Duality / Non Duality ???

Steve108

I am struggling to get my head around the concept of duality and non duality.
Can anyone help me to understand this?

With metta _/|\_

Cloud

I'm gonna move this to Advanced...

taiyaki

duality = this or that.

substantial non duality = this + that = super This

insubstantial non duality = super This is empty, unestablished, void. Instead of super This there is disjointed streams of experience arising due to conditions.

for a more in-depth look check out this link:

http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2011/08/substantial-and-insubstantial-non.html

taiyaki

Duality is the assertion of a reference point. On the basis of the self reference point, there is the other.

So reference point A, reference point B. (this, that).

What we make on the basis of those two reference points: inside and outside. time and space. us and them. white and black. good and bad. ETC.

All forms of thought are inherently dualistic.

But one must understand that the basis of dualism is the single reference point.

So many spiritual traditions and even Buddhism talk about oneness or super consciousness or GOD. They are generally speaking from an substantial non duality point of view. This means that they take the self and merge it with the other and BAM you have oneness. But usually prior to this there is "the watcher" phase. This is just being the pure SUBJECT by becoming the witnessing to everything. When this witnessing is let go then it fuses into oneness. This is Atman meeting Brahman in Hinduism.

Which is great but basically they just made a super ego LOL. Instead of a small self now there is a UNIVERSAL SELF THAT IS ETERNAL.

So basically one giant reference point.

But here is where the Buddha comes in. And he goes wait a minute you're just avoiding everything by restructuring the same self onto another grander self. Oh you still suffer. And this is where the Gods realms are. Nice as they are. They don't last forever and they don't end suffering and no nirvana mahahaha.

So this giant reference point is broken down even more through the teachings of anatman and emptiness. Reality is referenceless. It appears as it is, where it is, then gone. It has no true reference points. We give reference points. Thus we cling and crave and suffer and run away and try to maintain something.

But there are no true reference points. so basically we fuck ourselves constantly. well until we wake up our prajna and realize that everything is completely ungraspable thus pointless to crave and hold onto. what a relief!

So what does this mean to us all?

It means that in seeing just the color, shapes, forms. No seer. Just the suchness appearing due to conditions. Then BAM gone~ Poke an eye out then there is no COLOR. it arises completely dependent upon the conditions of an eye organ, some contact, and color bam you get eye consciousness. We can experience it as the experience itself. Even our bodies are color! WHOA!

And you can even jump around into the other streams of consciousness. Lets say sound consciousness. What is that dependent on? Ear, sound, contact and bam we have sound. So the action of hearing is the sound. And the subject hearing is just an assumption based on inference. Its just a thought! There is only the sound. That is the non duality!

Anyways I just kind of lost my shit right now. I need to eat food. My blood sugar is low. Hope this helps.

David

@Steve108;

You already answered this question in your other thread.

“Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.” Ching-yuan

Duality is a tool we use, like a labelling system but ultimately, it's all part of the same process.

Duality isn't a bad thing as it comes in handy for information sharing and there is no thing or event that is not the result of information being shared in one way or another.

Songhill

From Asanga:

"Thus the duality finds itself in appearance, but not in reality; this is why one attributes to the form, etc., existence and non-existence" (Mahayanasutralamkara X. 21).

pegembara

Between this and that is a grasping. Labels (nouns) are useful for communication but ultimately unreal. We determined things into existence. That is why we see mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. They don't inherently exist. Even better, we create "things", cars, planes ships, nations, Santa Claus, Batman etc.

Form-emptiness; mundane-supramundane.

`To one detached from perception there are no knots and to one released through wisdom there are no delusions.'

So the purpose of this training in insight is that release from perception. Until full detachment with regard to perception sets in, knotting will go on. A sort of disgust or disenchantment has to occur for detachment to set in. With the gradual refinement of the mode of mental noting, one is able to eliminate these knots brought about by perception. As mentioned above, one has to stop short at the bare awareness of seeing, hearing, feeling and so forth. Thereby one does not take seriously those two pegs between which perception occurs. One avoids thinking in terms of subject and object - `There is that form there, and here am I'; `There is that sound there, and here am I'. Avoiding that way of thinking, one understands experience simply as a process of seeing and hearing. But there is something far more subtle which leads one towards perception and that is, contact or `phassa'. The arising of contact is an extremely subtle phenomenon. What is generally understood as contact is the striking together of two things. So, the notion of duality is already implicit there. But this of course is the worldly way of understanding the phenomenon of contact. That is why the Buddha also sometimes gives the illustration of the striking together of two pieces of wood as a simile for the phenomenon of contact. To contact or to strike together there has to be two. The presence of two things is already presupposed.

http://www.beyondthenet.net/calm/clm_main1.asp

sova

@pegembara thanks for the quote! very insightful ^.^

Cinorjer

@taiyaki and @pegembara did a great job explaining it. The quote about the mountains and waters is particularly important. See, duality is our mind's way of sorting the world into handy catagories. It's a survival mechanism. "good to eat or makes me sick" "dangerous or harmless" and such is duality thinking, and without that, it would be hard to survive childhood. Once assigned to an opposites label, you can automatically react without stopping to consider if the animal with sharp teeth coming at you might mean trouble.

But this process is then applied to the entire world around us. We're told "those" people are dangerous and inferior because they look different, and so a big hunk of humanity is divided into "us and them" and it's OK to fear or hate or kill "them". So the mountain is a mountain, but why? Because you've assigned that big hunk of rock to some dual system of "tall is mountain, not-so-tall is nonmountain".

So through meditation and effort, we break through accepting the labels as the things described. Everything is relative. At what point does water become water? How about when it's frozen? Is it the same thing? Or how about steam, or fog? Eventually even people are seen without the duality, and our connections and common attributes outweigh our differences. "We are one" or "everything is One" begins to spout out of your lips. The Eastern Gurus like to say this, because this breakthrough feels like what we expect enlightenment to be. And it looks impressive. So mountains are not mountains and water is not water, don't you know?

But there's another stage, one the Buddha points to. Duality means confusing the label for the thing. There is no absolute duality built into the universe. But, we still have relative values. Mountains have nothing inherent in them that say "I'm a mountain" but we can still call them mountains because we've agreed certain tall features of our landscape are mountains. Mountains are mountains and water is water. And steam is steam and ice is ice. Care for a cup of tea? The cup is what it is, and the tea is flavored water. Why do you ask? Drink the tea, if you want to know what tea is.

Hope this helps.

Steve108

Thank you all for your comments. I have found them helpful.

With metta _/|\_