The desire to awaken often leads to a search and the discovery of some form of nonduality.

The purpose of my work in nonduality is to provide many opportunities for discovery. It considers nonduality as both a practical tool for more effective living and a pointing to what is. My work also includes the deconstruction of nonduality, and the deconstruction of deconstruction.

In other words, there’s both something to nonduality and nothing to it. Out of some colors of existence something is fashioned and it is called nonduality. But what is nonduality, really? Knowing what it really is, there is laughter, enjoyment … and another email to open!

-Jerry Katz

The emperor, who was a devout Buddhist, invited a great Zen master to the Palace in order to ask him questions about Buddhism. “What is the highest truth of the holy Buddhist doctrine?” the emperor inquired.

“Vast emptiness… and not a trace of holiness,” the master replied.

“If there is no holiness,” the emperor said, “then who or what are you?”

“I do not know,” the master replied.

p.s. Click the word emptiness to see what matters.

Science and Nonduality Anthology, Volume 1
Interviews of participants at the Science and Nonduality Conference 2009.

3-DVD set, 21 interviews, 600 minutes

The following are excerpts from responses to the question, What is nonduality? They are found on Volume 1 of the DVD set:

What Is Nonduality?

Peter Fenner:

I can’t give you a definition of it because there’s nothing to define. That’s the definition. It’s the one and only thing that can be defined, in a way, by its absence. The nondual awareness: we can’t say what it is, we can’t say where it is. In fact, it’s going beyond existence and non-existence. That’s what it means to be nondual. If we say it exists, that’s in contrast to it not existing, that’s not nondual. If we say it does not exist, that’s in contrast to it existing. So here you can already feel that we’re way beyond the mind. The mind does not know what we’re talking about. … I don’t know what I’m talking about at this point, and that is one of the ways we can point to nondual awareness.

Stephen Wolinksy:

There’s no such thing as nonduality … Nonduality is just a word, it’s a pointer. But once you have nonduality, you have duality. So the question is, is there such a thing as nonduality prior to the word nonduality?

Rupert Spira:

Nonduality as the phrase implies, literally means not two. There are not two things. It makes reference to the presumption deeply embedded in all cultures, that experience is divided into two things, one, a knower, and two, the known. … The term duality makes reference to these two apparent things, a knowing subject, which is considered to be this body, or in this body, and a known object — other, person, world — which is considered to be outside myself and separate from myself. The term nonduality indicates the true nature of our experience, which, if we make a deep exploration of our actual experience, we find there are not these two things. There is just one. … not two. … That leaves what there is truly, completely open, unnamed, untouched, but yet absolutely present in every experience.

Vijay Kapoor:

Nonduality would be not the absence of duality. It is something which transcends duality. … In our experience we have youth, we have old age, we having the waking state, dream state, we have lots of different dualities, male, female… What we find is the very basic consciousness has no duality. It is independent of time. … Consciousness has no dependence whatsoever. … The very content of duality does not have duality.

Rabbi Hoffman:

If you name it you’ve already changed it. Our basic idea about nonduality is … an infinite light with no end that has no differentiation in it, no light or dark, no positive or negative, … or any of these dualities. … We don’t supress any question. We pray our questions. Our doubts are very holy. Out of a good question comes a lot of thinking. … The question is, “What motivated the creation of the universe?” Because there was no room in this nonduality for the so-called narcissistic ego that could choose to rebel against the nonduality and assert its individuality selfishly against the nonduality. This is the puzzle of Torah. We start from there then we go on to celebrate the existence of both. What we’re interested in is the conversation between the duality, or the left brain thinking — the “I” that strategizes — and the right side, which feels part of a unity without any differentiation. How do you give way to both sides and create a conversation between the two? What we believe is that G-d is the name of the one that cannot be named. How do you create G-d as the oscillating tension between the two that exist in the conversation. My operant metaphor for that is somebody walking a tightrope.

Science and Nonduality Anthology, Volume 1
Interviews of participants at the Science and Nonduality Conference 2009.

3-DVD set, 21 interviews, 600 minutes

However, it might be another movie … of a blank screen.

Here’s another anti-definition of nonduality:

Defining nonduality is like making a movie of a blank screen and casting it on a blank screen.

Don’t think too much about the metaphor. Just realize that there is an offset between the movie of the blank screen and the raw actuality of the blank screen.

My first grandson was born six months ago.
Our entire family is overjoyed at his arrival.
My daughter and her husband are experiencing the
joys, worries and responsibilities of new parenthood.

From the immense ocean of existence, wave upon
wave of life appears for a few brief seasons upon the
shore of this world. Countless generations lived
before him. Ancestors from Greece, Italy, Armenia,
Egypt, Ireland, Cornwall. My partner is Indian, with
ancestors from Gujarat. From diverse cultures,
they survived, with amazing resilience. Through war and
devastation, famine and plague, peace and prosperity.
Mariners, artisans, merchants, scholars, illiterates,
land owners, peasants, nobles and ignobles.

With each new birth, in each successive generation,
life is renewed. To simply be alive is a miracle and wonder.
You witness this miracle in your little one, every day.

http://www.naturalchild.org/james_kimmel/human_baby.html

I hope you can acknowledge the
miracle of your own existence, which includes
the heartaches and struggles that life
inevitably brings to each and every one of us.

My beard has now turned silver with age.
A few decades (at best) remain until
the sandcastle of my body dissolves back
into the ancient sea. The years pass so
swiftly, though there are times when life
seems unbearably long.

I write to you, like an aging grandfather
writing a handwritten letter to his distant
granddaughter, offering a few words of
encouragement as you bravely move through
your difficult time of transition; as you struggle to
fulfill your many responsibilities as mother,
guide and friend to your beloved child; as you
learn to trust your innate wisdom
to further guide you along the way.

With sunrise, another day of repetitive tasks
and heavy responsibilities awaits you, until
sunset arrives again. Another dawn, another
another day, with a few precious hours to sleep
and rest, before it all begins again.

How to find courage, how to survive, how to
how to endure, how to pay the bills, how to
parent wisely, how to heal anxiety and depression.
how to handle the next crisis, how to make it through
another day without falling apart, while often feeling
utterly alone and bereft.

These are the pressing questions asked by
millions of people, by parents, and especially
by new separated or divorced moms or dads.

Not the questions of how to understand some
ultimate meaning of existence, how to decipher
esoteric mysteries, or how to become enlightened.

You have come across the notion of ‘nonduality’,
here on this NDS list. There are a few voices here
who repeatedly post the more extremist, nihilistic
versions of nonduality, in which there is absolutely
no ‘you’, no ‘me’ and no ‘others’; in which all
phenomena is mere illusion; in which you are but
a passive, helpless observer of thoughts and
events that you do not control and cannot manage.

Children go through various stages of
physical, mental/cognitive, emotional
and social development. Jean Piaget was a
pioneer in this research:

http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm

Could you imagine telling your son that he is
nothing; that he doesn’t exist at all; that you
and he are illusion; that the world is utterly unreal;
that he cannot manage his emotions or thoughts; that
others are only characters in a movie or video game;
that he doesn’t need any social skills; that everyone
else is him?

Could it be that some of the more extreme notions
of nonduality are expounded by persons who may be
stuck in idealized early stages of development?

They offer these extremist, passive,
dehumanized, nihilistic notions as some kind of ultimate
panacea for the many complex problems of daily
living and relating. You may have already noticed
that the extremist views are entirely conceptual,
and rarely if ever relate to the details of daily
living.

When reading these extremist notions, you may
wonder if the writers know something very special
and extraordinary that you do not know, and that
perhaps, maybe, if you could just ‘get it’, your
life would be magically transformed and all
distress and anxiety would evaporate like dew on
morning grass.

This is the ‘carrot of ultimate peace’ dangled
in front of the anxious human being; the shining
pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, promising
the confused person easy riches of calm, wisdom
and compassion. This carrot is but a sludge of
rotted turnip and that pot of gold that is but a
heap of rusted metal.
Fortunately, there is no magical, ultimate cure-all
to permanently dispel all anxiety on this, or any,
internet list. The work of becoming aware,
skillful and wise is the long work of a lifetime.

There is however, your innate bravery to move
through the seemingly overwhelming challenges
of life, with steady progress and many setbacks along
the way, day by day.

There is your innate courage to bear mental and
emotional discomfort and anxiety; to
discover that mental and emotional discomfort
can be endured, without panic.

There is your innate resilience, as you go through
difficult experiences.

There is your growing wisdom, which discovers
that you are not a victim, but
rather, you are the now one who is fully
responsible for your own actions and their
consequences and for the quality of your
life and the life of your son.

Mistakes, many mistakes, must be
made along the way. All opportunities to learn,
adapt and make wiser decisions.

Last week, my youngest son talked about
how good it is to learn from mistakes. He
said he recalled what I had told him
numerous times. “It is a foolish man
who cannot learn from his own mistakes.
It is a wise man who can also learn from
the mistakes of others.” I learned that
from my Greek mother who is now dead. She
learned it from her grandmother, who in
turn heard it spoken from her grandmother.
Small, golden stands of hard earned wisdom
passed along through the resilient generations.

Life will reach out to you, in the form of
different personalities. As you also reach
out, you will find wise mentors, councilors or
friends in your community who know, through their
own direct life experiences, skillful ways to heal
and wise ways to navigate the rough waters.
Practical life skills will be learned, gradually,
day by day, with incremental progress
and many setbacks.

Mature spiritual teachings will balance
any ultimate views with the unavoidable
requirements and responsibilities of ordinary,
daily living and relating.

The NDS Daily Digest can be a source of
inspiration and further exploration. Jerry offers
a variety of ‘nondual’ perspectives in his collations.
Gloria Lee is a very special woman who is especially
careful to balance various views, and include down
to earth, practical perspectives that re-humanize
perspectives that over-emphasize dehumanization.

Hopefully, other list members can point you to various
wise resources for your consideration. Resources that are
not mired in mere concepts, but grounded in down to earth
skillful methods.

I wish you all the very best.

JP

“The dark night of the soul is slap-up against the treasure and my life has been about that. I am called to write and speak about the darkness and the light and they always go together and there’s always a punchline to the darkest hour.”

Listen about a broken heart, a broken life, a broken mind, and its sharing:

No_Shit.mp3

Vicki’s home page.

Into the demon’s mouth…

Milarepa, who lived in the eleventh century, is one of the heroes of Tibetan Buddhism, one of the brave ones. He was also a rather unusual fellow. He was a loner who lived in caves by himself and meditated whole heartedly for years. He was extremely stubborn and determined. If he couldn’t find anything to eat for a couple of years, he just ate nettles and turned green, but he would never stop practicing.

The story goes that one evening Milarepa returned to his cave after gathering firewood, only to find it filled with demons. They were cooking his food, reading his books, sleeping in his bed. They had taken over the joint. He knew about the teaching of the nonduality between self and other, but he still didn’t quite know how to get these guys out of his cave. Even though he had the sense that they were a projection of his own mind- all the unwanted parts of himself- he didn’t know how to get rid of them.

So first he taught them the dharma. He sat on this seat that was higher than they were and said things to them about how we all are one. He talked about compassion and emptiness and other key Buddhist teachings. Nothing happened. The demons were still there. Then he lost his patience and got angry and ran at them. They just laughed at him. Finally he gave up and just sat down on the floor saying, “I’m not going away and it looks like you’re not either, so let’s just live here together.”

At that point, all of them left except one. Milarepa said “This one is particularly vicious.” (We all know that one. Sometimes we have lots of them like that. Sometimes we feel that’s all we’ve got.) He didn’t know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of the demon and said, “Just eat me up if you want to.” Then that demon left too. The moral of the story is, when the resistance is gone, so are the demons.
~ The Pocket Pema Chodron

Wraith in Wings writes…

I’d like to say something about self love, and not in the sniggering wink wink nudge nudge kind of way. I mean genuine self love, self forgiveness, appreciation, and recognition.

All my young adult life, and perhaps when I was younger, though I don’t recall very well my state of self awareness back then, I have struggled with this very anti Western concept.

The Western world is big on swagger and ego, but low on genuine self esteem, and I found self love a very hard concept to wrap my mind around. I asked myself, Why the hell would I want to do that? What benefit is there?

(As a matter of fact, I was outside on the phone with my partner, banging my head against the wall in frustration (literally, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit) yelling at him for even suggesting something (so ridiculously stupid) as just showing a little simple loving kindness to myself.)

The more I’ve delved into my understanding of teachings of mindfulness, awareness, acceptance, and that simple loving kindness, the more I’ve sensed a deep change in my own personal awareness and sense of self. I find a deeper sense of self respect in being true to even my darkest hurts and shames and addictions.

The Western philosophy we’ve had drilled into our brains since infancy is that we hide the dirty ugly things and fear in a big kind of way our own belief of our badness. Churches mediate to their respective god heads for that ever elusive forgiveness for sins, perhaps forgiveness they can never give themselves.

I’ve seen how the shift in mindset has changed my actions. Oh yes, the urges to lapse, to panic, to hurt myself in major ways still pop up into my head and scream for attention, just because they are so used to living here. They want to share my bed, eat my food, hide my keys and take the mate to my sock.

Just as in the story at the beginning of this entry, I used to scream at these demons. I screamed, I raged, I begged. I threw things, I broke things, I cried. I generally made a huge mess. And then it slowly stopped mattering. They live in this little house along with me , I couldn’t rage against that machine anymore, I had to accept them. They were here, and so was I. I wasn’t going anywhere, even though many times I thought ending it all would be the answer.( If I was going down, they were going down with me, right?) Slowly I let them sit next to me through the day, I listened to the chatter, and I let it float by me, unarmed thoughts, untouched clouds, harmless.

And the world shifted.

This is a big deal for me, something I felt worth sharing.

~ ~ ~

This entry is reproduced from the Live Journal of Wraith in the Wings: http://wraithinwings.livejournal.com/13524.html. It was composed by someone known as Wraith in Wings and was not written by the owner of this blog.

The fog is a lightest when standing as suchness.

When the fog disappears altogether, a different kind of description of the world and reality appears.

What is seen these days is a lot of the fogless descriptions, confessions, showings. They form the genre known as neo-advaita, which tries to cut out the middle man of suchness. It tries to cut out all middle men except the neo-advaita teachers themselves.

It is not hard to see that neo-advaita teachers are saying the same thing in different ways. When that is seen, the suchness of neo-advaita is seen. Then it is possible that the suchness of all things is seen and is seen looking back at you. And the fog is lightest at suchness.

What the neo-advaitins (don’t know what else to call them) are talking about can’t be known in the same way suchness is known. All you can know is suchness. That’s all that can be taught and it is the most high spiritual experience. It is pure love.

What the neo-advaitins are talking about is exactly what is, “this,” and it can’t be expressed. Every expression of “this” has to rent a room at the hotel of suchness. But the fog is the lightest there.

So what can be done to know “this”? Absolutely nothing, except to depend upon a neo-advaita teacher to tell you more about it, to confess what it’s like to be/not be “this.” But the fog is quite light there.

I always wonder why these people are called teachers as most of their students do not understand their teachings or leave any way different. I always wonder is any of them “enlightened” or just selling the nonduality belief system. All of their stories can easily be dismantled and shown to be based on thought and copied from others. I always wonder this. One even said to me privately, “I worry less about death!” Certainly despite reading their books and going to their lectures I only left with ideas in my head.

Response:

For me, these guys are reminding the reader or listener that he or she exists. If someone picks up on that and values it and pursues it, then they may find they don’t exist!

That’s paradox, to exist and not exist non-separately. If inclined, that one may spin claims, confessions, declarations, assertions, reports about … that. Whatever it is.

It’s true that it’s easy to copy the neo-advaita way of talking without ever having actually spun the silk of paradox. A few may be doing that.

Since so many people don’t realize they exist and don’t value and pursue that, or are hesitant to talk about it, they will consider the one who does have a familiarity with his or her existence, and who speaks confidently about it, to be a kind of guru, even if that familiarity isn’t very deep or stable.

It comes to be seen that every atom is the guru. Then in the seen suchness of the guru, the guru falls away, and what remains is … what? What to call it? Out of the silk of paradox spin something.