Is non-duality actually a fundamental truth, or just another philosophy?

[rideforever]

1 hour ago, Bindi said:

This is a fundamental aspect of non-duality - 

The experience of any state or heavenly world that comes to us will eventually go away again.

That which comes and goes is not the Self. - Ramana

I wonder if non-duality isn't sometimes being mistaken for a non-dual experience. 

 

Ramana was a poor boy who got on a train and sat in a temple for 14 years and then bang it happened.   Others sat with him and bang it happened.   They do not know what happened, they were poor peniless desperate.   

 

Experiences are of objects.  Changing.

 

Spirituality is of the subject that is it's own unchanging world.

[rideforever]

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

1. Some one might punch him in the nose and then ask "Okay then .... who is hurting ?

 

I'll show you just how stupid human monkeys are.

Now this phrase "who ... is hurting ?"
What does this phrase mean.

Monkeys interpret this in one of two ways :

 

a.  Doh there isn't anyone there.
b. I don't know let's investigate.

 

(a) is not going to heaven.

 

The unfortunate truth is that there is someone there, a seed it is very small and hidden.  Very few humans even teachers can detect it.   If it is cultivated it grows into the Buddha.   Most awakenings on Earth .... well that person has no idea what happened.   We just aren't that smart or sensitive, unless we kill .... we are good at killing and sexing.   Spirituality is really on the very edge of our possibility.   Sort of.

Sort of .... because actually "just be normal" is quite a good spiritual instruction.

Edited August 18, 2018 by rideforever

[wandelaar]

1 minute ago, rideforever said:

I'll show you just how stupid human monkeys are.

 

Always nice to have someone around who is beyond all that....

[rideforever]

2 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

Always nice to have someone around who is beyond all that....

 

I fully accept I am a moonkey.   In fact I often do practices that are beneath me, because I know what my monkey needs !!!

 

 

[Bindi]

Just re-reading some Ramana words because of this thread, and I came across this:

 

Quote

 

“It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good that the great change in my life took place. It was quite sudden. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle’s house … [and] I just felt ‘I am going to die.’ …

“The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inward and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.’ … But with the death of this body, am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it.

“’So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.’

“All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. ‘I’ was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that ‘I.’

“From that moment onwards the ‘I’ or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the ‘I’ continued.” (9)

 

 

Interestingly, "I am the deathless Spirit" sounds a lot like recognising the immortal spirit. Perhaps the immortal spirit is non-dual afterall, if this is Ramana's introduction to non-duality. Neidan is after nothing more than birthing and nourishing the immortal spirit, though it requires dualistic Yin and Yang to be resolved first. It is a method, unlike the spontaneous happening that cannot be taught except intellectually. 

[Cheshire Cat]

Faith is the driver of potentiality.

This life is nothing short of a summoning current of consciousness-expanding insight. We exist as frequencies.

You must take a stand against illusion.

It is in unfolding that we are recreated. The fusion of interconnectedness is now happening worldwide. The biosphere is approaching a tipping point.

You and I are spiritual brothers and sisters of the multiverse. We grow, we self-actualize, we are reborn. Nothing is impossible.

Where there is suffering, learning cannot thrive. Turbulence is the antithesis of coherence. You may be ruled by dogma without realizing it. Do not let it eradicate the truth of your story.

 

The nexus is radiating supercharged waveforms. The goal of electromagnetic resonance is to plant the seeds of intuition rather than suffering. Truth is the healing of knowledge, and of us.

Only a traveller of the dreamtime may harmonize this current of health. We can no longer afford to live with ego. Without grace, one cannot dream.

[lifeforce]

20 minutes ago, Cheshire Cat said:

It is in unfolding that we are recreated. 

 

This ^^

[Apech]

23 hours ago, Marblehead said:

I hold that non-duality is a state of mind.

 

All things are not really One even though they emerge from the same source (the Mystery).

 

But when we live with our environment instead of just in our environment we become a bit closer to non-duality.

 

 In dreams, I think, we can experience non-duality but when we wake up consciousness returns to duality.

 

But then, I have experienced non-duality while awake even though it didn't last very long so I cannot negate the possibility of some people being able to spend more time in non-duality than I have.

 

 

 

Non-duality does not say 'all things are One' - that is a common misconception - to say things are one would be monist.  Non-duality says something more like 'although things are not the same, they are not different either'.

 

I guess I would say that non-dualism is a philosophical position but you need to remember that in the east particularly India the division between view and practice is not a sharp division.  So, for instance, those practicing Vajrayana would consider themselves doing a practice which is based on a non-dual view.  Similarly those practicing Advaita Vedanta.

 

 

[Marblehead]

2 minutes ago, Apech said:

'although things are not the same, they are not different either'.

I would never say anything like that.

 

 

[Apech]

2 hours ago, Bindi said:

This is a fundamental aspect of non-duality - 

 

The experience of any state or heavenly world that comes to us will eventually go away again.

 

That which comes and goes is not the Self. - Ramana

I wonder if non-duality isn't sometimes being mistaken for a non-dual experience. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'experience' means essentially 'outwardly probed' (ex = out and 'perience' = as in 'experiment' i.e. 'tested') - given this if something is an experience then it is outside while the witness to this is inside and thus there is a duality.  So a non-dual experience would be only an echo of the truth and not the reality itself.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Apech

[Apech]

1 hour ago, Bindi said:

Just re-reading some Ramana words because of this thread, and I came across this:

 

 

Interestingly, "I am the deathless Spirit" sounds a lot like recognising the immortal spirit. Perhaps the immortal spirit is non-dual afterall, if this is Ramana's introduction to non-duality. Neidan is after nothing more than birthing and nourishing the immortal spirit, though it requires dualistic Yin and Yang to be resolved first. It is a method, unlike the spontaneous happening that cannot be taught except intellectually. 

 

 

Not sure why you think Neidan (which is actually practical) is intellectual.  Also what is called spontaneous - does it arise randomly? or can we say that although it is not caused overtly - that Ramana's being was somehow in ways that we may not know prepared for this insight/realisation?

[Apech]

16 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

I would never say anything like that.

 

 

 

 

You are just trying to be different

[Marblehead]

3 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

 

You are just trying to be different

Well, I am different.  Hehehe.  And I'm not the same today as I was yesterday.

 

The only thing that can remain the same is some thing that does not change.  I see no thing that fits that criteria. 

 

 

 

[Apech]

1 minute ago, Marblehead said:

Well, I am different.  Hehehe.  And I'm not the same today as I was yesterday.

 

The only thing that can remain the same is some thing that does not change.  I see no thing that fits that criteria. 

 

 

 

 

Energy?  A river flows and changes constantly but is always a river.

[Wu Ming Jen]

When we achieve mastery we may realize that we are still at the beginning. The never ending journey is what keeps us developing as humans and martial artists. In time as the seasons change over the year, we enjoy the interaction of yin and yang, the hardships and good times come and go as do our emotions. We are not solely on our own, all is connected to where we come from, nature. When hard things happen you will know that good things will come as the ever changing cycle is the rule of interaction with us and the earth. Only heaven does not change, for humans to try to be “heavenly” interferes with our teachings. Happiness can only happen because there is sadness, Good can only happen because there is bad. None of this exists in a place where nothing changes. Taoists do not interfere with this cycle and do not hold on it, let it turn, change, come and go as it pleases.

[Bindi]

20 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

 

Not sure why you think Neidan (which is actually practical) is intellectual.  Also what is called spontaneous - does it arise randomly? or can we say that although it is not caused overtly - that Ramana's being was somehow in ways that we may not know prepared for this insight/realisation?

 

I was trying to say that the spontaneous 'awakenings' which are so often equated with non-dualism can only be taught intellectually, because their spontaneity doesn't equip the experiencer to suggest a method, whereas neidan requires practical work over time with how yin and yang are expressed in embodied reality, which leads to the realisation of the immortal spirit. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. 

 

Yes Ramana might have been prepared for this insight/realisation, but equally it took him another X amount of years in meditation to settle this realisation, and in the end he referred to non-dualism as the most appropriate philosophy available to him to explain his realisation. I imagine if he was in China his explanation of his experience might have been in Daoist or neidan terms, in a Christian country he might have used Christian terms, I only refer to his words because he was immersed in non-dualism to explain things, and developed a good understanding of non-dualism through study over time.   

Edited August 18, 2018 by Bindi

[Apech]

2 minutes ago, Bindi said:

 

I was trying to say that the spontaneous 'awakenings' which are so often equated with non-dualism can only be taught intellectually, because their spontaneity doesn't equip the experiencer to suggest a method, whereas neidan requires practical work over time with how yin and yang expressed in embodied reality, which leads to the realisation of the immortal spirit. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. 

 

Yes Ramana might have been prepared for this insight/realisation, but equally it took him another X amount of years in meditation to settle this realisation, and in the end he referred to non-dualism as the most appropriate philosophy available to him to explain his realisation. I imagine if he was in China his explanation of his experience might have been in Daoist or neidan terms, in a Christian country he might have used Christian terms, I only refer to his words because he was immersed in non-dualism to explain things, and developed a good understanding of non-dualism through study over time.   

 

Ah! Ok.

 

I would guess that a spontaneous realiser still has work to do.  I suppose a kind of finding their way back to work out how they got there.  While everyone else is trudging up that hill - but at least on arriving will have the advantage of knowing how they got there.  I think all systems at some stage will be intellectual because of the need to get the right ideas aligned.  I think perhaps this is only a problem if intellectual understanding is seen as the end point and not just a kind of helpful support.

 

 

[Michael Sternbach]

32 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Well, I am different.  Hehehe.  And I'm not the same today as I was yesterday.

 

The only thing that can remain the same is some thing that does not change.  I see no thing that fits that criteria. 

 

 

 

 

Funny. The only thing I saw change about you since I joined TDB was your avatar (which turned from a flower into an ape).

[3bob]

Does your head hurt yet?  

 

It is so simple 

[Fa Xin]

47 minutes ago, Bindi said:

 

I was trying to say that the spontaneous 'awakenings' which are so often equated with non-dualism can only be taught intellectually

 

I’m not so sure about this...

 

Yes they do point with words, but there’s nothing you intellectually understand about it.

 

 

Edited August 18, 2018 by Fa Xin

[Marblehead]

57 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

Energy?  A river flows and changes constantly but is always a river.

But you can never walk in the same river twice.

 

[Marblehead]

58 minutes ago, Apech said:

Energy?

It's always changing.  Now more Yang, now more Yin.  There is never lasting balance; but there can be harmony.  But harmony requires changing.

 

[Apech]

4 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

But you can never walk in the same river twice.

 

 

What is it that makes it the same river?

[Marblehead]

29 minutes ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

Funny. The only thing I saw change about you since I joined TDB was your avatar (which turned from a flower into an ape).

That is because I am devolving back to my Neanderthal roots.

 

[Marblehead]

18 minutes ago, 3bob said:

Does your head hurt yet?  

 

It is so simple 

You talking to me?