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from Ken Wilber: verified by me.
The twoness of experience is the fundamental lie, the primordial untruthfullness, the beginning of ignorance and deception, the beginning of the battered self, the beginning of samsara, the beginning of the lie lodged in the heart of infinity. Each and every experience just as it is arrives as One Taste- it does not arrive fractured and split into subject and object. That split, that duplicity, is a lie, the fundamental lie, the original untruthfullness- and the beginning of of the "small self", the battered self, the self that hides its Original Face in the forms of its own suffering.
Q:so they were onto a taste of Zen? a taste of the Nondual?
KW: well a glimmer, a taste, a hint of the nondual- this is easy enough to catch. But for the Nondual traditions, this is just the beginning. As you rest in that uncontrived state of pure immediateness of pure freedom, then strange things start to happen. All of the subjective tendencies that you had previously identified with- all of those little selves and subjects that held open the gap between the seer and the seen- they all start burning in the freedom of nonduality. They all scream to the surface and die, and this can be a very interesting period.
As you rest in this primordial freedom of One Taste, you are no longer acting on these subjective inclinations, so they basically die of boredom, but its still a death, and the death rattles from this liberation are very intense. You dont really have to do anything, except hold on- or let go- they're both irrelevant. It's all spontaneously accomplished by the vast expanse of primordial freedom. But you are still getting burned alive, which is gosh, just the most fun you can have without smiling.
Q:so they were onto a taste of Zen? a taste of the Nondual?
KW: well a glimmer, a taste, a hint of the nondual- this is easy enough to catch. But for the Nondual traditions, this is just the beginning. As you rest in that uncontrived state of pure immediateness of pure freedom, then strange things start to happen. All of the subjective tendencies that you had previously identified with- all of those little selves and subjects that held open the gap between the seer and the seen- they all start burning in the freedom of nonduality. They all scream to the surface and die, and this can be a very interesting period.
As you rest in this primordial freedom of One Taste, you are no longer acting on these subjective inclinations, so they basically die of boredom, but its still a death, and the death rattles from this liberation are very intense. You dont really have to do anything, except hold on- or let go- they're both irrelevant. It's all spontaneously accomplished by the vast expanse of primordial freedom. But you are still getting burned alive, which is gosh, just the most fun you can have without smiling.
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Comments
Each and every experience, both the 'dual' and 'non-dual', is mere elements, completely void of 'self', just nature. To split into subject and object and to not split into subject and object is equally delusion.
Buddha said:
In the question-and-answer section of the OP, Wilbur isn't making an ontological statement about nonduality, he's describing the experience of practice from a "nondual tradition." It doesn't seem to be delusive.
Feels funny to be defending Wilbur...
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Most people seeking understanding of a nondualistic perspective of reality seem to be looking for teachers who are into Advaita Vedanta. What Advaita points to is for the most part true. The right words are said because it is a pretty straightforward and simple to follow concept. Of course, it is trying to bring people beyond concepts altogether to a direct seeing into what is really taking place, to the core of our being. If it really did bring people to see reality then that would be wonderful. However, there is a problem in the teachings where a person, even the teachers of Advaita, turn the teaching itself into a concept. Then thinking they 'understand' the concept, think they know the truth. One cannot understand the truth behind these teachings without a direct awakening on their part. People can get high from the ideas/concepts/beliefs taught in Advaita, just as one can get high from any belief system, and then try to live by these beliefs. One of the beliefs that Advaita teaches is that there in no one to be responsible. This is the main reason this is being written, to go into this question of responsibility.
Advaita teaches, rightly so, that there is no separate self because what we think of as ourselves is just the mind's conceptual thinking. Just as there are no things; things also being concepts within the thinking mind. Everyone of course misunderstands this until they actually awaken to the fact. No matter how well the intellect thinks it understands it is still in a dream.
Take the fact that there are no things. If one does not see the reality beyond the concept, they come up with all sorts of misunderstanding. They feel that because Advaita has shown them that nothing exists, that there are no things, then the world is a dream. The world is not a dream. What we have overlaid in concepts and beliefs is real, but we cannot see that reality because we are the dream. If you believe the concepts of Advaita to be true and you haven't gone beyond those concepts, you are as lost as you were before you ever heard of Advaita.
Advaita says that there is no one to be responsible. When it is realized that there is no separate self, then who is going to be responsible? To the unawakened mind, this makes sense. However, in practice it is not that easy to get out of being responsible. Just as there is thinking but no thinker, there is responsibility without someone who is responsible.
When we awaken, it is all perfectly clear that we had been dreaming. The sense of ego is seen through, yet there is still a fully functioning something that walks, talks and has needs to maintain the body. Individual traits make up a personality. Character can take many forms and express itself in many ways. Yet, there is no one there. There is still intelligence, or the lack of it, and the capacity to use it. We don't become zombies walking around with smiles on our faces.
Many people new to Buddhism think that Anatta is a negation of an individual self, that affirms a cosmic Self. As a "facilitator" with my home Sangha who meets many new people, I have found this misunderstanding of the Dharma to be quite common.