No Stupid Questions

I read your whole comment. I’m working on a PhD in religious studies so your in my field of interest ;) I will try to respond to you when I’m not on mobile so I can read as I write

I’m pretty new to TEC

Sorry what is TEC?

Re: Buddhism V advaita:

So, it’s not so much about what one fills that the other lacks as it is about… Perspective? If multiple groups are all saying something similar, but with different focuses, intentions, inflections, verbage, et cetera, I think it’s interesting to examine both, find their commonalities and differences, and try to understand the underlying message. Buddhism speaks of emptiness, Advaita of illusion. While Buddhism tells us there is no self, advaita says there is no self except the self, the singular Brahman. I’ll be honest in that I am really new to Buddhism, and most of my advaita comes from Vivekananda and Ramakrishna and others labeled neoadvaita, but there is a lot of traditionalist thought and teaching in there, too. But I think, ultimately, they’re saying very similar, if not the same, things, and that by allowing yourself to float a bit between them you get to understand them a bit more. Kind of like how if you learn Italian and Spanish and Romanian you might have a much easier time understanding some old Latin texts. **

I like how you worded this as different perspectives and focuses with potential a singular underlying messages rather than the common saying, which I dislike, of they're different paths up the same mountain.

May I ask how do you handle big and/or cosmological differences? Or do you focus on the advaita one's? One of the biggest reasons I haven't studied any form of Hinduism is the main Buddhist critiques of it. Non-self/atman, anti-caste, no eternal source, and no creator god. I also, find the three marks of existence quite logical as well as the four noble truths. Though I study it academically I also follow it personally. If I understand correctly your current method or interest is taking advaita as your core but studying traditions around it to gain other perspectives? It's fun that the Buddha ran into some big religious traditions if his time and had debates with them so there is a record of exactly the sort of back and forth you are interested in.

Have you watched Let's Talk Religion's videos on Advaita? They're pretty interesting. Watched them a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMEsszfBYMo&pp=ygUHYWR2YWl0YQ%3D%3D

Re: Kashmiri Shaivism:

If you’re at all interested in nondualism you’ve got to check out Kashmiri Shaivism! Very cool tradition. It’s a nondualism tradition, but with Shiva as the focus instead of Brahman. It’s independent of Advaita, and IIRC significantly older. Like, potentially Indus Valley civilization old. Prevedic old. Though, obvious any living tradition has changed in that amount of time. There are several really good YouTubers that do advaita info (and if you’re anywhere near NC then Swami Sarvapriyananda from the Vedanta Society of NYC is going to be in Raleigh in March, and I’m hopefully going to be there), but there’s less info on Kashmiri Shaivism. There’s the Kauai’s Hindu Monastery also called Himalayan Academy, but I don’t remember if they’re specifically Kashmiri or not, but I do think they’re ultimately nondualist, or qualified nondualists. I’ll look around and find some resources if you’re interested.

May I ask what about nondualism interests you? And what about Kashmiri Shaivism carried this interest? What is the difference with Shiva as center? What does that imply for the practice?

And yeah, Jainism is fascinating! Though so strict. I can’t imagine being brought up in that tradition. I have Catholic Guilt by association, and I’m not even Catholic. Lol. I can’t imagine what the idea of that strict an understanding of Karma would do to my psyche! Lmao

I actually used to have this understanding as well until I read this book by James Laidlaw: https://archive.org/details/richesrenunciati0000laid His main point, which is a good point to understand for religion in general, is that in Jainism as understood through its texts and Jainism as its lived can be wildly different traditions with little pressure for lay people to renounce. The particular city he did his fieldwork in showed that many Jains were wildly rich though they supported those who renounced. If you only approach it from its texts it appears the only point of the traditions is to renounce. This is was a pretty eye opening moment for me in school that lived religion is the best approach. This comes as a critique of how early Protestant scholars of religion only studied religions based on what their texts said then would label its followers as good or bad based on that. If one follows this method there are few Buddhists in East Asia, when in reality there are millions.

And I have actually just recently begun reading about Sikhism again! I love their ideas around universality of religions.

Are you at all familiar with Meister Eckhart? Turns out, there’s a Christian nondualist tradition!

Sufism is another really interesting entry point into Abrahamic nondualism, too. Though it’s a minority viewpoint even within Sufism, a minority trend in Islam, from what I understand. If you’re interested in that Tawhid is a good keyword for search and Let’s Talk Religion has an excellent video (or several) on Islamic nondualists and mysticism

I guess because of my more Buddhist views I have trouble being interested in more creator centered traditions. I, like you, was brought up Christian and one of the big eye opening moments for me in Buddhism besides emptiness and impermanence was no creator god. In the nondualism you study is Brahman necessarily a creator god or are there forms where they are not?

I hope I don't come off as aggressively Buddhist. I also enjoy reading about what your talking about. Really fun to listen to podcasts on all of it and Great Courses talks. Studying at the phd level has somewhat ripped away my non-Buddhist time and care since it's my job lol.

When I was more Buddhist-Christian I really did enjoy such nondualist traditions within Abrahamic and potentially South Asian religions as they sort of bridged my way.

IDK if I already asked it but what particularly about nondualism interests you? And outside of that what about those two traditions way above interest you? What made them click moving from Christianity?

I’m gonna stop writing there, because this is already a wall of text. Sorry!

**

I lied. Bit more on what I was saying about Buddhism and Advaita. I look at religion the same way I look at language. You have language families that share a common ancestor proto language, and we can see that with philosophical thought as well. Hell, it’s often along the same lines. Indo-european languages are often spoken by groups of people that also had similar religious thought. There are deep similarities between Greek and Roman paganism and the Vedic gods, for instance, as well as with Norse paganism.

I like this metaphor!

Above language families you have the more speculative language phylum, and so on it goes. I think that, ultimately, if you trace the root of a word back far enough, you often find it is present in some form in a proto language shared by seemingly disparate languages, and then working forward again you can find all of these cognates in other languages, and how this simple word in proto Germanic, or PIE is now present, but significantly different, in millions of people’s lives.

Taking this and going back to your comment on universalism. How do you think that can work when there are radically different core beliefs? Makes me think of the Chinese Yiguandao religion which stems from the sanjiao or three teachings tradition mixing Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Christianity, and Islam, lol.

I apply that same thinking to religion. We see similar concepts, myths, stories crop up in areas that, on the surface, have completely different religious structures. Hinduism and Judaism appear to be completely different, but Hinduism and Zoroastrianism influenced each other to a considerable degree (they even call each other’s gods demons and demons gods. Deva/Deava, Asura/Ahura.). Zoroastrianism in turn influenced the crap out of the region, and that includes ancient yahwism and Judaism. There are parts of Leviticus that are almost identical to Zoroastrian texts. Judaism, and in turn Christianity, were also heavily influenced by Hellenistic Greek traditions (sometimes positively, by adopting things, sometimes negatively by making their rejection of them a staple of their faith). Nothing exists in a vacuum (on earth anyway. Lol), and there’s so much influence on everything that, much like with language, there exists a sort of continuum of belief. Sure, there are definitely still languages, we need that mutual intelligibility to communicate, but from a really broad historical view, they’re all basically connected. Isolates notwithstanding.

Oh yeah this is also very fun. Like how Gilgamesh contains the story of Noah and the flood way before the Tanak wrote it. I find it difficult to balance these manners of thinking. On the one hand I believe Buddhism to be true but find other traditions interesting and potentially helpful. On the other hand I academically recognize the truth in thousands of years of traditions radically affecting one another. I don't like to randomly mix traditions but I do see "native" followers doing so in more traditional manners such as sanjiao and find it reasonable. On the other hand it makes me annoyed when people say it's just multiple paths up the same mountain. This complication in both one's religious life and one's research of historical and modern traditions long influence is what makes religious such as interesting topic.

Jesus, I am so sorry for how long this comment is.

Same.

//these are rambles written very late at night. I hope it's an engaging reply for you :) I'm gonna send this as a pm as well in case this gets deleted though I am on my own instance.