Category
Personal identity
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Reading group: Yājñavalkya, Maitreyī and Gārgī in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad
Reading Śaiva Siddhānta on my own, I want to go back behind the schools to the text they all argue over. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka is the oldest and, for me, the most alive of the Upaniṣads, mostly because of Yājñavalkya and the two…
Started by Thamarai Raman5 replies -
Reading group: the chariot in the Milindapañha, read beside Hume’s “Of personal identity”
My working rule is that comparisons should be made text against text, not summary against summary. Here is a small experiment: read the most famous Buddhist passage on the self and the most famous Western one side by side, slowly, and see…
Started by Kenneth Lam Chi-ho5 replies -
Reading group: Augustine’s Confessions Book X, the books of memory, in Chadwick’s translation
There are already threads here on Book XI (time) and Book IV (the death of a friend), so I'd like to propose Book X, which sits between them and which I think is the most philosophical book of the Confessions. Having told…
Started by Aoife Kilbride5 replies -
Reading group: Nāgasena’s chariot and flame in the Questions of King Milinda
The Milindapañha, the Questions of King Milinda, is a dialogue between a king usually identified with the Indo-Greek ruler Menander and a monk called Nāgasena. It is a composite text that grew over centuries, so I read Nāgasena as a literary interlocutor…
Started by Nirmala Jayasekara6 replies