Reddit reviews Upanisads (Oxford World's Classics)
We found 3 Reddit comments about Upanisads (Oxford World's Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Reddit reviews Upanisads (Oxford World's Classics)We found 3 Reddit comments about Upanisads (Oxford World's Classics). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
While I’m excited to see some posts on Indian philosophy showing up in r/philosophy, I feel I need to give a broad outline of what’s going on before some misconceptions emerge. I’m going to try to be super organized, and provide a bibliography at the end.
Me: graduate student, studying Indian philosophy in the U.S.
Method
I think its important to know that philosophy was written and was done differently in India than it was and is done in the West. Not knowing that there is a difference seems to cause misconceptions.
In India, philosophy was oral; it was transmitted directly from teacher to student. What was transmitted were ‘texts.’ These are the sūtra-s (note: sūtra literally means ‘thread’ and can refer to both the individual aphorism and to the text containing those aphorisms). Sūtra’s are often short, terse, cryptic, and, well, don’t seem very philosophical. So, the teacher would help the student memorize a sutra-text; once memorized, the teacher would expound upon it, taking for granted that each aphorism was instantly recallable by the student. In sum, two things: 1. most of Indian philosophy is done in commentaries, commentaries on commentaries, etc. 2. Indian philosophy is terse so that it can be memorized easily.
Early Indian Philosophy
The earliest “philosophical” texts in India are the upaniṣads and the Buddhist sūtra-s. In both of these you can see the aforementioned ‘method’ of direct student to teacher conversation.
There is absolutely no unified “upanisadic philosophy;” that being said, many Vedāntins (= those who study Vedānta) argue that there is a unified message, and they are propounding their understanding of what this “upanisadic philosophy” is. There is indeed a lot of monistic tendencies in the Upanisads, but that is not all there is.
The early Buddhist sūtra-s are similar, but I know much less about them. I’ll just add something to the bibliography at the end if you’re interested in early Buddhist stuff.
Scholastic Indian Philosophy
After the early era, organized schools of thought developed. First, let me give you a broad framework of “orthodox” (=Hindu), and “heterodox”(=non-Hindu) schools of thought. I’m going to add one to the orthodox list that is usually left out, but here are the schools:
—Orthodox
Nyāya — Logic, debate, realists, etc
Vaiśeṣika — atomists, substance-metaphysics, realists, etc
Saṃkhyā — dualists (matter-spirit; ≠ mind-brain)
Yoga — often said to be praxis to saṃkhyā’s theory
Mīmāṃsā — hermeneutic of pre-upanisadic texts, pragmatism, direct realism
Vedānta — hermeneutics of the upanisads, many, many sub-schools
—Advaita — monism, anti-realists,
—Dvaita — dualists
Vyākaraṇa — philosophy of language, logic,
—Heterodox
Madhyamaka (Buddhist) — anti-metaphysicians, skeptics
Yogacara (Buddhist) — idealism, consciousness-only
Jainism — extreme relativism (also weak-spot for me, might not be apt)
Carvaka — hedonists, materialists, skeptics
These schools, for the most part, materialized around a sūtra, but more importantly a bhāṣya ‘commentary’ on those sutras. So, Nyāya—the school of logic, debate, etc—had the nyāya-sūtra, but it didn’t really get rolling until the nyāya-sūtra-bhāṣya. Those are the basic texts in each school, but after those two works, it can get pretty crazy.
General Notes
One cannot generalize about Indian philosophy by saying (sorry OP) that there is a certain idea of consciousness that underlies the schools. There are monists, and some are very prominent, but there are some atomists who are equally as prominent. Additionally, what will shock and awe the Western-trained philosopher the most is the dyad: Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, which is could easily be described as scientific, analytic, rigorous, etc; in fact, the logical system developed by later nyāya (called Navya-Nyāya ‘Neo-Logic’), especially Udayana and Gaṅgeśa is so extremely complicated, technical, precise, etc that I would guarantee it will convince even the most skeptical onlooker to Indian philosophy (see Nyāya2 below).
Bibliography
—Early.
—Scholastic
I just got this one https://www.amazon.com/Upanisads-Oxford-Classics-Patrick-Olivelle/dp/019954025X. It got really good reviews and won an award for best translation.
The Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda
Book Four Part One by Aleister Crowley
And of course everybody will recommend The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa (John Yates).
While these are all practical texts for the most explicit instruction, I think they fail to represent the beauty and philosophy of mindfulness. In my opinion, it is important to cultivate a knowledge of this side of mindfulness because it can help you bring your mindfulness into your everyday life off the cushion. In that sense, I recommend:
The Dhammapada
The Tao Te Ching
The Inner Chapters
The Bhagavad Gita
The Book of Lies
The Upanishads (I liked Patrick Oleville's compilation)
In The Buddha's Words
I think there are pdf's online for almost all of these books save for In The Buddha's Words, which is a collection of discourses of the Buddha in such a way organized to give structure to the discourses and better understand their holistic meaning for a first timer to the teachings of the Buddha. As with most foreign books, you pay for the skillful translation rather than a copy of the text.
Have fun on your journey :)