Favorite Obscure Thinker

[AnOminous]

One of my favorites is U.G. Krishnamurti. You would think from his name and, if you knew slightly more, his connection with the Theosophical Society and one of its other members, J. Krishnamurti, that he would be some hippie dippy mystic.

He is not, though. He is one of the most corrosively cynical thinkers of all time.

His thoughts on self-discovery, for instance, are amazing: "The so called self-realization is the discovery for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to discover."

There is no wisdom, there is literally nothing to know, there are no gurus, because there are no secrets.

Nobody has ever stated the truth so clearly and bleakly.

http://www.well.com/user/jct/intro.html

This is a book called Mind is a Myth.


My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody. U.G.

Despite having absolute contempt for all modern practices, including medicine itself, he lived to 88 and died for no particular reason other than being old.

He also wanted to be completely forgotten when he died, so I'm kind of a dick for even saying his name now.

 

[Pepsi-Cola]

There's plenty of obscure Buddhist and Jainist monks I really admire, for instance, I've taken a liking to the Buddhist monk Rennyo. He's a dude from medieval Japan who played a big role in resurrecting Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism in the area. Most practitioners of the tradition today regard him as the "second founder" of the sect.

Here's one of his more famous creeds:
"We abandon all indiscriminate religious practices and undertakings (zōgyō zasshu) and all mind of self-assertion (jiriki no kokoro), we rely with singleness of heart on the Tathāgata Amida in that matter of utmost importance to us now—to please save us in our next lifetime. We rejoice in knowing that our birth in the Pure Land is assured and our salvation established from the moment we rely [on the Buddha] with even a single nembutsu (ichinen), and that whenever we utter the Buddha's name thereafter it is an expression of gratitude and indebtedness to him. We gratefully acknowledge that for us to hear and understand this truth we are indebted to our founder and master [Shinran] for appearing in the world and to successive generations of religious teachers in our tradition for their profound encouragement. We shall henceforth abide by our established rules (okite) as long as we shall live." --Translation by Professor James C. Dobbins.

 

[PuniPuniFag]

The granddaddy of all obscurest thinkers: Hegel-senpai