Bindi

Yes, this ^

This is related to neidan, something like immortal spirit self-replication from memory.

Just some more crap.

My mistake, just some crap.

A. It is my experience, and B. when I saw a reference to it in sifting through various writings on Neidan I resonated with the idea.

Yes wu wei is non-interference, and I agree it appears to be the point of Daoism. But wu wei is not alchemy. We can only disagree on this point. To me chaos exists because Yang is not 'conjoined' with Yin naturally. Trying not to rock the boat mentally or emotionally cannot fundamentally change the initial opposition between Yin and Yang, though I suspect that might be the main method people cling to. To me this method would seem to require endless effort, because the fundamental principle hasn't changed, but it can resemble true balance.

My information on Buddhist influence regarding the term is unfortunately only from wikipedia. 'Cultivating Stillness - a Taoist Manual for Transforming Body and Mind' - Laozi again? If his philosophical approach is wu wei, I imagine his manual for transforming body and mind would rely heavily on cultivating stillness. A little calmness and quietness are required in order to attend to the energies within, but alchemical transformation requires a lot more than just stillness to be cultivated. First you wei and then wu wei remains the principle of alchemy.

It also might occur to one who is not wilfully jealous that the non-dual emperor isn't actually wearing any clothes.

Yin and Yang should ideally complement each other. But, Yin and yang are not complementary without work to make them so, they are out of sync, uninvolved, they have different agendas, they have different modes of operating which when not working together mean fundamental order cannot be attained. With neidan they come to work in a mutually dependant manner, what yin lacks Yang provides, and together they create order where before there had been chaos and separation. Is this interdependence?

Confucianism and Buddhism have altered the meaning of wuji. Originally it meant infinite and boundless, without end, limitless. In the 11th century wuji was redesignated as 'stillness' where Wu = Nothingness, Void, Zero; Chi = Energy. Neidan doesn't lead to stillness or emptiness or void, it leads to refined energy and fullness and the birth of an immortal Self, and that Self continues to multiply endlessly. Is this philosophically speaking a non-dual or a dual outcome?

The laboratory for Neidan is the body. The dantians and channels in the body/subtle body, the brain area, anywhere within the body. I am aware of the current scientific understanding of left and right processing styles, but terms like conscious and unconscious are very apt for yin and yang qualities, as are left and right.

Isn't yin-yang unashamedly dual? Male/female, left/right, conscious/unconscious, how could duality be anything else than tangible, of the body, psycho-spirituality based on the material body. Things of the earth are yin, I cannot perceive anything real beyond what is of the earth, anything else is conjecture, a philosophy that you choose to run with, that you don't even question. 'Know the white (yang), keep to the black (yin). This formula is "the model for all under heaven, eternally." What is in our bodies is a microscosm of what is in the heavens, I don't see the point of looking towards the heavens directly.

Energy is either more or less refined, and agreed it is not dual. Jing - Qi - Shen. Male/female and yin/yang duality seem to refer to the channels through which this energy flows, like the Ida and Pingala channels in Yoga, and the left/conscious and right/unconscious brain processes. It is body-based, but not just in our minds, there seems to be a deeper truth to male/female and yin/yang than just our minds creation. My position (today ) is that we cannot perceive beyond yin and yang, and any assertion that we can is deluded.

Wújí (simplified Chinese: 无极; traditional Chinese: 無極; literally "without ridgepole") originally meant "ultimate; boundless; infinite" in Warring States period (476–221 BCE) Taoist classics, but came to mean the "primordial universe" prior to the Taiji 太極 "Supreme Ultimate" in Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE). ...The term Wuji first appears in a Daodejing context (c. 4th century BCE) about returning to one's original nature.

There is yin and yang, but within white yang there is the black 'higher order and more powerful and balanced' yin essence, and within black yin there is the white 'higher wisdom and more balanced' yang essence, so True yin and True yang. So Yin and Yang reveal 'higher' yin and 'higher' yang. At this point logically my mind says where there are two layers of yin and yang, (and previous to them there was a male/female duality, so there have been three layers of duality really,) there must be another more invisible layer of yin and yang which has birthed the three layers I have perceived. A Mother principle and a Father principle. And if a mother and father principle exist, it is always possible that an ultimate mother and father principle exist before the mother/father principle, and etc etc far beyond my comprehension. To all intents and purposes eternal duality. This seems as possible as the taiji theory, and to my mind actually more likely. The balance between yin and yang I perceive as 'the observer', unmoving but still entirely related to and nourished by the yin/yang dynamic. There is probably a balance as well between True Yin and True Yang that I haven't yet perceived, but logically follows, and again that balanced observer can be projected to the mother/father principle, ultimate mother/father etc etc, always ever more refined. An end point may be so far beyond my understanding that it seems foolish to name it just 'the mother', or 'non-duality' or whatever.

I think one of the really big issues for me is that certain things have to be sorted in the dual male/female yin/yang level before trying to go 'beyond'. 'Non-dualism' tends to ignore this need, and what they leave undone is the formation of a new relationship between yin and yang that replaces separation and chaos with cooperation and psycho-spiritual evolution. What yin and yang are and how they can be understood requires a lot more understanding to occur on my part, for now I just know that this duality once resolved is a vital foundation for genuinely fulfilling progress, not only because these two forces become complementary and 'powerful', but also because they are a vital stage in the development of the subtle energy body.

This is definitely a big part of the problem, but not the only issue. Is this saying that yin and yang have no real independent identity so do not truly ‘exist’, though to ordinary (deluded) minds yin and yang appear to exist? Does the subtle body have a real independent identity in Buddhism, or energy etc? I have no knowledge of mutual interdependence, so my questions are very basic.

You could just put a pin in randomly and start there.

I would love to actually hear your explanations.

Freeing the Mind from the Prison of Non-Duality The doctrine of non-duality remains the primary influence within all major spiritual traditions which pursue self-realization. Not only Advaita but all the Buddhist schools base themselves around this concept. Moreover, non-duality has also deeply influenced the relatively independent teachers such as J. Krishnamurti who, in spite of his external rebellion against traditions, was in fact expounding another version of this philosophy. Nowadays the whole neo-advaitic satsang culture that has taken root in the collective spiritual mind is but a shallow commercialization of that very same non-dual conception. So what is wrong with the non-dual philosophy? On the surface it appears rather convincing. However, this perspective lacks imagination and the necessary self-knowledge. Furthermore, the fact that it appears convincing does not make it any more true. Intellect alone is a very limited tool with which to discover the paradoxical nature of existence. Before we begin to examine the flaws of non-duality, we need to confront the very sad fact that while humanity has developed on many levels since the times of the Upanishads and Buddha, the science of enlightenment has hardly evolved at all. We still live in the dark ages of spirituality in the sense that all spiritual teachings are based on the constant repetition of what was discovered thousands of years ago. We often hear about a global awakening or a new age of spirituality, but who is awakening to what? People are as ignorant of their true nature as they always were. The globalization of spiritual information should not be confused with global awakening. If truth be told, spirituality is just becoming increasingly superficial and so are the spiritual teachers who sell cheap and absurd versions of enlightenment to the unconscious masses. Humanity has evolved psychologically to a large extent, but it appears to have stagnated, if not regressed, spiritually. There is no one version of non-duality. The concept varies from one tradition to another and from extreme views to more moderate ones. For example, in Buddhism there is the idea of two truths: a higher and a lower truth. The lower truth accepts a certain level of duality on a daily, practical level, whereas the higher truth can be described as the absence of self or emptiness. In Advaita there are also various conceptual approaches, such as the one which accepts the existence of the personal god, Isvara, as an aspect of the one self, Brahman. It is important to bear in mind that Advaita was deeply influenced by Buddhism via the exchange of ideas between Hindu and Buddhist scholars who were fighting at the time for spiritual and political dominancy in India. Moreover, Buddha himself created a path and philosophy that was deeply conditioned by the non-dual concepts that were already present in ancient Hinduism. Buddha, like Krishnamurti, was a rebel but perhaps not rebellious enough to free his intelligence from a pre-advaitic model of reality. The intention here is not to over-analyze these different views, but rather to capture the main energy of that mind-perception which forms the major influence on past traditions of enlightenment, a perception which, in many ways, cripples the further exploration of truth beyond non-duality. The next question to ask is: does the experience of self-realization or awakening naturally give rise to a non-dual understanding? Or is it the other way around – that a non-dual concept of reality conditions the very nature and experience of self-realization? The latter question points to the role of our intelligence in interpreting any awakened state. Here, the first thing to realize is that it is exceedingly difficult to properly comprehend and reflect any awakening experience in the mind. The inner world is totally unknown and incomprehensible to human intelligence when the mind only knows how to function and orient itself in the realm of objects. Therefore, most of those who walk the path have very little ability to understand what they are experiencing when they shift into any of the awakened states. What they may translate as an experience of oneness or non-duality can easily be a trance-like condition of the mind which cannot properly grasp the nature of altered consciousness. As such, being unable to understand what they experience, most resort to interpreting their realization through the concepts offered by their respective traditions. And because the science of enlightenment was originally conceived from a non-dual philosophy, non-duality has become the paradigm for all those who lack the imagination and sensitivity to question its basic assumptions. Therefore, it is this model of non-duality that determines the interpretation of most of the awakening experiences, not the opposite. Because intelligence has such a long way to evolve, many seekers are as if blind, trying to orient themselves in a landscape that is beyond their ability to see and comprehend. This lack of orientation in the inner world naturally leads one to seek the easy solution. But to do so is to give away the creative freedom of the mind by agreeing to become indoctrinated by an external authority. Reality demands balance; existence is a play of polarities. The non-dual philosophy has come into being as a rejection of the state of separation, as if offering a simplistic resolution to it. Duality has been defined as a problem to be overcome, but this is a wrong assumption based on a false and hypocritical premise which is rooted in self-denial. Rather, one has to begin by understanding the positive nature of duality. Those who live in unconsciousness of the ego do not experience true duality; they experience insubstantiality, the pretension of living. Positive, true duality requires one to possess a clear sense of self. Duality is the essence of creation, the force through which life moves. It is present not only within the mind and senses but as an intrinsic aspect of any reality, including all the states of awakening. There is even duality in pure consciousness and in natural samadhi. This duality constitutes the base of the enlightened relationship between our sacred individuality and the light of creation. Those who do not honor our unique individual consciousness as the true base of evolution and enlightenment are the false prophets of non-duality. They give us the illusion of freedom while taking away our power and dignity. Speaking about oneness and the absence or illusory nature of ego inevitably leads to the denial of human life. But one must be wary of those who exploit such simplistic spiritual notions for their own gain, either using these notions to justify the unguarded pursuit of desire or having the power to subdue their desires and claiming sainthood through rigid adherence to morality. Those who confuse their natural disinterest in the things of the world with spiritual truth have often somewhere on the way lost the passion to live. Overall, such messages have a crippling effect on humanity, spiritually speaking. Duality is sacred. Non-duality is the passive principle of existence; duality is the active spirit of creation, the precious force through which anything and all can exist. There is no self-realization without duality. Enlightenment does not dissolve duality. On the contrary, it illuminates the consciousness of duality so that for the first time we can see what is truly dual and to whom duality refers. In all the traditions of self-realization, the most important element and understanding is lacking – who we really are. The self-enquiry of Advaita or Buddhism leads us to the wrong conclusions: it begins with the preconception that our unique sense of self is unreal and only the universal is real. Those who perform such dishonest self-enquiry already have their answer, which is based on either trying to either disidentify from our natural, relative sense of self or to identify with the impersonal existence. They are not really enquiring; they are hypnotizing their minds into another false perception, one which is taking them even further from the truth. No one has correctly answered the question ‘who am I?’ because their minds are not free and there is no space for understanding to arise. Initially, we cannot answer this question at all, not only because our higher self is simply absent, but also because our relative self is completely fragmented. If a mature seeker with the basic stability of mind were to pursue this question with absolute honesty, someone who was conscious enough to know where to look but whose soul is still dormant, he would discover as his answer the fundmental consciousness of me. Me is our innate sense of self, the subject to all thoughts and perceptions. All living beings possess the sense of me, otherwise they would not know that they exist. When our me is sufficiently developed and becomes fully conscious, it can experience itself in separation from thoughts, independent from the mind. This realization is what we call ‘conscious me’, which in some traditions was termed ‘awareness’. Awareness is not our higher consciousness but the knowledge of me in itself. For the deeper answer to the question ‘who am I?’ to arise, we must awaken to something that we are not yet; we must awaken to our potential. The light of I am has to enter our existence and integrate with the consciousness of me in order for the consciousness of our soul to awaken. When the soul is not met, not realized, one can very easily misconstrue this state as impersonal, as universal consciousness, forgetting who one is. This kind of identification with the impersonal is one of the major pitfalls on the path as it jeopardizes the actualization of our divine individuality. Realization of our pure nature is a complex process. Those who simplify it artificially have not realized themselves and are deceiving others. Furthermore, realizing who we are is not the end of our spiritual evolution but the true beginning. That beginning points in two directions: the inner and the outer – the never-ending deepening of our realization of the mystery of the inner world and the constant expansion into creation. The true subject to that evolution is our soul. The soul should not be confused with some kind of ego-consciousness. She is our higher being that must be actualized, otherwise she remains non-existent. The soul, when awakened, embraces our human nature, allowing the human in us to become whole, to reach purification and healing, and to fulfil our essential human desires. Blessings, Anadi

Using the sunny and shady side of a hill analogy (which I was aware of but chose to ignore), can you explain how yin and yang unite and reconcile their differences, and using the same analogy can you explain how True Yin is differentiated from Yang and True Yang is differentiated from Yin and reconciled with each other?

Even united yang is still yang and yin is still yin, they're just co-operative. It just sounds more like a healthy duality to me, two forces working together for the greater good of each.

I see what you're saying, maybe I have a different understanding of yin and yang. Unlike the forever changing pattern of sunlight on a hill I see Yin and Yang as more permanent qualities within our own brain level of functioning, Yang is always Yang and Yin is always Yin, and they are always paired. What changes is their focus, Yang goes from outward looking to looking towards Yin. If I were to make an analogy with the hill, an entire half of the hill would physically rotate on its axis, so I suspect I have a fundamentally different idea of how Yin and Yang operate. To me therefore I think they are still a dualistic pair, their interaction level with each other just changes. To me True Yin and True Yang follow the same principle, they exist in 'isolation' from each other, and what changes is their association with each other. It is this pattern that I imagine can keep repeating beyond our known boundaries. Any reports I have ever read of people's experience of non-duality show evidence of their non-duality state falling apart and having to be shored up by further meditation, or samadhi, or workshops, or further teaching etc. This is of course as far as I have read or heard, which is what I then form my opinion from. How could we actually be liberated from the constraints of space and time permanently while we are alive? If it's not permanent, then it's not non-dual.

It proposes a dualistic fundamental reality, which in a sense gave me the space to give my opinion on the duality/non-duality debate.

Is this a philosophy that counters non-dualism ? The principle of Yin and Yang never changes, only the point of reference. Neidan attempts to actualise True Yin and True Yang, as far as this is possible within a human form, but beyond this, beyond what can be perceived by us, this principle still operates. If an immortal spirit is produced, it too must operate within the principles of Yin and Yang. Perhaps it is more Yin, and the consciousness beyond it more Yang, which in itself becomes the force that then continues to promote further 'spiritual' evolution. If this is true, and I think this is my position on the question of non-duality from my own experience and understanding of Yin and Yang, non-duality becomes a state that can be experienced for any given period of time, but this state must falter, because true non-duality cannot be experienced. Positing non-duality and striving to attain it becomes trying to stagnate, which is simpler than suffering the machinations of dualistic evolution.