Non-Duality

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Snoopy

Hi cav,

I think the phrase “not two and not one” originates with Shunryu Suzuki (or at least that's where I've come across it ) :

“…the oneness of duality: not two and not one. This is the most important teaching: not two, and not one. Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one. We usually think that if something is not one, it is more than one; if it is not singular, it is plural. But in actual experience, our life is not only plural, but also singular. Each one of us is both dependent and independent.”

I think it is also helpful to bear in mind one needs to consider from what viewpoint/s is the person speaking (e.g. relatively and / or absolutely, ideally and / or realistically). Sometimes a teaching is an attempt to break down our “normal” way of thinking and the language used cannot be taken on simple “face-value.”

s.

Or as in D T Suzuki's translation of Tao Te Ching chapter 1

1. The Reason that can be reasoned is not the eternal Reason. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The Unnamable is of heaven and earth the beginning. The Namable becomes of the ten thousand things the mother. Therefore it is said:
2. "He who desireless is found
The spiritual of the world will sound.
But he who by desire is bound
Sees the mere shell of things around."
3. These two things are the same in source but different in name. Their sameness is called a mystery. Indeed, it is the mystery of mysteries. Of all spirituality it is the door.

Compared to Dwight Goddard's translation:

The Tao that can be understood cannot be the primal, or cosmic, Tao, just as an idea that can be expressed in words cannot be the infinite idea.
And yet this ineffable Tao was the source of all spirit and matter, and being expressed was the mother of all created things.
Therefore not to desire the things of sense is to know the freedom of spirituality; and to desire is to learn the limitation of matter. These two things spirit and matter, so different in nature, have the same origin. This unity of origin is the mystery of mysteries, but it is the gateway to spirituality.

[flowperson]

OR Stephen Mitchell's translation:

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

flow....

[cavalier]

Originally Posted by Snoopy

Hi cav,

I think the phrase “not two and not one” originates with Shunryu Suzuki (or at least that's where I've come across it ) :

“…the oneness of duality: not two and not one. This is the most important teaching: not two, and not one. Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong; if you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one. We usually think that if something is not one, it is more than one; if it is not singular, it is plural. But in actual experience, our life is not only plural, but also singular. Each one of us is both dependent and independent.”

Ah, I understand.

[/quote]I think it is also helpful to bear in mind one needs to consider from what viewpoint/s is the person speaking (e.g. relatively and / or absolutely, ideally and / or realistically). Sometimes a teaching is an attempt to break down our “normal” way of thinking and the language used cannot be taken on simple “face-value.”[/quote]Ok. I think though, that I will not think too much about that. I guess that either I'll understand or I won't and I might get it wrong but I don't want to be second-guessing.


Thanks Snoopy

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by cavalier

I think though, that I will not think too much about that.

No, don’t think too much, cav! What do you think of this? –

“Trained in the Zen (Chan) Buddhist tradition in China, Dōgen was sensitive to the limitations of language and mistrustful of certain types of thinking. Like other Buddhists, he understood the problem to be egoism. By hypostatizing the ego, one falls into a desire for reality to be a specific way. One seeks permanence in both self and in one’s own worldview. Therefore, it is easy to project interpretations on experience, interpretations that shape the experience to meet our presuppositions, expectations and desires.
Dōgen believed that experiential immediacy is possible. In Zen meditation, one quiets the mind and merely lets phenomena appear. Dōgen called this a state of ‘without-thinking’ as opposed to either ‘thinking’ or ‘not-thinking’. Thinking, for Dōgen, included any form of sustained conceptualization whether fantasy, cogitation, believing, denying, wishing, desiring or whatever. Not-thinking is the effort to blank the mind and empty it of all awareness. In without-thinking, however, there is the awareness of brute phenomena but no sustained act of bestowing meaning. There is no consciousness of a self having an experience. Furthermore, since no meaning at all is projected on the event, it is free of the distortions found in ordinary, ego-driven forms of experience.”

Japanese philosophy : Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online

s.

[cavalier]

I think I'll have to try not to think about that without thinking stuff. I think that might be the best thing all round.

[Francis king]

non-duality...

my take on it is... in the most basic sense...

we impose upon the world and the people around us with "angles": good/bad, black/white, etc, and yet- the world isn't always like that...

"...clinging not to extremes..." is how a person reaches the furthest shore... if you have such firm beliefs, such a firm sense of what right and wrong is, then you will suffer... clinging to silly notions, such as the supremacy of a specific football team to the extent you meet up and fight opposing teams with bottles and boots... silly... extremism comes from this grasping onto things, hatred comes, so too greed, anger, malice, all these poisons, and afflictions come... so, good/bad, etc; bear in mind all is relative, bear in mind there are many facets, and aspects, to any given opinion, character, situation, and you will never be a fascist...

or so I have heard...

and yet- in another sense, non-duality is more complicated... for me, it's a twofold dislike- I think that this focus on non-duality is perhaps a remnant of buddhism's more vedantic roots and secondly I think it causes division between buddhists...

initially, this dualism was between Reality and Non-Reality; the asat and sat, this became personified in brahma and maya, and in buddhism the same notion becomes a more intellectual interpretation, more philosophical, but it's the same thing- deciding on the difference between what constitutes asat, the non being, and the sat, the being, or, as it's more usually described, illusion and non illusion. Ultimate truth and that which appears like truth, the Paramarthamsatya and the Samvrttisatyam, the buddhist division of the two truths...

you have probably come across the different buddhist schools and know that people such as mahaprasangikas differ from the cittamatrins due to their interpretation of this non-duality concept, although, of course, it's been overintellectualised to such as extent it's barely visible, there it is...!

some say there is something, some say all, some say nothing. Some divide. All cling to extremes.

for me, its more like... not good, not bad, just is... not "just is", -let's not bother making things better, or -let's stop making things worse, not -let's give up, simply accept the status quo, but.... just "is"... not something to pretend doesn't exist, or if we could become miraculously enlightened we might suddenly wake up in this unreal reality where nothing (something) exists...

good exists, just like bad does, and yet... good to know what good and bad is, then, up the good, squash the bad, all live happily ever after..

yet... all things are relative...

as you say, cav, "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same"... then you have reached a level of awareness and maturity that most humans never reach, and hence, yes, you are then, a man...

there's just not that many men about! lol... adios...

[earl]

Thought I'd contribute some words from contemporary Zen roshi, Bernie Glassman's book, "Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen."

"A big mistake commonly made in studying Zen is to think there's something inherently wrong with the world of duality and that it's to be transcended or somehow discarded once and for all. The point is not to negate or transcend duality, but to totally immerse oneself in it. Totally becoming duality means becoming not only the relative but the absolute as well, because the distinction between the two is nothing but a notion....Since both absolute and relative function in the world of dualism, we have to go beyond that state and drop the notion of dualism altogether, which means dropping all our notions-including those of relative, absolute, and Source. That is the state of not-knowing...When self-conscious awareness drops away altogether, we call the functioning ordinary, pointing to the fact that it's completely free of notions, including such exotic ones as absolute, relative, and Source. But we have to resort to expedient means such as notions of absolute, relative, and Source because our functioning is fettered by our attachment to self. Until we truly forget the self, we have to take our medicine, we have to practice with notions such as relative, absolute, and Source."

The irony is how much practice it takes to truly be ordinary. earl

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

'Emptiness' is actually full of possibilities. What IS is transient, but real for a space. What IS NOT (the myriad of possibilities) is always there, but do not always manifest, yet contain the seeds of what will be.

"The object is an object for the subject,
the subject is a subject for the object:
know that the relativity of the two
rests ultimately on one emptiness."

- author unknown (to me)

s.

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Snoopy

"The object is an object for the subject,
the subject is a subject for the object:
know that the relativity of the two
rests ultimately on one emptiness."

- author unknown (to me)

s.

Which all goes back to not confusing good with evil, but instead focusing on the connectedness of everything.