appearance in our experience.
My understanding of the buddhists is that there is absolute transcendental existence, which is alone, that there is no real relative existence, and that there is no illusion/maya/samsara that is not superimposed through mental-grasping, conscious-labelling, discursive analysis etc. on this transcendental existence, unborn awareness.

>>21396894
Madhyamaka doesn't establish any absolute existence. It destroys all notions of absolute existence tho. "Unborn awareness" is older Buddhist language in reference to the mind that is freed from delusion. Also the guy you're replying to is wrong. Madhyamaka doesn't say "things neither exist nor don't exist". They say things don't have Svabhava, essences, self,atman,etc that which gives things a sense of permanence, a sense of uniqueness, a sense of core essence. But they absolutely affirm things exist, they just exists as non-svabahvic phenomenas. Advaitas claims things have the core atman and beneath both things and the atman is the Brahman. And in the face of Brahman, nothing else exist. No emptiness is not Brahman nor Atman. They're ontologically very different. Hindus deny the reality in favor of Brahman. Buddhist affirm reality, but deny the core eternal essence and the so called "absolute reality"

>>21396959
Buddhists do not deny Absolute Reality. Have you read the Platform Sutra?

>>21396959
>Advaitas claims things have the core atman and beneath both things and the atman is the Brahman. And in the face of Brahman, nothing else exist. No emptiness is not Brahman nor Atman. They're ontologically very different. Hindus deny the reality in favor of Brahman.

How can they deny reality if by your definition it is also a temporary expression of Brahman?

>>21396980
Platform sutra draws from Yogacara branch which is a later development into the nature of mind/consciousness. Madhyamaka establishes the foundational ontology. Conventional reality is the ultimate reality. There's no other.

>>21396989
Reality is denied in favor of Brahman's self importance. It's like saying I have a million dollar. A monopoly dollar.

>>21396833
you read so much of the 'primary sources' that you created your own version of advaita and thinks that it is the same as that of "those who know the tradition"

it seems your next step is rejecting the avasthatraya as an innovation, just like you did with the different standpoints, anubhava and the general methodology

are you related to Luther by any means?

>>21397042
So Buddhists have a Monopoly dollar without a Monopoly board?

In non-duality you would not deny the dollar because it belongs to the board and is part of the game but it is understood it only exists because of the board, in the same way "reality" only exists because of Brahman.

>>21397075
Buddhist have million dollars. There's no heiarchy to the nondual in Buddhism. So while everyone is playing on Monopoly board, Monopoly money is used, there's no non monopoly reality outside. Same as if we're simulation but there's no outside of simulation, that which is ultimate/separate from the sim. So all is real, even if ultimately it's all a sim.

>>21397112
Ok, you're a retard.

>>21396894
>I am having trouble understanding by independent do you just mean without superimposition?
Objects are independent in the sense of that they don't depend on an individual's mind and its epistemic status for their manifestation. Their manifestation in time and space occurs due to the medium of which they are a part, the medium develops in a certain way and thus objects manifest in space. When an individual's mind (which is another object in the medium), is illumined by the light of the Atman then it allows that mind to have experiences of other objects. What is superimposed on objects by the mind is erroneous conceptions and understandings of those objects (as being real etc), the visual sensation or auditory sensation of objects as mere experienced phenomena are not themselves a superimposition (however these sensations can be erroneously superimposed onto the Self by thinking "I am hearing this"). The liberated man doesn't superimpose anything anymore (because he isn't fooled or deluded) but he continues to be able to see the world via visual sensations etc and interact with others and teach them, so obviously sensory perceptions etc are not themselves a superimposition or it would be impossible for an enlightened Advaitin (who doesn't superimpose erroneously anymore) to even instruct or communicate with others because he would not be able to see or hear them.

Anyway, if you are at all confused about this I would just go check out those two sections in Sharma's and Ram-Prasad's book which talk about this.

>No he doesnt obviously, so why does he disagree with the buddhists, is relative existence really? Is not all that is absolute existence? What does this debate even prove, is my point.
Because they aren't arguing here about absolute existence, he disagrees with the different kinds of Buddhism for various reasons but his specific objection against Yogachara here involves his view that Yogachara is giving some account of experience that is wrong and contradictory and that for this reason the prospective spiritual seeker should not follow or accept Yogachara as true. In this Brahma Sutra Bhasya (and other works) he covers various other non-Advaita doctrines and explains why they are wrong and why Advaita should be accepted instead.

>My understanding of the buddhists is that there is absolute transcendental existence,
Many/most Buddhist schools are not willing to admit this and many will say that's an incorrect "crypto-Vedanta" etc understanding of Buddhism. The few schools which say something like this are the exception that proves the rule that Buddhism generally doesn't accept it

>>21396959
>Also the guy you're replying to is wrong. Madhyamaka doesn't say "things neither exist nor don't exist". They say things don't have Svabhava, essences, self,atman,etc that which gives things a sense of permanence, a sense of uniqueness, a sense of core essence. But they absolutely affirm things exist, they just exists as non-svabahvic phenomenas
You said my post was wrong but then you just repeated what I already said. I said that they only denied that objects have absolute/independent existence and that they affirm the relative/dependent existence of objects; I was just saying that all Madhyamaka statements about things "not existing" only mean a denial of them as more-than-relative.

>Advaitas claims things have the core atman and beneath both things and the atman is the Brahman. And in the face of Brahman, nothing else exist.
That's false, Advaita says the core Atman *is* the Brahman, they *don't* say that the Brahman is "beneath both things and the Atman". You are evidently confusing Advaita and Vishishtadvaita, again.

All this terse pseudointellectual debate from non-practitioners who can't sit a single moment in half or full lotus.

>>21397171
Each individual has Atman. But Brahman is one. Atman are only conventionally important. Ultimately Atman and the reality don't matter. That's Advaita. Advaita and all hindu religion puts the emphasis on the Absolute/Brahman above all else. AAs such, they deny the existence to anything else. Everything else is fiction.

>>21397240
Also it's not just each individual, every phenomena has atman in Hinduism as well. Chairs have atman, rock has atman.

To those anons who are more situated in Vedantic and eastern studies, would it be correct to make the analogy that Buddhism seems to be as if pre-Socratic sophists formed a mystery cult? As in, they answer the dialectical problem of 'Many vs One' with an unremitting 'Many' and deny all unitary essences, i.e monads. Meanwhile Advaita Vedanta seems to be more aligned and resemblant of late Platonist doctrines expounded by figures like Plotinus. Also analogies could be drawn to other Indic traditions like Shaivite tantrik practises and their similarity to Iamblichean theurgy.

How accurate do you think these are? Guenon, being retarded, outright dismissed Plotinus and the Greeks for some reason (despite having never read any of them). I've heard Coomerswarmy is better on this issue though. But the attempt by Trads to larp as if Buddhism is reconcilable to any other religion via the assertion that anatta is just apophatic theology seems absurd.

>>21397051
>you read so much of the 'primary sources' that you created your own version of advaita and thinks that it is the same as that of "those who know the tradition"
No, I have just read Shankara and I simply explain Advaita as I clearly perceive him to explain and understand it, in his own writings. There isn't anything that I say that departs from what he says in his works. What I explain is just repeating what he explains already.

>it seems your next step is rejecting the avasthatraya as an innovation
Why would I reject the avasthatraya as an innovation when Shankara talks about them in his Mandukya-Karika bhaysa? Knowing about the three states is just basic Advaita 101. However, unlike certain secondary sources who lived a thousand years after Shankara, Shankara DOESN'T view the avasthatraya as some all-important concept or rule to mention over and over and he rarely even mentions it outside of his Mandukya-Karika Bhaysa. In fact he mentions it so rarely that some researchers even suspect that he never wrote the Mandukya-Karika Bhaysa (I think he did write it). I wouldn't expect you to know this because you seem to stick to the secondary sources.

The avasthatraya is not even directly related to the discussion about Shankara vs Yogachara, and it's not the most immediate and obvious of differences between Advaita and Buddhism generally (this thread topic). You posting "control-F avasthatraya" was just to haughtily posture about having read ONE secondary source on Advaita, and to chide others for not repeating the same talking points about Advaita that this secondary source uses over and over. However, this is cringe and laughable since people can and do talk about Advaita in a way that is perfectly fine just by relying on Shankara's and other medieval Advaita texts and there is no reason to insist that everyone talking about Advaita does so in the exact way your preferred 20th-century secondary source does, and in fact Shankara himself does not speak about Advaita that way. You need to get over your ego and accept that not everyone will agree with or even like the interpretation of Advaita by your preferred secondary source. Stop trying to police other people's discussion of Advaita, it's cringe

>just like you did with the different standpoints, anubhava and the general methodology
I just reject some of your 20th century secondary sources interpretation of what Shankara's says, that's it
>are you related to Luther by any means?
Funny since your preferred secondary source is very much like Luthur insofar as he rejects the still existing tradition of which he is a part (Catholicism or the existing Advaita teachers) and tries to forge a pseudo-tradition ex-nihilio by reading the source texts of the already-existing tradition in a different way

>>21397260
Bad

>>21397240
>Each individual has Atman. But Brahman is one.
Each individual only """"""has"""""" Atman because the one infinite non-dual Atman-Brahman is the Self (Atman) of every being. Individual's don't have their own separate Atman (this is Vishishtadvaita and not Advaita) but rather all individuals share the same non-individual Ataman, which is itself nothing other than the one undivided partless Brahman.

>>21397260
This isn’t the worst cross-cultural philosophical analogy you could make, I think. The Sophists favored considerations of relativity, reminding us all we have access to are uncertain phenomena in a transitory world, and applying radical skepticism to all philosophical and theological claims, whereas the Platonists sought a firm grounding of thought in Absoluteness, such as the realm of Forms beyond the changing flux of transitory, phenomenal reality, or in the Logos.

>But the attempt by Trads to larp as if Buddhism is reconcilable to any other religion via the assertion that anatta is just apophatic theology seems absurd.

This is in fact why Guenon didn’t include Buddhism so prominently in his Traditionalism, and in fact portrayed it as a degenerate offshoot of Tradition in the form of Hinduism, also seeing the anatta (no self) teachings as explicitly anti-Traditional. However, later in his life, he is held to have turned back on this but ironically by having considered it possible the Buddha did not originally teach anatta (no self) but instead had his teachings corrupted by later Buddhists, making it possible original Buddhism is “Traditional” per his conception.

However, Coomaraswamy, whom you also bring up, was much more explicitly positive in his appraisal of Buddhism, writing in his book “Hinduism and Buddhism”:

>The more superficially one studies Buddhism, the more it seems to differ from the Brahmanism in which it originated; the more profound our study, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish Buddhism from Brahmanism, or to say in what respects, if any, Buddhism is really unorthodox.

>>21397291
If everyone doesn't have their own atman, then they never had atman in the first place. Hence no one has atman. There's only Brahman.

>>21397321
>If everyone doesn't have their own atman, then they never had atman in the first place.
They don't "have" atman, they are atman
>Hence no one has atman. There's only Brahman.
everyone is atman, thus everyone is Brahman, thus atman-Brahman is atman-Brahman. You are defining or talking about people from the point of view of the unreal contingencies that define individuality, but I am talking about them (really they are all the same entity in actuality) as they are in their true/actual nature that is beyond these contingencies.

From the point of view of viewing people as being a sum of unreal contingencies, nobody (no unreal contingency constituted by gunas etc) is Brahman

From the point of view of viewing people as being their actual true Self, everybody (their true Self) is Brahman, and this is true both in the absence and presence of contingencies

>>21397184
>cant spend a single minue...
I have spent hours in half lotus, and every second of the day is meditation.

>>21397321
If there's no independent reality, there was no reality in the first place. There is no reality. There is only Brahman.

>>21397314
Indeed, much in Buddhism and Hinduism IS obviously and on its face already similar. From both being Dharmic traditions, they uphold beliefs in karma, transmigration, and liberation by stopping the wheel of transmigration and metaphorically “escaping” from our lower world.

In both, suffering is held to arise from attachments and desires in this world, the world of maya (illusion) or samsara of the Buddhists. Advaita Vedanta seeks liberation by moksha, Buddhists by nirvana, both names, in Western translation, are often simply included under the name “enlightenment.”

The sought liberation or enlightenment comes about by transcendence of karma as well as by systematized elaborations of many yogic practices to stabilize or order in a certain way the body, emotions, and thoughts. Hinduism has Avatars of Brahman who incarnate again and again to show suffering humanity the way to liberation, Buddhism has Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

>>21397337
Subtle bodies are everyone's memories,personalities,identity,etc.
>>21397343
Exactly.

>>21397260
Setting aside the later Buddhist schools and their claims about what Buddha really taught (which are all over the spectrum), if we examine Buddha's teachings in the Pali Canon we find that it is somewhat like the classic 'duck-rabbit' illusion, in that it occupies an ambiguous uncommitted no-man's land, which can appear to the observer and be equally read either as being some form of a reductionist quasi-physicalist proto-redditor propounding some empirical 'science of mind', or as a mystic concerned with introducing people to an ineffable existing timeless spiritual reality in a way that avoids objectifying it. Whether he seems more like one or the other shifts according to the person who considers the issue and according to the knowledge and assumptions that they bring forth in considering the issue.

>>21397338
Philosophy is a failing approximation of good poetry.

>>21397347
>Subtle bodies are everyone's memories,personalities,identity,etc.
I know, it's where their false identity resides, however the true identity of all beings is the Atman that illuminates all the subtle bodies and their contents, like an invisible sun that exists everywhere. The subtle body is not even properly sentient but it only appears to be. Living beings with their inner sentience are not reducible to the subtle and gross body that are non-Atman but they are like a conjunction of the subtle body etc and this omnipresent Atman together. Because of this if you refer to the person in the sense of being a conjunction of the inner-self with non-self then the true identity of this composite entity is just the inner self or Atman alone, and in that sense, all beings fundamentally are the Brahman-Atman already, which can also be expressed by saying that they (as a composite of self and non-self) have the Brahman-Atman as their true self already.

Even if one theoretically removes all the unreal contingencies like subtle bodies etc and it turns out that one was talking about the same undivided non-dual Entity all along, that only appeared divided by way of an apparent connection with the contingencies, (it would be correct to grant this as Advaita does) if we grant this as true that still doesn't make it any less true to say that any particular composite of non-self with Self (i.e. for example a living human person) has the Self as their true identity or as the true self/identity of that composite.

>>21397730
Subtle body is the self identification factor. Not only does it exist, it reincarnates. Then there's atman on top, which is the consciousness. But atman enters the body of all, like an alien parasite taking over the body of humans. All the while controlling the self/subtle body and the physical body. Since the atman is part of the greater parasite, it never dies. Also the subtle body never dies since it just reincarnates. So an immortal human self is taken over by an immortal alien parasitic atman-brahman

>>21398835
Hindus aren't human. They're alien parasites trying to takeover the human soul, the subtle body and denying us our humanity. They want our souls to be so they can eat it up.

Don't buy into the parasitic alien cult.

>>21397344>>21397314

>Indeed, much in Buddhism and Hinduism IS obviously and on its face already similar. From both being Dharmic traditions, they uphold beliefs in karma, transmigration, and liberation by stopping the wheel of transmigration and metaphorically “escaping” from our lower world.
>
>In both, suffering is held to arise from attachments and desires in this world, the world of maya (illusion) or samsara of the Buddhists. Advaita Vedanta seeks liberation by moksha, Buddhists by nirvana, both names, in Western translation, are often simply included under the name “enlightenment.”
No, since liberation from the suffering of karmic rebirths is not in the Vedas.

>>21399627
Shankara added it

>>21397730
>I know, it's where their false identity resides, however the true identity of all beings is the Atman that illuminates all the subtle bodies and their contents, like an invisible sun that exists everywhere.
yes you are just repeating over and over the dogma.

>>21397112
>>21397075
>>21396959
Non duality is not even the teaching of the buddha.


>>21397266
>Shankara
weird how you are obsessed with a guru from the middle ages babbling about spiritualities from 2000 years before he was even born.

>>21399637
Non-duality is a teaching within Buddhism since the early days. The whole "middle way" is another word for non-dual. Then you go on the nature of enlightenment and the views, the manifestations of an enlightened mind, the madhyamaka's nirvana = samsara, ultimate = conventionality, heart sutra, and so on.

When Buddhists say non-dual, they mean non-dual. They don't mean monism.
When Hindus say non-dual, they mean Brahman-only. There's heiarchy of reality within the so called "non-dualism." A form of an absolute monism.

Source?

I get my wisdom from the primary source.

>>21399672
It came to me in a dream, asshole

>>21399681
Your very "waking" state is a dream, only one who has awakened can know he was once dreaming.

>>21390798
The white room is basically the Buddhists idea of "Nirvana" or "Nothingness".

https://youtu.be/AGZiLMGdCE0

>>21398887
Buddhists don't have a soul. They are NPC.

>>21399837
More equivalent to the luminous mind/buddha nature/etc.

>>21399843
Is that what you call it when NPC's are deleted from the simulation?

Buddhists never left the cave, how can you have light without a source? The highest they have reached is realising the shadow of a horse is not a horse.

>>21399843
What luminous mind? It’s all black nothingness. Buddhist Nirvana is what it feels like for the NPC when the console/PC is turned off. Pure nothingness.
Not so for the Advaitachad, who indeed sees/is the light of pure consciousness.

>>21400229
Nihilism part of buddhism. bro. Also once brahman takes back his atman from you. You'd continue exist. Atman becoming Brahman means nothing to you.

>>21400326
Atman always was, is, and will be Brahman, there is no “becoming”

>>21399637
>weird how you are obsessed with a guru from the middle ages babbling about spiritualities from 2000 years before he was even born.

see >>21391288

>>21391252
1. Most Hindus don't believe that buddha is an incarnation of a godhead, not sure where that anon got that particular view from. The farthest that I've seen hindu doctrine go to say that buddha was an incarnation of some deity is that he was an incarnation of the deity Budha, which is the planetary deity of Mercury, this is usually based on some vedic astrology arguments but I'm not too familiar with vedic astrology.
2. Ancient brahminical vedism and hinduism are not the same thing and hinduism arguably isn't even one religion but multiple ones under one label, the idea of a "hinduism" didn't exist pre-colonial india.
3. The vedas do contain the ideas of rebirth, karma, meditation.
4. Upanishads cover a wide variety of ideas, and some upanishads reject more things from the vedas than buddhism does.
5. Concentration/absorption style practice as found in the yoga sutras may seem similar to buddhist practice of focus on breath, but is actually very different in practice. In the pali canon it is largely implied that collectedness of mind is very important for attaining jhanas, in the yoga sutras pure concentration is utilised instead. The samadhi and jhana states slightly differ as well, you can find adept meditators who have described how they differ online like Delson Armstrong. In other words, the meditation practices described in the pali canon are not pure concentration practices, even if commentaries like the visudhimaga interpreted them to be so. Vimalaramsi (a buddhist teacher) talks very in-depth on this subject.
6. The buddha did develop rebirth and meditation further but the development of these ideas was already underway in the early upanishads. Buddha also talks about in the pali canon about how he learnt meditation from several teachers iirc, which would seem to imply that meditation was a widespread practice already at the time of the buddha.
7. The dating of the yoga sutras is widely debated, without any conclusive date.

>>21400685
I think anon was referring to the idea that buddha is an avatar of vishnu, the connection with budha (the deity) is that vishnu used budha to incarnate as buddha, the avatar stuff can get really confusing.

>>21400735
In the Vishnu Purana it says that Vishnu incarnated as Buddha to teach false teachings to some demons so that they would be subdued and lose their powers, allowing them to be killed. It doesn’t say that Buddha’s teachings are good but it implies they are a false trick. Many Hindus apparently hear or read that Buddha is considered an incarnation of Vishnu, but very few are actually aware of the details of how this is described and what this entails and how it implies that Buddha’s teachings are actually still bad and something to be cast aside. It also says that Vishnu appeared as the founder of Jainism as part of the same trick of fooling demons.

>In order to defeat the demons ( daityas ) who had succeeded in obtaining great powers through religious austerities, Visnu came down to earth disguised as an ascetic and began teaching doctrines contrary to the Vedas. First, disguising himself as the founder of the Jaina school, he taught the doctrine of anekāntavāda (perspectivism or “non-one-sidedness”) to the group of demons. Then, moving on to another group, he changed his outfit and, appearing as the Buddha, taught that animal sacrifices are immoral and so forth. By this means, the demons lost all of the powers they had attained, and were summarily massacred by the gods.
>This story is remarkable because it accomplishes two goals simultaneously. First, it manages to subsume Buddhism and Jainism under orthodox Brahmanism, by demonstrating that both Mahāvīra (if that is indeed who is portrayed—he is nameless in the Visnu Purāna ) and the Buddha were incarnations of Visnu. Second, it completely discredits the actual content of the doctrines of these two sects, by suggesting that the teachings of Buddhism and Jainism are intentionally false and nonsensical. The dupes are the Buddhists and Jainas, who do not understand that the source of all of the teachings they defend so vehemently is a divine trick.

You do not need any complex philosophical arguments to demonstrate that the rangtong interpretation of Nagarjuna's philosophy - of emptiness being empty of inherent self-existence is false.
You can do it with a very simple argument. You don't need to involve any kind of atman or consciousness.
You need to only agree on 1 (one) premise, which is : some stuff exists in some way shape or form, even if it's illusory existence or dependent-on-other-things existence.
How does this btfo Nagarjuna's philosophy exactly?

Let's imagine that only 2 things exist, what do they have in common?
They both exist.
Could you theoretically somehow seperate the two from each other in such a way that thing#1 would cease to exist from the perspective of thing#2?
Let's see - we take thing#1 and then build a machine that erases reality, we erase reality around thing#1, now thing#1 doesn't exist for thing #2, they are in seperate realities.
What do these 2 realities have in common now?
They both exist.

Anything that has any form of existence, be it illusory or real or dependent, MUST share the quality of existing inside of existence. This is the absolute essence/ground/god/shentong interpretation of emptiness/brahman etc....

>>21400812
Your misreading of the meaning of sunyata (voidness, emptiness) is about as bad as if you were to fill up a glass of water, place it on a table, and say, “Buddhists claim everything is empty, but this glass is filled with water, so how can they be right?”

Sunyata holds everything is empty of SWABHAVA, or self-nature, an underlying permanent coherent essence that gives it its “thisness,” its haecceity. It is not saying that “literally nothing exists,” which is nihilistic thought and held to stand in opposition to and be equally erroneous as the eternalistic thought which Buddhists also argue against (e.g. that there is an underlying eternal Self, God, or Nature-of-Reality).

Thing #1 and Thing #2 may both exist, but what makes them “be”? How do they both fall under the “category” of Being (which to call a “category” is itself misleading, as Being clearly is something which transcends all categorizing, descriptions, labels, and conceptual thought, being in fact the paradoxically undefinable basis on which they all can exist in the first place)? It seems as if “Being” itself is fundamentally void, empty, and undefinable, like an abyss.

What make a table a table apart from its interdependence on the rest of the world and our own interrelated apparatus of conceptual thought, definitions, and inventions, with which we’ve created and defined the table? Is there an underlying permanent “Table-self” to the table, a “Form of Tables,” or is just that we conventionally label it a table and have it carry out its interdependent role with other furniture and customs of ours?

Similarly, where is the underlying “Mountain-self” of a mountain, instead of it being that we’ve arbitrarily cordoned off a section of the universe (mountains) from the rest of the universe it is an interdependent piece of, and labeled it as a “mountain” for convenience’s sake?

Likewise, Buddhism argues that just as it seems erroneous to ascribe a permanent, underlying objective “self-nature” to a rock, tree, or mountain, so it might be erroneous to ascribe a single, unified, conscious, independent permanent “self” to “you.”

However, if you use this reasoning to arrive at a mountain with your hiking companion and then cleverly argue, “This mountain does not exist,” your very claim will be implicitly refuted by your climbing that mountain. Conventionally speaking, mountain-self and you-self may not strictly and independently exist apart from their interdependence with the rest of the phenomenal universe, but empty-of-self-nature-you still (conventionally speaking) climbs empty-of-self-nature mountain.

Hence why the Zen dialectic goes:

>Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.
Dōgen

>>21401469
Seems you misunderstood my post
>It is not saying that “literally nothing exists,” which is nihilistic thought and held to stand in opposition to and be equally erroneous as the eternalistic thought which Buddhists also argue against
Never said or implied it did, rest of your post is a cliche rhetoric dump.
I'm arguing against the idea that emptiness is empty of an inherent self existence.

>>21400812
>>21401469
>You need to only agree on 1 (one) premise, which is : some stuff exists in some way shape or form, even if it's illusory existence or dependent-on-other-things existence.

You’re hence misinterpreting what the Rangtong interpretation of emptiness is arguing for.

>Rangtong is the majority Tibetan teaching on the nature of śūnyatā or "emptiness", namely that all phenomena are empty of a self-nature in both the relative and absolute sense, without positing anything beyond that.[1] This position is the mainstream Tibetan interpretation of Madhyamaka, especially by the followers of Prasaṅgika Mādhyamaka.

"Whatever depends on causes and conditions
Is empty of intrinsic reality
What excellent instruction could there be
More marvellous than this discovery?"

>Ultimate truth does not point to a transcendent reality, but to the transcendence of deception. It is critical to emphasize that the ultimate truth of emptiness is a negational truth. In looking for inherently existent phenomena it is revealed that it cannot be found. This absence is not findable because it is not an entity, just as a room without an elephant in it does not contain an elephantless substance. Even conventionally, elephantlessness does not exist. Ultimate truth or emptiness does not point to an essence or nature, however subtle, that everything is made of.

>>21401505
You've quoted my post but you haven't pointed out what I've misinterpreted. I know that buddhists believe that things exist.

>>21401505
Does a thing still exist if you can’t perceive it?

>>21401517
I am arguing that you did not even coherently argue against the idea of the emptiness of emptiness because your conclusion

> Anything that has any form of existence, be it illusory or real or dependent, MUST share the quality of existing inside of existence.

Does not get at the central fact that “the quality of existing inside of existence” is also coherently held by such Buddhists to itself be empty of an inherent, objective self-nature. In fact, the very syntax and subject-predicate grammar you’re using, implicitly “pulling itself up by the bootstraps” and assuming its conclusion in its own verbal structure, when it’s never even been made clear what “exist” or “existence” is grounded on, and when the subject-predicate form implies subject-object-duality in its very structure, when it’s not necessarily been proven reality can best be accurately described in subject-predicate form.

>>21401527
All we ever have access to is phenomena, whether they are sensory phenomena, subtle phenomena, intellectual phenomena (our own faculty of thinking and our use of higher-level concepts) and so forth. Per Kant, we can deduce the existence of noumena that must be the cause of these phenomena, independently of our own existence and how these noumena appear to us phenomenally, but we can never actually know the noumenon or the thing-in-itself, as it would seems “objectively” and independently of any observer’s viewpoint (like Nagel’s impossible view-from-nowhere). A thing exists even if not perceived but it cannot be conceived of or experienced apart from our own conceptual and sensory apparatus we grasp it with.

So, yes, but we cannot coherently say anything about it without falling into incoherence, paradoxes, or wild rambling (like quantum physicists’ wrangling over Schrodinger’s-cat, which is the dilemma of, “Is the cat dead or alive if there’s no one to observe it?”, strangely relevant to this question).

>>21397260
Buddhism DID form a religious tradition in Greece, it's Pyrrhonian Skepticism.

Anyways, yes, Advaita Vedanta is Platonism, but instead of having a vertical hierarchy of being, with the material realm at the bottom as the least being and The One at the top as the most being, it has a horizontal hierarchy: anything that isn't top-level being just doesn't exist. So, there's no room for a Form of the Beanbag Chair, or Intellect, or Pneuma, because all of these things aren't The One, so they don't exist.

If you HAVE to make a comparison to Greece without just pointing to Pyrrho, it's Heraclitus. There doesn't seem to be any kind of soteriology to Heraclitus, however, so this can only take us so far (okay sure the river changes and so do you, but what should we be doing because of this?).

>>21401536
>I am arguing that you did not even coherently argue against the idea of the emptiness of emptiness because your conclusion does not get at the central fact that “the quality of existing inside of existence” is also coherently held by such Buddhists to itself be empty of an inherent, objective self-nature

This is your first post so far that's actually trying to address my actual argument, lol don't pretend those two walls of text previously were anything but rhetoric spam.
On to your point - my argument is incoherent because buddhists think existence is empty of inherent existence? I know that that's how they would argue, but I fail to see how that makes my argument incoherent.

>In fact, the very syntax and subject-predicate grammar you’re using, implicitly “pulling itself up by the bootstraps” and assuming its conclusion in its own verbal structure, when it’s never even been made clear what “exist” or “existence” is grounded on, and when the subject-predicate form implies subject-object-duality in its very structure, when it’s not necessarily been proven reality can best be accurately described in subject-predicate form.

This is a very familiar, barely coherent and vague form of arguing, I can only assume you're ape from /omg/ with your trip off.
I kinda agree with these critiques of the strength of my argument if you can even call them that, but they're so weak I'd rather just occam's razor when it comes to these points.

>>21401559
>A thing exists even if not perceived but it cannot be conceived of or experienced apart from our own conceptual and sensory apparatus we grasp it with.

>So, yes...

If you are blind do you have the same sensory apparatus as me, a man with two working eyes?

Would it not be stupid of you to try to impose your blindness upon others?

If I accept your blindness and don't try to impose sight on you why can't you do the same and accept that others can see that which you cannot.

>>21401536
The fact that there is any is-ing at all, points to is-ness. Is-ness not having inherent is-ness is absurd.

>>21401594
>>21401712
See >>21401505 on the Tibetan Rangtong interpretation of sunyata. If I deny there is an elephant in a room, you cannot accuse me of reifying “elephantlessness,” or saying there is some “not-containing-an-elephant-nature” intrinsic to the room. Likewise, if I deny an underlying, objective, permanent self-nature (swabhava) to reality, I am not reifying the emptiness or lack-of-self-nature of reality, turning it into a paradoxical “non-self-natureness.” Hence, even emptiness is empty. They deny an ultimate final “ghost-in-the-machine” which fulfills the criteria of a “self” to things.

>>21401608

I actually prefer the teachings of Vedanta and other similar schools and teachings, but am arguing as a Buddhist as an entertaining exercise for the mind. The Buddhists are centered too much in the (funnily enough) Buddhi, the organ of higher-level conceptual thought, which should be subservient to and work at the behest of the Atman, Self, and in fact is dependent on it for its existence. Buddhists use the subordinate faculties of their own Self to deny the existence of a self! However, I still think there is much wisdom in Buddhism and much worth learning from, and even the likeliness of an enlightenment to be found in its adherents totally compatible with the abstraction of “Tradition,” among the Mahayana Buddhists, the Hwa Yen sect, Zen and Ch’an, the conception of the Buddha-nature and the Shentong interpretation of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism and their Dzogchen teachings, etc.

>>21401559
>All we ever have access to is phenomena, whether they are sensory phenomena, subtle phenomena, intellectual phenomena (our own faculty of thinking and our use of higher-level concepts) and so forth.
Try to disprove the claim that the inner awareness which reveals these phenomena to us is itself the noumena, and that we already have knowledge of the noumena already by virtue of having this inner awareness

pro-tip: you can't

>>21401870
This is the Vedantic view (I am the noumenon) and indeed difficult to argue against when fully gone into. As I said in this post >>21401846 I am actually more of a Vedantin, arguing as a Buddhist for laughs. Fun fact: scholars hold some schools and interpretations of Buddhism to be rather similar in some respects to Kant’s transcendental idealism, like the Yogacara (“mind-only” school with underpinnings of idealism) particularly, hence why I brought it up.

>>21401870
How would you actually prove that this awareness is not dividable and is unchanging, besides referring to experience?
Also there seem to be implications of phenomena that are beyond awareness/witness-consciousness, if you look at the last samadhi and jhana states in both hinduism and buddhism. When you go to sleep or get knocked out or whatever, your consciousness becomes progressively uncollected, scattered until your awareness becomes aware of your consciousness when it regains it's collectedness.
But when you reach the final jhana/samadhi, your consciousness is extremely collected, focused, energized, and then you lose consciousness and spontaneously regain it some time later. This points towards something beyond awareness.

>>21401924
>How would you actually prove that this awareness is not dividable and is unchanging, besides referring to experience?
That wasn't what I asked, I asked if someone wanted to try disproving it, I didn't say anything about proving it.
>Also there seem to be implications of phenomena that are beyond awareness/witness-consciousness, if you look at the last samadhi and jhana states in both hinduism and buddhism. When you go to sleep or get knocked out or whatever, your consciousness becomes progressively uncollected, scattered until your awareness becomes aware of your consciousness when it regains it's collectedness.
Advaita disagrees and would say that what you incorrectly think "consciousness" is, is simply just mental activity and not the actual light of consciousness (which reveals mental activity). Advaita says that when someone goes to sleep or is knocked out their consciousness remains the exact same, just like it always does, but without any manifested/awake mind for it to illumine as it's object (it remains the exact same regardless if there are stuff for it to illumine or not)
>But when you reach the final jhana/samadhi, your consciousness is extremely collected, focused, energized, and then you lose consciousness and spontaneously regain it some time later. This points towards something beyond awareness.
No, only the mind is affected by this and not consciousness according to Advaita

>>21401969
>I didn't say anything about proving it.
It's not falsifiable though, same as yogachara, same as nagarjuna

>>21401995
>It's not falsifiable though, same as yogachara, same as nagarjuna
So? Metaphysics in general isn't usually falsifiable, this is not news. You can still argue against or for something without being able to directly falsify it. Speaking about consciousness alone can be seen as more of an epistemological matter and not metaphysical, but even here the Advaita position is not falsifiable..... because consciousness is exactly as they say it is and so nobody is able to come up with any solid evidence to the contrary.

Metaphysical claims about ultimate reality being Brahman or empty or mind-only etc are not falsifiable but several of Nagarjuna's arguments are falsifiable and have been falsified already. Nagarjuna claims to refute other non-Shunyavadin views and thereby indirectly justify Shunyavada but various articles and books have already been published (Emptiness Appraised, Buddhist Illogic, Richard's Robinson's essay etc) that identify various logical fallacies and errors that he makes in the MMK. These fallacies undermine his whole enterprise and derail any attempt to claim that he refuted all non-Madhyamaka views. So, in that sense his arguments and his attempted justification of Shunyavada have been falsified, even if Shunyavada as a metaphysical view of reality remains a hypothetical that has not been falsified.

>Can someone explain to me what is the original divide between Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism?

Buddhist believe the ultimate reality is sunyata (emptiness) and through this emptiness, everything in the universe is interconnected and dependent on each other through cause and effect (karma). Because of impermanence and emptiness being the ultimate reality, there is no self (anatma).

Vedanta believe ultimate reality is Brahman, that Brahma exists in everything in the universe and that everyone is one through Brahma. Brahma is the true self (anattā).

>>21401924
>This points towards something beyond awareness
No it just points to the fact that awareness can be controlled/directed rather than uncontrolled and undirected. It doesn't establish consciousness as beyond the body, or the mind. The end justification from that is you need "faith." Which is nonsense. The bare minimum is there's a consciousness that can be collected/calmed/controlled at the end, not that its a permanent substrate of reality, immortal, atman, part of brahman, survives death, transmigrates death, is outside of body, etc.

The core of buddhists claim consciousness is just the physical aspect of the body that dies/reborn with new bodies, has no greater meaning behind its various states.
The core of the advaita/hindus claiming that there is something greater, a god behind the body, an immortal one, blah blah blah.

Its pure nonsense

>>21402920
Which has more permanence? Computer files created and destroyed multiple times a day or a human?

>>21402067
You're speaking to a robot, he's going to argue that anything non-falsifiable isn't worth thinking about. No point engaging.

>>21402067
>identify various logical fallacies and errors that he makes in the MMK
What are those? Give examples

>>21403019
>more
Thats the weasel word.

>>21402920
So you're a "buddhist" but you deny the entire "supernatural" aspect of buddhism? You're just an atheist

>>21402482
>>Buddhist believe the ultimate reality is sunyata (emptiness) and through this emptiness, everything in the universe is interconnected and dependent on each other
none of this is what the buddha teaches

>>21403231
Nagarjuna does and he is revered as the second Buddha in some Mahayana and Vajrayana schools.

Sunyata (emptiness) is the main thesis of the Prajnaparamita Sūtra whereby Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva teaches Sariputra about it.

"valokitesvara Bodhisattva, doing deep prajna paramita,
Clearly saw emptiness of all the five conditions,
Thus completely relieving misfortune and pain,
O Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form;
Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form;
Sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness are likewise like this.
O Shariputra, all dharmas are forms of emptiness, not born, not destroyed;
Not stained, not pure, without loss, without gain;
So in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, conception, discrimination, awareness;
No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind;
No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, phenomena;
No realm of sight . . . no realm of consciousness;
No ignorance and no end to ignorance . . .
No old age and death, and no end to old age and death;
No suffering, no cause of suffering, no extinguishing, no path;
No wisdom and no gain. No gain and thus
The bodhisattva lives prajna paramita
With no hindrance in the mind, no hindrance, therefore no fear,
Far beyond deluded thoughts, this is nirvana"

Source: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://zmc.org/documents/four-sutras.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiq4Zy1xoX8AhVHkmoFHYrQCdMQFnoECA0QBg&usg=AOvVaw3TDWPNXtKbvb_tqyA4csB_

>>21399840
>>21399857
>>21403019

Buddhist Reincarnation

>>21403709
>emptiness is no awareness, consciousness or mind
>who is aware, conscious and mindful of emptiness?
>i don't know bro

>>21403709
>>21402482
Wording is creating confusion. Sunyata only applies to svabhava. Nagarjuna is applying sunyata to svabhava idea. Reality itself is dependent originated, without svabhava.

>>21403709
Imagine a tradition that reveres Nagarjuna as their man guy lmao.

>>21396473
>By who were they ordained
Usually the Zen master who confers the spiritual influence. Or was this a joke?

>>21404318
It was a zennoid test. If you answered with “they were ordained by so and so”, that other anon would try to one up you by saying that you still cling to the notion of a Self. You’re supposed to answer with “they were ordained” or some other cringe Reddit-tier pseudo-profound zennoid gacha one liner.

>>21403039
>What are those? Give examples
Go read Richard Robinson's classic article "Did Nagarjuna Really Refute All Philosophical Views?" that was published in "Philosophy East and West" 22 (3):325-331 (1972)

There are like 7 or 8 major fallacies or examples of fallacious use of reasoning or sophists tricks that Robinson points out. Just as an example, here are two of them:

When Nagarjuna tries to refute the existence of akasha his argument presupposes the denial of real things having extension, even though this claim cannot be considered proven until the existence of akasha as ubiquitous and indivisible has been disproven, i.e. he puts the cart before the horse and uses the circular reasoning fallacy.

Nagarjuna claims to refute his opponents without advancing any empirical propositions which are not accepted by them, but this is not true in fact and he asserts dogmatically the empirical proposition that perception is marked by conceptualization which falsifies.

>>21402920
>Its pure nonsense
yet you can't explain what exactly is nonsensical about it and why it is nonsensical, how amusing

>>21404275
Yeah I get all my doctrines from the Lord of Dragons he's pretty based

>>21404413
>Nagarjuna claims to refute his opponents without advancing any empirical propositions
I think this is more of a claim by much later partisans, but in any case "real" thing(s) not having extension was something of a shared idea at the time and in Indian thought survived with the later Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

>>21404481
>but in any case "real" thing(s) not having extension was something of a shared idea at the time and in Indian thought survived with the later Advaita Vedanta philosophy.
This is simply factually incorrect, if you had actually read Robinson's article as I had recommended before spouting off you would have seen he points out in the article itself that the orthodox Hindu schools don't accept this premise, including Advaita Vedanta which says that Brahman is both infinite and real

>>21404468
>Lord of Dragons
Cool D&D campaign, nerd.

>>21404490
>the orthodox Hindu schools don't accept this premise
If brahman has extension then maya must be brahman too. Seems like a problem

>>21404544
There are only nerds in the jeetology thread on the literature board of a japanese cartoon pornography forum

If you admit that the awareness is primordial, then thoughts and identity are a product of this awareness, thus you cannot establish this identity of I am Brahman. It's much simpler to view awareness as a flux and devoid of essence. Any comments on my thoughts?

>>21404595
>If brahman has extension then maya must be brahman too. Seems like a problem
This objection involves a logic that wrongly presupposes that Brahman and maya are on the same spatial plane and that one being infinite automatically entails one (Brahman) intersecting with and including the other, like how an infinite extension of an area would include all objects situated within that area; however this objection is invalid because this *isn't* what Advaita is talking about in their teachings—Brahman and maya are not two objects in the same spatial plane, maya is not in any sort of spatial relationship with Brahman as it's an illusion. In actual reality, where there is just partless unconditioned non-dual Brahman alone, that Brahman is infinite and without any boundary or end.

Maya is not a "space" or "object" within the infinity of reality, the illusion has no location in reality, just like how the places experienced in dreams don't have a location either. Thus, no amount of Brahman being infinite will ever "extend" into making maya into Brahman too because Brahman is infinite *within reality* and reality *doesn't* spatially intersect with what is non-real, they ultimately have no spatial relation, so actual reality extends infinitely without ever including non-reality within itself as a part of itself.

>>21404633
>If you admit that the awareness is primordial, then thoughts and identity are a product of this awareness, thus you cannot establish this identity of I am Brahman.
You didn't explain the logical connection of how one leads to the other and *why* that would prevent someone from establishing the identity of "I am Brahman". I have no idea why you think that would be the case

>>21404633
According to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Para Brahman is prior to consciousness/awareness so not primordial, think of it like a substrate for creation.

>>21404603
Sush, NPC boy! Soulful, complete human beings with personhood are talking! Go stare at a wall or something.

>>21404654
You take two distinct moments, what allows you to draw a common essence if not thoughts? What allows you to affirm me and you share the same awareness?

At each moment you can say: "there is something right now", this is correct. But from that you abstract a universal there-isness that in reality doesn't exist.

>>21404637
If brahman has no spatial relationships it has no extension either. So we agree what is real cannot have extension but you merely want to argue. Or is brahman now not real? A truly pseudojeet pandit.
>>21404732
What a waste of "personhood"

>>21404759
You're being goofy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qGs_c7jyOs

>>21404782
Sorry, I don't talk to the furniture. Keep staring at the wall!

>>21389016
I've seen some advaitins say that intellectual understanding of advaita scripture instantly makes you liberated. I find this a bit odd, as it's a rare stance to hold among eastern schools of thought, it seems that the huayan school of buddhism possibly held a similar view but it doesn't exist anymore.
Could you clarify why liberation purely through intellectual understanding of scripture is possible? Does it go beyond the argument that advaita scripture is divine?

>>21397266
Timalsina is one of the leading scholars of advaita currently and he identifies quite a few possible different interpretations of shankara's writings actually

>>21405312
huh?

>>21385247
This is a completely ahistorical take.
Religion in the east is not binary like in the west, religions freely exchange ideas and practices, especially buddhism and vedism/hinduism, the entire branch of vajrayana is literally just rebranded shaiva tantra with some philosophical differences, due to shaivist and buddhist tantrics always practicing and exchanging ideas together in the charnel grounds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_religious_belonging
The idea that any of the eastern philosophers were dearly concerned with this internet debate-bro tier one-upsmanship is cringe and retarded.
Shankara himself in his writings says that he sees no danger to the continued existence of vedic religion.

>>21405446
Do you disagree with the idea that intellectual understanding of scripture is sufficient or is this an unpopular idea or are you confused about something else?

>>21405481
If you need someone to tell you you're enlightened, you're not enlightened.

>>21405521
?

>>21405532
I often drink cow urine. For health and religious reasons at first, but I've grown quite found of it. I'll rub it on my body and sexual organ before. It's quite the tonic. Would you give it a try?

>>21404694
>According to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Para Brahman is prior to consciousness/awareness
I have read some of him and he identifies the Para Brahman with pure awareness

>>21404735
>You take two distinct moments, what allows you to draw a common essence if not thoughts?
The essence is me, they both occurred, for me, the awareness that is me was present, just like it always is
>What allows you to affirm me and you share the same awareness?
That the Upanishads say so, which are a source of higher knowledge and I accept them as such. I can accept this and find it to be perfectly coherent and in accordance with my experience, because everything that can be cited as evidence of us possessing a different awareness is itself a non-awarene phenomena and thus not an actual example of two different awareness's

>To those who say that sound etc., perceived through the ear and so forth, contradict the unity of Brahman, we put this question: Does the variety of sound and the rest contradict the oneness of the ether? If it does not, then there is no contradiction in our position with perception. ...Those characteristics having name and form which the opponents will put forward to infer differences in the self belong only to name and form, and are but limiting adjuncts of the self, just as a jar, a bowl, an airhole, or the pores in earth are of the ether. When the logician finds distinguishing characteristics in the ether, then only will he find such characteristics in the self. For not even hundreds of logicians, who admit differences in the self owing to limiting adjuncts, can show any characteristic of it that would lead one to infer differences between one self and another.

>>21404782
>If brahman has no spatial relationships it has no extension either.
Incorrect, this is a silly non-sequitur response that involves no logical connection between the first and second half of the sentence.

"Relationships" and "Extension" are two completely different things and are not dependent upon the other. A relation presupposes a multiplicity of at least two things. However, if something is the only thing that exists and is also infinite, then it has no spatial relationship with anything else because there is not an existing multiplicity that can be related in the first place, but that has nothing to do with the separate question of whether or not that thing that exists is infinite. If said thing is infinite then it still has extension even though it is not related to anything else (there being nothing else existing for it to be related to)

You first tried to assert something that was blatantly false (that Advaita says that anything with extension is unreal) and then when you were confronted with the truth, you tried to save face with a complete non-sequitur, all to cope about Nagarjuna being refuted by Richard Robinson and your own inability to rescue his arguments from being falsified. Sad!

>>21404884
In this video he is not truly representing the Buddhist view. In Vedanta you are identifying yourself to Brahman, with Buddhism you cease identification altogether. It is not about claiming that reality can go own without mind (whatever that is). You fail to understand Buddhism because you are stuck in essentialist metaphysics, while Buddhism is non-essentialist. Essence is an abstraction, you are taking what is common in the moments you have experienced and forming an abstract concept from them, that is nowhere to be found.

>>21405642
Yes, he equates awareness with Para Brahman because ultimately it is he who is aware, your original question attributed thoughts and identity to awareness which is wrong, those belong in consciousness. So Para Brahman is prior to consciousness and prior to the awareness you were thinking of.

>Q: You use the words 'aware' and 'conscious'. Are they not the same?

>M: Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.

>>21405667
>If said thing is infinite then it still has extension even though it is not related to anything else (there being nothing else existing for it to be related to)
Ack yourself dude, that's some rabbi-tier pilpul. Extension requires space, not mention time, and now we've got motion and things moving from one point to another in relation to an observer owing to cause for that motion and a whole host of other stinky illusions. Doesn't sound like this brahman's the absolute, sounds like a cope for jeetish rabbis after centuries of brahmin breaking. Maybe you're conflating samkhya and AV in a desperate attempt to sound coherent instead of just mumbling the Vedas while roasting animals.

>>21405677
>In Vedanta you are identifying yourself to Brahman, with Buddhism you cease identification altogether.

Wrong. You don't identify with anything, you become who you are. In Advaita you realise your true identity, in Buddhism you stop identifying with a false identity but remain lost unable find your true essence. Advaita is complete Buddhism is not.

>>21405719
Christian tier argumentation

>>21405312
>I've seen some advaitins say that intellectual understanding of advaita scripture instantly makes you liberated.
The intellect is the "jumping-off point" so to speak, but Shankara is quite clear IMO in his writings and pretty much says verbatim that liberation is not attained through a "theoretical" understanding of Advaita, but rather, that the intellect aids in grasping the essential teaching of the Sruti, and when its fully and correctly understood, that this results in the mind/intellect no longer being fooled by ignorance anymore (i.e. the mind's or intellect's ignorant views end) and that when this happens, the Self-knowledge that one in fact *already has* is clearly revealed. If someone understands it deeply at a theoretic level and can answer any question about it at a moments notice but still sometimes habitually identifies with the mind and body and is concerned with fulfilling desires, then such a person is still not liberated because this habitual identification with the mind and body and identifying with their urges and likes and dislikes etc means that there is still some ignorance left for that jiva. You have to understand it well enough at a theoretic level before you can have the full spiritual realization but the theoretic understanding doesn't confer the latter.

>>21405816
>attempts insult
>can't explain why it's wrong

>>21404082
>>21405816

>>21405677
Did you even watch the video? Nowhere in the video does he say that he is representing any kind of buddhist view apart mentioning that buddhists claim that consciousness is temporary, which they do, buddha did, nagarjuna did.
>essence is an abstract concept
Consciousness is not an abstract concept because the necessary pre-condition for the existence of any abstract concept is consciousness.

>>21405434
>Timalsina is one of the leading scholars of advaita currently and he identifies quite a few possible different interpretations of shankara's writings actually
I have listened to him speak and I read some of his book "The Advaita Doctrine of Pure Awareness" and was unimpressed. There were several points in the book where he professed to not grasp something or where he thought there was an apparent point of confusion that I didn't find to be a confusion at all, I disagreed with his understanding of Advaita on a few points or felt he didn't understand something. I would have to go back and reread the book to remember and identify exactly what it was though. I don't deny the point that there are different interpretations of Shankara though (the Vivarana and Bhamati subschools with their own sub-categories for example). I don't think he has published many articles in the academic literature about Advaita, there are plenty of other Sanskrit-speaking scholars both in India and the west who regularly publish research on Advaita to academic journals. I don't dislike him but I would not consider him a "leading authority" on Advaita in academia.

I find Swami Sarvapriyananda to be a better lecturer on Advaita and I think he understands it better, even if he does have a 'ecumenical' tendency to sometimes downplay where it disagrees philosophically with some other traditions.

>>21405719
>Advaita is complete Buddhism is not.
And that's the gist of it isn't it?
Advaita is about fullness.
Buddhism is about emptiness.
Which way, Western man?

>>21405905
yes we should all embrace mindless narcissism such that "only I exist and everything and everyone else is just me amusing myself" and that won't lead to the next phase of WALL-E cinematic universe

>>21405698
>Yes, he equates awareness with Para Brahman because ultimately it is he who is aware, your original question attributed thoughts and identity to awareness which is wrong, those belong in consciousness. So Para Brahman is prior to consciousness and prior to the awareness you were thinking of.
In the classical Advaita of Shankara "awareness" and "consciousness" are held to be identical and interchangeable and both Brahman, and what Nisargadatta calls "consciousness" Shankara just considers to mental activity. When Nisargadatta separates awareness and consciousness it is basically just two ways of teaching the exact same thing but with different terminology. Nisargadatta would read Shankara's works etc but he wasn't initiated into traditional Advaita and he was initiated into both Veerashaivism and the Inchegiri Sampradya, which comes by way of Dyaneshwar from the Nath Shaivas, which are a very Advaita-permeated form of Shaivism. So, it's not the exact same as traditional Advaita but it ends up arriving at that conclusion by another route more or less.

>>21405713
>Ack yourself dude, that's some rabbi-tier pilpul.
No it's not, you are the one engaging in blatantly fallacious non-sequiturs

>Extension requires space, not mention time
No that's false, extension is only required for things to be manifested in space like an object being placed in a container has to have some dimensions that determine "where" it is manifested, but when we are talking about Brahman itself this is no longer true because Brahman is the very substance or being of the independently-existing container itself, extending infinitely, and so there is no separate "space" or container needed for Brahman to be placed or manifested in because it is independent, limitless, formless, unconditioned and beyond manifestation, so no separate "space" is needed for Brahman's existence to be infinite, extending without boundary.

Similarly when reality is timeless, no time is required for Brahman to be infinite. Extension is not based on time so to assume extension requires time is a non-sequitur.

>>21405974
>No that's false, extension is only required for things to be manifested in space
*space is only required as a precondition in order for things with extension to appear as a part of manifestation, but an infinite unmanifest independently-existing reality with extension is not being "placed" in something else and thus doesn't require another space to have extension like how something appearing within manifestation does.

>>21405926
Yea because nihilism and deconstruction will totally save us from that fate

>>21406036
Brahman does NOT have extension. Stop trying to conflate Spinozism with Advaita Vedanta.

Boom

Fucking die, retard hippie religion thred

Bump limit reached. Byeeee garbage thread.

>>21406078
Yeah that seems extremely obviously to be the case. He absolutely refuses to have anything in common with Madhyamaka to the point of converting Brahman into modes with extension. But somehow these extensions are infinite and real while the ordinary extensions we experience are false and given their here-ness or there-ness somewhere definite, all the while these extensions of brahman should be impossible themselves if we accept brahman as having no spatiality. So again I suppose we end up with our Advaitan only being able to utter "atman is brahman" despite being unable to clearly define either? Is it schizophrenia or just larping

>>21405867
The necessary pre-condition to identity is thought, there is no identity or essence otherwise.

>>21406078
>Brahman does NOT have extension. Stop trying to conflate Spinozism with Advaita Vedanta.
I'm not conflating Advaita with Spinozism, I'm not talking about some rationalist construction with a plurality of distinct attributes, when I say "extension" I am referring to that Brahman is infinite, limitless, without boundary, everywhere in every direction ever and ever is just the reality of Brahman. There is no end to this. Space is only infinite in a relative sense while Brahman is THE metaphysical infinite that de facto exists everywhere and thus has infinite extension and thereby forms all of non-dual infinite Existence, the relative infinity of space only mimics this actual infinitude. It's contradictory to affirm that Brahman lacks extension but is also infinite. The idea of Brahman lacking extension and being contained in a single atom or point instead of being spread out everywhere in infinitude, is an idea that appears in the Yoga Vasistha, but it's not a part of Shankara's teaching.

>>21406170
There is no personal self in advaita, what are you even arguing against? If your view of essence is that it's an abstract concept you still haven't refuted anything, consciousness is the necessary pre-condition for the existence of abstract concepts. Like listen to any lecture of advaita on youtube, this is goofy as shit. Shankara refuted a mountain of learned buddhist scholars of his time and you think you're gonna refute it with your questionable understanding of emptiness? Get a grip

>>21406105
>to the point of converting Brahman into modes with extension.
Nowhere have I talked of Brahman having modes. All Brahman is everywhere the same, always. Brahman completely lacks parts or separate modes.

>l while the ordinary extensions we experience are false
Ordinary experiences are not "extensions of Brahman", they are maya which is not Brahman or Brahman's infinitude. It seems you werent paying attention.

>all the while these extensions of brahman should be impossible themselves if we accept brahman as having no spatiality.
As I already explained, when an infinite reality exists independently it requires no other space for itself to be placed in, unlike how objects which don't exist independently DO depend on space to manifest, and thus there is no reason that Brahman would have to have another space in order to be infinite because it's not doing the same thing (being manifested in something else) that these objects are doing

>>21406207
Essence is an abstract concept that you infer from what is common in different manifestations.

>>21406207
I have listened to enough Vedanta and it was my original position. Maybe try rising above common sense.

>you think there's a soul or self and that you can convince me of such an anti-scientific idea? Nice try Chud but I will just talk in circles spouting basic bitch nominalism as a response to any and all challenges to my worldview

>>21406234
You could provide an argument but you know you will be refuted

>>21406207
How did Shankara refute Buddhists if his guru was a mahayanin himself, even employing the same terminology? You are full of shit.

>>21406246
Are you mentally ill?

>>21406245
I already did, but it seems to escapes you understanding that naming things does not mean that an archetype exist in some sort of platonic realm.
All you can think is that for something to exist it needs to be perceived, that is all you have said until now.

>Breton man: Hello

>Imperial woman: Hello

>Breton man: This is an illusion, we have no real selves, we are part of a vast simulation that only breeds suffering

>Imperial woman: By the Nine Divines! What a horrible situation

>Breton man: Fear not, you can escape it by realizing your own lack of reality!

>Imperial woman: What happens then?

>Breton man: Well, there is a delay and then once your body dies you stop being a person or having any experiences or any awareness whatsoever, but at least then you can't be hurt by bad fee-fees anymore.

>Imperial woman: Sounds bleak but it doesn't look like I have any other option...

>>21406266
You are again reusing the same argument about abstract concepts, not realising that you are using an abstract concept (consciousness is an abstract concept) to point at the source of abstract concepts.
>All you can think is that for something to exist it needs to be perceived
Literally never even implied anything of the sort

>>21406250
If you are the same guy posting these memes I will stop questioning myself, assumed you didn't have the maturity and intelligence of a developing teenager on such serious topics.

>>21406302
Yes this thread has only 2 people, me and you, I use 40 different IPs to create the illusion of an organic thread

>>21406285
I'm not just saying it's abstract, a leaf is a useful concept to utilize in day to day basis, but it is not true, each leaf is different from each other, singular in atoms and in shape. You ignore the difference of each leaf and the form this useful concept, happens that we forget that and mistake the leaf for reality. In the same way, there is not Brahman, just experienced moments.

>>21406246
Shankara's guru was a hindu, and all dharmic religions share a lot of terminology between each other

>>21406356
Point at Brahman for me. What are the epistemological rules for something to exist? I can't infer an identity between me now and in 5 minutes by saying that we both are brahman, I would be ignoring the singular differences.

>>21406356
You would have to point to something that proves the momentaryness of consciousness for your argument to have validity, since you are making a claim that disagrees with the first-hand experience of every living person. You can't simply say "it's momentary because you are confused".

>>21406374
Hmmm... I kill and torture a cow, then my soul reincarnates in the past into this cow without my previous memories, so I would be torturing myself, but without my memories why can I establish that we share a common identity? We are two distinct souls now.

>>21406374
>I would be ignoring the singular differences.
There is no different in the witnessing awareness to which those moments are presented

Hindus didn’t persecute Buddhism enough.

>>21406375
That's enough for my argument really, conclusion will depend from your starting point. If you see a series of similar leaves you can think that there is a common essence, but it is not necessary. There is certainly a concept for all these leaves, but an essence of these leaves is a matter of faith.

>>21406394
Everything is different! My whole point. What allows you to scissor and separate abstractly an awareness? The picture of the moment is integral.

>>21406402
Well no, you are assuming that consciousness is momentary because... it just is? It seems you are confusing consciousness for focus or attention or collectedness

>>21406402
Starting points:
Time -> Moments -> Abstract concept of moments

Vs.

Brahman -> Time -> Moments-> Abstract concept rightfully corresponding to existing essence of Brahman

In these two situations reality would be the same.

>>21406418
This is so goofy and dishonest, jeez

>>21406416
Idk if consciousness is momentary, idk what you mean by it, im just saying that I live in moments and that factually I see nothing in common with one and another, I don't have the right to equate them because all the parameters and variables MUST match. Otherwise you are conveniently leaving a part behind for a abstract concept. Like ignoring the difference between leaves.

>>21406406
>Everything is different! My whole point. What allows you to scissor and separate abstractly an awareness?
Because you know the objects and not vice versa. That you are aware of objects instead of objects being aware of you is something that remains the same without any change or difference.

>>21406422
How dishonest? I have no agenda, I have literature from both traditions.

>>21406209
>when an infinite reality exists independently it requires no other space for itself to be placed in
so you're not even describing something that exists no wonder it doesn't make sense; you're taking terms otherwise understandable and then replacing their definitions with "brahman" so they always mean the same thing no matter which is used that way you can pretense to have some knowledge other than your doctrine's overt solipsism
>>21406179
And you admit to this here in saying "extension" refers to "infinite brahman" so it wouldn't have mattered what anyone else was saying with regard to extension or to any other term since everything is just brahman except real life

>>21406428
I know that, but it's different, the content of experience changes the identity of the experience. It's only the same as a thought.

>>21406443
>advaita vedanta
>solipsistic
probably shouldn't be in this thread acting like you understand anything about it

>>21406443
>>when an infinite reality exists independently it requires no other space for itself to be placed in
>so you're not even describing something that exists no wonder it doesn't make sense; you're taking terms otherwise understandable and then replacing their definitions with "brahman" so they always mean the same thing no matter which is used that way you can pretense to have some knowledge other than your doctrine's overt solipsism
This is not an argument anon, you just claimed that saying "an infinite reality exists independently without requiring another space for itself to be placed it" does not make sense, but you were not able to explain why it doesn't make sense. Your post is devoid of any meaningful content, logic or argument. Why does it not make sense? Is it really so hard for you to explain your thoughts?

>>>21406179 (You)
>And you admit to this here in saying "extension" refers to "infinite brahman" so it wouldn't have mattered what anyone else was saying with regard to extension or to any other term since everything is just brahman except real life
I said that to clarify that I wasn't talking about Spinozism, not that I was lying by calling Brahman extending (I wasnt). Infinity by nature extends everywhere, without infinite extension it would be spatially limited and thus not infinite, thus Brahman's infinity extends infinitely

>>21406455
>I know that, but it's different, the content of experience changes the identity of the experience. It's only the same as a thought.
I'm not talking about the identity of one experienced experience and another anon, I don't know why you suddenly changed the focus, I'm talking about the knower of the experience and not the experience itself. This is what remains identical and not "the experienced object". What remains identical is that you, as the knower of experiences, know the particular experiences, instead of those experiences knowing you, that any particular content of any one experience can be and often is different from another is totally irrelevant to this fact.

>>21406475
Ok I was trying to be nice, but nigga, extension only applies to bodies. Read some philosophy 101 then come back. This discussion is not going anywhere.

>>21406475
>Brahman's infinity extends infinitely
You are still just making up terms/definitions as you go along. Brahman is more infinite than infinite? The made up concept is more made up than something made up? I guess that's neat. So if brahman has super infinite extension beyond spatial relations what does that do for us in terms of explaining anything whatsoever with regard to extension? In fantasy land you have magical extension, fine. But you also believe the extension we can actually discuss, that of the world of experience and of relations, is entirely an illusion and excluded from the reality of brahman. So brahman doesn't have extension, he has magic extension. It doesn't answer anything.

>>21406456
>nothing is real except god thinking about himself
you're right that's turbo solipsism

>>21406516
There is no personal self in advaita

>>21406504
>Ok I was trying to be nice, but nigga, extension only applies to bodies.
Brahman is THE infinite body or substance of Reality that extends everywhere infinitely while existing by Itself as the sole existent

all of western philosophy is ultimately superceded by Advaita Vedanta

>>21406521
Holy glass houses. Never call a Buddhist an NPC again lmao

>>21406526
What are you talking about?

>>21406525
>Brahman is THE infinite body or substance of Reality that extends everywhere infinitely
If Brahman were the sole substance then there wouldn't be any need for maya. Everything could just be brahman, as in Spinozism. But you don't do this because all of life is basically denied as unreal except for self-awareness so you are only further misrepresenting AV

>>21406509
>You are still just making up terms/definitions as you go along.
Wrong, I'm actually remaining entirely consistent instead of coming up with one non-sequitur after another
>Brahman is more infinite than infinite?
That's not what I said, I said that Brahman's infinity has to extend everywhere (infinitely) in order for it to consistently fit the meaning of "infinite". When what you're saying has no relation to the point that I even made then all you are just doing is demonstrating that you're seething and can't even engage honestly anymore. Sad!

>>21406528
>>21406521
you admitting you're soulless

>>21406498
Where is the knower? There is a picture now and a picture for next moment, why is it the same knower to you? That's the same thing I said with the story of me killing a cow I said earlier.

I mus sleep now. Good night

>>21406525
>Brahman is a body
Brahman is incorporeal (without form in more Indic terminology). You are a Spinozist.

>>21406538
>Brahman's infinity has to extend everywhere (infinitely) in order for it to consistently fit the meaning of "infinite"
Extension is for bodies? So where is this infinite body? It's not any body we actually experience, because experience is maya. So you are just babbling about wonderland

>>21406536
>If Brahman were the sole substance then there wouldn't be any need for maya.
There *is* no need for maya. Maya does not take place because of some "need" external to Brahman but it effortlessly arises naturally out of Brahman's own nature to project it while remaining the sole existent substance/reality. Brahman being the sole reality/substance is not in any way incompatible with this unless you misunderstand what is being talked about.

>>21406545
>Where is the knower? There is a picture now and a picture for next moment, why is it the same knower to you?
Because it has to be present as the same knower in order to witness the transition between them, otherwise each moment would appear as a motionless snapshot devoid of all change

>>21406557
>effortlessly arises naturally out of Brahman's own nature
so experience (illusion) is brahman brahmaning? you're as bad as the other guy who made extension mean "brahman in extension"

>>21406553
>Brahman is incorporeal (without form in more Indic terminology). You are a Spinozist.
That's not incompatible with what I said, try thinking for two moments next time. Body as in substance as in entity, not as in physical body. Brahman is a partless, formless, homogenous, non-dual infinite Entity, the ultimate absolute body.

>>21406556
>Extension is for bodies? So where is this infinite body?
It's present right now as the awareness which reveals the contents of your mind as objects

Spinoza Anon, if Brahman were a body he could not have direct of awareness of anything, not even himself. Check Plato’s argument for the incorporeality of the soul. You not only misunderstand AV but also ignore (very) basic metaphysics.

>>21406570
>so experience (illusion) is brahman brahmaning?
No, experience is maya which is not Brahman. Maya is the downstream consequence of Brahman Brahmaning

>>21406578
>awareness (brahman) is now extension for the sake of arguing
>>21406583
>downstream consequence
So maya exists in relation to brahman?

>>21406582
>Spinoza Anon, if Brahman were a body he could not have direct of awareness of anything, not even himself.
Brahman only has unswerving awareness of Himself, this self-awareness requires no subject-object distinction and no parts because consciousness is inherently reflexive and self-knowing (self-revealing or self-disclosing) already by its very inherent nature. The very nature of awareness is self-disclosing presence, you can't have awareness without it being aware of itself reflexively or it's not awareness at all (non-reflexive models of awareness result in an infinite regress). Saying that Brahman is an infinity Entity, an infinite Body, and infinite Substance, and infinite Reality, none of these invalidate the correct premise that Brahman's awareness is reflexive and thus this infinite partless Brahman always has Self-knowledge.

>Check Plato’s argument for the incorporeality of the soul.
Plato doesn't even clearly identitfy partless consciousness as distinct from the intellect, we are talking about a subject right now that goes *beyond* Plato

>>21406600
>>awareness (brahman) is now extension for the sake of arguing
No, I said the infinite (not limited, ie present everywhere ie extending everywhere) Entity is awareness

>>downstream consequence
>So maya exists in relation to brahman?
Maya doesn't exist, it appears/manifests (same thing) as falsity while itself lacking existence, Yes this is because of Brahman

>>21406601
Check your ego and go back to philosophy 101. That’s all I can say.

>>21406619
awareness is not infinite nor is it everywhere, schizo

>>21406671
>Check your ego and go back to philosophy 101.
Not an argument, this discussion is about Advaita and it has nothing to do with me personally.

It's just objectively true that Shankara goes beyond Plato in analyzing consciousness, that just wasn't Plato's focus, and that's okay, we can still like both Plato and Shankara.

>>21406675
>awareness is not infinite nor is it everywhere, schizo
Calling someone a schizo is not an argument and nor does it invalidate the truth that awareness is infinite and everywhere

>>21406693
based

>>21406693
Awareness is something you have of, say, objects, or of thoughts, bodies in extension, perceptions, feelings, sensations, desires etc. Your definition of awareness, much like everything else in wonderland, is "brahman," which being schizobabble is thoroughly unhelpful to mutually intelligble discourse. Awareness isn't infinite because you aren't aware of all things at all times in all places. You have limited, partial, and often muddled awareness. You are not jeetgod

>>21406693
If something has extension, it has parts (namely one side and the flip side, the center and the periphery, etc.). You haven’t even understood Plato, let alone master him. Your heart is in the right place, but you’re still a child. No use arguing with someone who doesn’t know the basics. Swallow your pride and learn basic philosophy. Realize your mistake in thinking that Brahman is a body and has extension, then come back. Like I said, your heart is in the right place.

>>21406714
You realise that even in the buddhist jhanas there is a state of infinite consciousness?

>>21406723
>If something has extension, it has parts (namely one side and the flip side, the center and the periphery, etc.).
This assertion is rejected by basically all schools of Hindu Philosophy which basically all admit that Akasha (ether) is both ubiquitous and indivisible. There is no way to logically prove that there cannot be an infinite partless Entity or Principle that is absolutely homogenous and extended everywhere infinitely except to assert that there can be no extension without parts, which is exactly what is being disputed and so to blindly assert that in order to prove the point being disputed is committing the fallacy of circular reasoning. All you have offered is circular reasoning.

Brahman lacks any sort of internal distinctions or differences that would allows us to say any "parts" are more than imagined or nominal, one "area" of Brahman is exactly identical to all other Brahman and it's all seamless. How to establish that there are any real parts? Because humans imagine that there are things called "directions"? This is wrong because this is just another illusory concept. How to prove that there are real parts of Brahman that are actually different from eachother then? There is no sound basis to say so

>Realize your mistake in thinking that Brahman is a body and has extension, then come back.
I am using body in a very loose sense, you have not even clearly identified the issue. The Body or Substance of the Infinite extends infinitely and has no spatial boundary, if it wasn't, then it would be limited and not infinite and it would be a contradiction to call it infinite!

>>21406728
That's a mystical state of experience it's not a philosophical explanation of consciousness or of bodies in extension etc

>>21406756
>There is no way to logically prove that there cannot be an infinite partless Entity or Principle that is absolutely homogenous and extended everywhere infinitely except to assert that there can be no extension without parts, which is exactly what is being disputed and so to blindly assert that in order to prove the point being disputed is committing the fallacy of circular reasoning.
Imagine calling the rejection of dogmatic schizobabble a fallacy. You have offered nothing yourself other than barking from another dimension

>>21406714
>Awareness is something you have of, say, objects, or of thoughts, bodies in extension, perceptions, feelings, sensations, desires etc.
Wrong, Awareness is the constant and eternal Infinite, through which all of these appear, through which they are all revealed

>Your definition of awareness, much like everything else in wonderland, is "brahman,"
Awareness is self-aware (reflexive) presence, it also happens to be blissful/peaceful and also be Brahman!

>Awareness isn't infinite because you aren't aware of all things at all times in all places.
Awareness is aware of itself, which is the only thing that actually exists, thus awareness IS aware of all that exists in all places. Since this awareness is infinite, it always knows itself as the self-knowing infinite.

Hylic: But I have an awareness of an apple which is non-finite

Anon: But how do you know the awareness which is revealing the apple is not infinite

Hylic: Because the apple is non-finite

Anon: But I didn't ask about the apple! I asked about awareness

Hylic: But when the awareness knows apple it's not knowing a banana thus it limited and finite

Anon: Remember, we are talking about Advaita where the intellect perceives objects and awareness is just the partless self-disclosing witnessing presence which is distinct from the intellect but its presence is already presupposed by the intellect perceiving objects, how do you know that this awareness which illumines the intellect is non-infinite since the intellect is what is focused on the apple and not awareness itself?

Hylic: huh when you phrase it like that I really don't know....

>>21406784
>Imagine calling the rejection of dogmatic schizobabble a fallacy.
To assert that a partless and infinitely extended Reality is logically ruled out because any kind of extension or infinitude requires real parts is just the circular reasoning fallacy plain and simple

>>21406791
>Wrong, Awareness is the constant and eternal Infinite, through which all of these appear, through which they are all revealed
Wrong. Nothing is eternal. Everything has impernance.
>Awareness is self-aware (reflexive) presence, it also happens to be blissful/peaceful and also be Brahman!
There is no self and neither is there Brahman. Even children can acknowledge an empty cup, devoid of milk. No one can prove that Brahman exists unless you have deluded yourself.

>Awareness is aware of itself, which is the only thing that actually exists, thus awareness IS aware of all that exists in all places. Since this awareness is infinite, it always knows itself as the self-knowing infinite.
Again, there is no such thing as a self and there is no such thing as infinite. The nature of reality is devoid of a self and all things are subjected to impermanence.

The more I engage with your ignorance, the more I come to an understanding that Vendatist are under some mass delusion. They seem to be the spider caught in its own web of illusions and maya.

>>21406809
Revelation isn't an argument, at least try to make sense

>>21406791
>how do you know that this awareness which illumines the intellect is non-infinite since the intellect is what is focused on the apple and not awareness itself?
How do YOU know lmao

>>21406857
I didn't mention Revelation in that post, nor did anything I say in that post not make sense (if so, what?)

>>21406829
>Wrong. Nothing is eternal. Everything has impernance.
Wrong, awareness is eternally present, it's never not-present

>There is no self and neither is there Brahman.
Wrong, Brahman is the innermost awareness and Self even of those fools who deny that they have a self!

>The nature of reality is devoid of a self and all things are subjected to impermanence.
Wong, reality *IS* the Self, which is the only thing non-negatable and non-sublatable (one cannot negate or sublated one's inner awareness)

>>21406962
>I didn't mention Revelation
Your only source for "awareness" being an absolute infinite reality which excludes all objects of experience as falsehoods, is priestly documents about jeetgod.

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

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

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

>>21406984
The self cannot be also regarded as being manifested by ideas or percepts. It is not true that the cognition of the self occurs after the cognition of the book or at any different time from it. For it is true that the cognition of the self and that of the book take place at the same point of time; for the same awareness cannot comprehend two different kinds of objects at the same time. If this was done at different points of time, then that would not explain our experience—“I have known this.”

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

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

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

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

>>21406981
They were trying to argue against the theoretical concept of a homogenous substance or entity that is both at once partless and infinite/infinitely extending; I pointed out that their only objection raised against it consisted of pure circular reasoning. I know that you are seething about Advaita but Advaita really has nothing to do with the debate about whether this concept is itself coherent since the same point could be argued by any school of orthodox Hindu philosophy which basically all accept the ether to be partless and existing everywhere. You are like a bull who becomes enraged and loses track of the point of what is said when you see the matador raise the 'red flag' of advaita