Does Advaita Vedanta come to the correct conclusion?

I don't know but Vedantists on this board are always so easily buttmad and that makes me not want to get into it

I think part of what feeds that perception is that Vedanta is less well-known online and in some ways is more complex than vanilla Buddhism or Daoism etc and so there are many misconceptions about it; and that because of this when people post incorrect information about it on Yea Forums or whatever and are then corrected about it by others they feel like they are being attacked and then become hostile

Yes – the freedom from the need to conclude

Partly.

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NO!!! YOU FUCKING TAKE THAT BACK! YOU TAKE THAT BACK YOU BUDDHIST SON OF A PIG! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU

Where is this from?

Idea is Non-Dual Shaiva Tantra. >The english translation of the quote is specifically from Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis.

>Vedanta is less well-known online and in some ways is more complex than vanilla Buddhism or Daoism etc and so there are many misconceptions about it; and that because of this when people post incorrect information about it on Yea Forums or whatever and are then corrected about it by others they feel like they are being attacked and then become hostile
Is that not the case with pretty much every Eastern tradition, though? Everything from Yoga, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism...etc is reduced to relaxation and self-help by Westerners, and because of that, most of the discussion about these traditions found on Yea Forums involves incorrect information.

The problem is that Hindu "religion" is a huge mess of different religions that got intertwined, mixed, remixed, corrupted, improved, misunderstood and generally messed with by absolutely fucking everyone ever stepping foot in India. This includes Indians themselves.

You need some extremely rigorous scholarly work to get to the teachings as they were intended at the time of their flourishing. It doesn't help that "incorrect" teachings can work for people, since the whole fucking point is to brainwash yourself so that you can have a spiritual liberation. Brainwashing sounds bad but in this relation, it's not really that different from going to therapy to reconfigure the way you think about stuff. So, quite literally, if you believe that some practice or a branch of religion is going to give you spiritual attainment, for sure, eventually, you'll have that experience.
Problems come when people don't have time-tested teachings to proceed after they've had those experiences.

So yeah, people who have been following some bizarre westernized branch of a vedic religion might genuinely get a spiritual experience from it. You question their experience and they are likely to get hissy ( since if they lack the full array of teachings, they'll not be able to make use of the experience ).

Pic related kinda btfos Kashmir Shaivism (from the Advaita tradition in Indian Philosophy by Sharma)

>Kàshmïra Shaivism admits jivanmukti, emphasises the ultimate reality of the pure Self alone, traces all difference to innate Ignorance, treats bondage and liberation as ultimately unreal, takes everything as the manifestation of the Real, regards immediate spiritual experience as leading to moksa, admits màyà shakti as veiling the Real and as the root-cause of all difference, finitude and limitation and emphasises the need for spiritual discipline to realise the Self. Pratyabhijnâ glides away in aparoksànubhüti of Vedanta. There are many passages in the classical works of this system emphasising the transcendental unity of the Supreme Self and condemning all difference in unmistakable terms. In spite of all this, this system has a bias against the inactivity of Brahma and the theory of màyà as advocated in Advaita Vedanta and wants to preserve the reality of everything by treating it as the manifestation of the Supreme. We have seen that it is not possible to do so. The School of Kàshmïra Shaivism appears to be a house divided against itself and its inner contradictions can be removed from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta, which is often implicitly contained in it.

I agree with some of the criticisms the author of pic related makes although I can also see how someone practicing Trika could end up reaching a functionally similar state of liberation/bliss despite superficial disagreements in ontology, I think they complement each other. Some medieval era and latter Advaita texts like Yoga Vasistha and others take some influence from Trika. I especially appreciate the Trika idea of phenomena sorta being the ecstatic dance of the Absolute abounding in a blissful fullness (and this is not itself strictly incompatible with viewing the phenomenal as unreal). To some extent this notion appears in early Advaitic texts like Vivekachudamani and even the Upanishads but there is not as much emphasis on it.

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I'll need a moment to read that but from the get-go it seems like the text is either attacking a strawman, or specifically the *dualistic* Kashmir Shaiva Tantra. "The View" as taught by Abhinavagupta is non-dualistic.

Yes, but that is especially the case with Vedanta. Buddhism was the main eastern religion/doctrine that got popularized in the west from the 60's onwards and so most people have an understanding of the basics of it just from hearing people talk about it and seeing it talked about in movies, books etc but many people in the west have never even heard the word Vedanta before. The understanding of Hindu thought that most westerners have is for the most part limited to knowing that the Upanishads and the Gita exist and that Yoga is somehow related to it.

Compounding this issue is that Vedanta goes further in it's ontology/metaphysics than early Buddhism did, you often see people saying "well uh Buddha is cool because he didn't answer all these questions about the causes of X or the reasons for why Z is the case and he just focused on what's important", without judging or commenting on that perspective in any way Vedanta differs in that it has an elaborate metaphysical system that provides answers for almost all of those questions that Buddha never did which greatly adds to the complexity and which accordingly provides fertile ground for misunderstandings.

yikes

>you often see people saying "well uh Buddha is cool because he didn't answer all these questions about the causes of X or the reasons for why Z is the case and he just focused on what's important"
While I've definitely seen that, I've seen more often people say "Buddha didn't answer questions of a metaphysical nature because they are based on false premises rooted in delusion or conjecture, like in self-view, or objectivity." In all the cases where they say "he didn't answer these questions because they're not important" I find it's usually just because they're neophytes and don't know the actual reasons why he didn't answer metaphysical questions.

>fall for mental constructs and imagination because Brahman can never be entirely grasped as an object of thought.
i once have a conversation with a girl who talk to me about the astral trips and the out of body experiences she have. i ask her how she knows her out of body experience was not in her imagination. she stay silent for a while, and tell me: well, i dont know. at first look to me like a pretty dumb answer, (and it is). really an answer that some brahmanic nirvana jimi hendrix experienced guy never could tell you this plain.
if you cant have an object of thought you cant teach nothing to nobody, you need an object of thought to tell there is no object of thought, or maybe is only an experience, but you need some object of thought to put that experience in a hierarchy in the superior realm of experiences. there is a reason all this brahmanic shit is a religion. a rigid and strict religion, people are too credulous. i dont mean to be the pedantic "smart guy". only i dont know how people are totally atheistic and fedora tier with chistianinty and maybe with islam but they have some sort of sweet respect with brahmanic vedic mixing buddhism religions like some kind of "old wisdom".

>You might as well say that Buddhism teaches attachment to Nirvana
you attach to nirvana through the non attachment of nothing more including, supposedly, the thoughts. you create the nirvana but they say, you find the nirvana. they dont care about this, they only care about the nirvana and the truth and this attachment that is non attachment because is the ultimate truth of everything. the problem here is you believe that non attachment is important and mystic and beyond the conscience because you "feel it". like that girl who have out of body experience you need some part of your mind or "spirit" to tell you this is the "truth" in order to give prominence to that experience. the fact that you need to tell you this is not the mind or is not the world or is Pure Experience is only a conceptual frame. or maybe we simply dont know.

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>Buddha didn't answer questions of a metaphysical nature because they are based on false premises rooted in delusion or conjecture, like in self-view, or objectivity.
Maybe so, but that didn't stop many later Buddhist schools from trying to answer them, even if from the perspective of saying "well the question is based on wrong presupposition but THIS is how one might conceive the answer from the perspective of truth"; which is pretty similar to how Vedanta approaches some of the same questions. The point I guess is that the complexity found in just the basic original Advaita of Shankara is already of the complexity of later Mahayana philosophy which contributes to people forming misconceptions because unless someone is arsed to read a whole lot about it they're not likely understand it very well which is why people constantly repeat misconceptions about it such as that Advaita teaches the self that Buddha rejected or that it's a form of substance ontology or whatever.

>i once have a conversation with a girl who talk to me about the astral trips and the out of body experiences she have.
on an unrelated note there has been some research suggesting that they are indeed possible and some parapsychology studies have found evidence of people being able to have OBE and read numbers etc that their bodies can't physically see. If you look for them you'll find some of them online.

>if you cant have an object of thought you cant teach nothing to nobody, you need an object of thought to tell there is no object of thought, or maybe is only an experience, but you need some object of thought to put that experience in a hierarchy in the superior realm of experiences.
That is why the Upanishad use negation in many places such as when the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad describes Brahman as "not this, not this", and "neither gross nor subtle", or when the Kena Upanishad says "it is beyond what is known as well as what is unknown" or when the Taittriya Upanishad says "that from which speech turns back along with the mind". It's called apophatic theology, both the Upanishads and Buddhism use it extensively. Words can be used to indicate what is beyond speech and thought and points towards direct spiritual experience.

>you need to tell you this is not the mind or is not the world or is Pure Experience is only a conceptual frame. or maybe we simply dont know
Anyone can argue that anything experienced by the mind or consciousness isn't verifiable or whatever, taking a serious interest in these sorta things presupposes moving past this objection for whatever reason; for some people it just makes sense intuitively or the bliss they experience from practicing its teachings is validation enough and makes it self-evident

Okay, I think the guy who wrote this has a hateboner for Kashmir Shaivism. He seems to have difficulty with the "dualistic" Shiva+Shakti symbolism and clearly doesn't understand teachings that differ from Vedanta.

Non-dual Kashmir Shaivism doesn't generally say any god is "nothing". Of course individual practitioners may say what they may but NKS tends to regard other religions as a means to an end. In fact, you can ( and in some cases were even expected to ) practice an whatever religion you want, just do it Tantrikly ( since every God you choose to believe in is another manifestation of Divine Awareness ). Classical Tantra doesn't reject individual experiences because any experience is an expression of the divine.

>Kashmira Shaivism... regards the supreme Self as the self-conscious Creator of this world of manifestation.
Again, the author is clueless. Divine Awareness doesn't intentionally create, it allows creation to happen. This is a pretty important point.

>Kashmira Shaivism holds the manifested world is real
>Kashmira Shaivism agrees... that consciousness is the only reality
So which position does the author claim about NKS? Because he can't claim both.

Also, weird dig at the NKS talking about "imperfect knowledge". He insist on errors. Then does he not say that his god is capable of error? Did he even think this through? How can his view of all-encompassing Consciousness and reality contain "errors"? Imperfect knowledge is what makes sense, errors imply there could be something other than reality, which goes against both Tantra and Vedanta.

The only decent argument was about how you can maintain individuality if you attain spiritual liberation, but that's only a good argument again because the author hasn't been playing attention: You are a part of a "Divine Play". You play a part. Liberation only marks the difference between if you experientially KNOW you're playing a part, or are you stuck in Suffering/Ignorance.

So yeah, the author certainly BTFO'd the strawman he thinks NSK is.

Can anyone point me to someone that reached heights equal to a metaphysical fullness like Shankara but also didn't go ahead and take a giant steamy dump on the rituals and worship of the Gods or karma in the way Shankara did?

>Work, or action, is not contrary to knowledge of God, but indeed, if performed without attachment, is a means to it. On the other hand, renunciation is renunciation of ego, of selfishness--not of life. - Isha Upanishad
I basically want this to be true, to whom do I turn?

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>Words can be used to indicate what is beyond speech and thought and points towards direct spiritual experience.
its not beyond speech. i mean, speech is not real, it was never real, is a representation. they use words to explain this thing beyond concepts, and they do it well in that "apophatic" form (i dont know that word until now..). we undestand. we know what they are saying. the poetry exist, not all is plain and stiff writing. i understand. but the claim that this concept of no concept is "direct spiritual experience" is other thing. in the best of cases is another experience, another possible experience of the mind or the body or whatever. the fact that they experience this thing and at the same time trying to making it appear like something beyond experience looks stupid to me. i repeat, there is a reason this is a religion. if i am with a master and i reach that "nirvana buddhist indhiana jones ultraexperience" and then, i just say "meh"?. they usually come and tell you this is not the real experience until you feel it like the Ultimate Truth. its just like that.

>or the bliss they experience from practicing its teachings is validation enough and makes it self-evident
this is my theory. yes. but they only validate the bliss they had. they look for that bliss, they start all the path in the search for that bliss. and they, finally, dont move away even a centimeter from that bliss. or they try to dont move away. dont misunderstood me, im not that scientific empirical guy who thinks everything have to be validated. i dont care. im only specifying this is an organized social religion saying they know the truth. like thousand of others.

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Not really a student of Hindu philosophy, but just reading that image I have some questions.

If this Consciousness freely choose to embody a finite being as a sort of divine play, what is the reasoning for saying that one must escape that? Doesn't this move away from the sort of willed self-experiencing wish of Brahman?

And if taken to its extreme, then one can imagine a reality where only fractions upon fractions of time/space would ever emerge as the moment Brahman actualizes its potentiality, this potentiality actualizes(?) itself back into Brahman. As this seems to be the purpose of Atman.

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Good questions. I wouldnt say the return to Brahman is counter to the purpose of creation, its precisely that return that makes it purposeful, ie the awareness of God within illusion.

>what is the reasoning for saying that one must escape that?
From Tantrik view ( that image ), you don't have to escape that if you don't want to. You may choose to do so. If you are truly happy living life without this kind of spiritual realization, that is fine. That's still Divinity doing it's thing through you, the way you're okay with. ( Classical Tantra doesn't line up with Vedanta so people who know more about that may have another answer ).

> only fractions upon fractions of time/space would ever emerge
Well, that could be happening right now for all you know. Though I don't speak of Brahman.

Maybe either Kashmir Shaivism as expounded by Abhinavagupta or Ramanuja, a good place to start with Ramanuja is his Vedantha Sangraha

srimatham.com/uploads/5/5/4/9/5549439/vedartha_sangraha_.pdf

Another point to consider also is that Shankara mostly agreed with the Gita about work without attachment leading to liberation, he considered that Brahmins and people of similar disposition were best pursuing ascetism but wrote in his Gita commentary about how the Kshatriyas et al could follow the path of bhakti and attachment-less work and still reach bliss etc. Also, in recognition of the totally different circumstances and setting we lived in compared to Shankara's time it's not like everything he says totally applies to us 100%, you can still agree with Advaita and practice its teachings while going about life and doing puja and volunteer service for others while having a job and family etc.

>Work, or action, is not contrary to knowledge of God, but indeed, if performed without attachment, is a means to it. On the other hand, renunciation is renunciation of ego, of selfishness--not of life. - Isha Upanishad

I don't see that in any of the Isha Upanishad translations I've looked at, are you sure that line is actually a part of it? I don't believe that it is

Tantraloka and Trident of Wisdom btfo Advaita both ethically and metaphysically.

That chapter comes after one where he generally seems to overview Kashmir Shaivism pretty fairly and positively, I think that chapter attacking NKS just comes maybe from his desire to defend Advaita against their criticisms or something. Speaking of, would you be willing to post what some of NKS legitimate criticisms of Advaita are from your perspective or areas where it's more correct? I would be curious to see what they are because nothing I've seen so far looked like very solid criticisms and most people on Yea Forums seem totally clueless about it.
>Divine Awareness doesn't intentionally create, it allows creation to happen. This is a pretty important point.
So where does it come from then? Is it treated as spontaneously coming from and being allowed to happen by the Divine Awareness or is does it proceed from somewhere else?
>So which position does the author claim about NKS? Because he can't claim both.
I think the point he was making was that NKS holds the manifested world as real *within* the overall unity of Shiva-Sakti insofar as it's all just the divine consciousness manifesting itself in different but real ways

how so?

i think so, but the whole picture is enriched by seeing how many different ways people arrive at the same understanding.

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>the actual reasons why he didn't answer metaphysical questions.
So, why didn't he answer those questions?

Because he was listening to Nirvana?

Hmm.. Maybe it's not. I have a shorter version of the principal Upanishads and before every Upanishad there is a quote like that one and I always just assumed it was a quote from the actual Upanishad. But maybe it's just the translators summary of each Upanishad.

Hadn't really questioned it lel

I have the Signet Classics one which is translated by Swami Prabhavanada.

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ty user, sorry i'm too stupid to finish reading posts somedays

It engages with darkness in a more real way. It is also more politically charged.

>It is also more politically charged.
please give me the tl;dr.

Could adopting Kashmir Shaivism save Evropa?

You can only save it by creating the new world order. But first is Mortal Kombat.

Lets say there are steps .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9

Each step in buddhism logically fits the format of reaching a conclusive set system of thought, but what buddhism doesn't do is go beyond it's own steps.
we go through the steps
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9
and buddhism will say you are there, you are finished, this system was escaped. But... Then you look further and see another system
2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7... etc
Buddhism doesn't deny these steps, but it'll say it's not "buddhism", and that it's a separate path, when in reality it's path is but a part in a continuous system... I do not mean that this system is a horizontal plane how ever...

Each "escape" ( leaving a set ) actually is actually a whole new dimension of sets, not just a linear progress, but an exponential growth of it's world view.

Please be gentle, but from I understand the main difference between advaita vedanta and kashmir shaivism is that in vedanta, Brahman is inactive and in shaivism it is active?

sounds pretty subjective desu

yes