a parade of nondual perspectives
from
www.theawakenedeye.com/nonduality.htm
nonduality
Most of the excerpts are taken from One: Essential Writings on Nonduality.
Nonduality means ‘not two’, nonseparateness.
When we speak, we speak from a disposition.
There are two basic dispositions: one from the place of oneness or “I Am” or Truth, Consciousness, God, Reality, whatever you want to call.
The second is the disposition from the Absolute, which is where the direct experience people come from. People like Tony Parsons or U.G. Krishnamurti. They say there is no God, consciousness or whatever you claim to be. They’re coming from nothingness, the Absolute. From that point of view there isn’t even nonseparateness. There’s nothing and no one. That’s the ‘real’ nonduality. That’s true Advaita. But no one can get it. You can’t do anything to get it. There’s no getting and no one to do the getting.
But we can get the nonduality that pertains to God, consciousness, truth, reality. We can get it through intention, inquiry, surrender, and different means. We can taste it and know it as our true nature, as the truth of who we are.
nonduality and art:
A mature creative life, which has discovered its source, finds it is linked to everything. When we are able to tap this source and link the illumined threads, we no longer want to live our creative lives separate from it. A creation that does not have the residual glow of its source can, at best, only sound a deathly rattle – however impressive that rattle may be.
Jerry Wennstrom
nonduality and education:
Awareness doesn’t need more information. It needs only enough information. This intelligence, the quality that mediates information into wisdom, is seldom referenced in school. If we do not include awareness in what we convey to our children, then aren’t we teaching them to be unconscious and to be consumers of an endless stream of pointless information and products?
Steven Harrison
nonduality and aikido:
The Art of Peace, begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here for no other purpose than to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all that you encounter.
Morihei Ueshiba
nonduality and cinema:
“Who were you that I lived with, walked with? The brother, the friend? Strife and love, darkness and light – are they the workings of one mind, features of the same face? Oh my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.”
The Thin Red Line
nonduality and haiku:
These intimate haiku-pauses ground us in the mystery of being as we open ourselves, time and time again, to new vistas and to keener insights into the living, changing universe we inhabit. They allow us to be attuned to the rhythm, colour, sound, scent, movement and stillness of life, from season to season, whoever, whatever or wherever we are.
Gabriel Rosenstock
nonduality and western philosophy:
Proving the nondual nature of reality is not an overall goal for Western philosophy. A few philosophers have created nondual metaphysical theories; and others have argued against metaphysics altogether. But most philosophers who dissolve or dismiss dualities are not nondualists. The dualities left in the dust by these writers are merely casualties of their other work. In fact, the cleverest and most persuasive arguments tend to come from the works focused on narrower issues. These arguments can be very helpful in the course of one’s nondual inquiry. As the old-time news editors used to say, “We can use it!”
Greg Goode
nonduality and psychotherapy:
Are awakening psychotherapists in the same lineage as the Buddha or India’s other illustrious sages? It seems obvious that any awakening or awakened beings will transmit their understanding according to their capacities and limitations in any moment. This holds true for psychotherapists and nonpsychotherapists alike. In some ways being a psychotherapist may make awakening more difficult, especially if there are strong attachments to theories about the mind. On the other hand, psychotherapists are in a unique position in modern society to offer a sanctuary for individuals to sort out their lives and more intimately explore their direct experience.
John J. Prendergast
nonduality and religion:
With the perspectives of religion, particularly Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Judaism, Sufism, and Christianity, you’ll see expression from the disposition of the Absolute. It’s important to recognize the difference between the two dispositions.
advaita vedanta:
“The essence and the whole of Vedanta is this Knowledge, this supreme Knowledge: that I am by nature the formless, all-pervasive Self.”
buddhism:
“If anyone listens to this discourse and is neither filled with alarm nor awe nor dread, be it known that such a one is of remarkable achievement.”
sufism:
“… if you know yourself without being, not trying to become nothing, you will know your Lord. If you think that to know Allah depends on your ridding yourself of yourself, then you are guilty of attributing partners to Him – the only unforgivable sin – because you are claiming that there is another existence besides Him, the All-Existent: that there is a you and a He.”
judaism:
“Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ein Sof emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid! Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say, ‘This is a stone and not God.’ God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.”
christianity:
“The truth of the body, then, is the revelation that Christ is all that is manifest of God or all that is manifest of the unmanifest Father. Self or consciousness does not reveal this and cannot know it. In the ‘smile’ there was no knower or one who smiles, nor was there anyone or anything to smile at or to know; there was just the smile, the ‘knowing’ that is beyond knower and known.”
native american tradition:
“We believe profoundly in silence – the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. Those who can preserve their selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence – not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the shining pool – those, in the mind of the person of nature, possess the ideal attitude and conduct of life.”
taoism:
Evince the plainness of undyed silk,
Embrace the simplicity of the unhewn log;
Lessen selfishness,
Diminish desires;
Abolish learning
