Differences between dualism and non-dualism

[Michael Sternbach]

15 hours ago, dwai said:

Well, then the body will go. Not much can be done about it...unless... someone gave me a tub of ice cream!

I read that as "caramel" desire  

 

 

Obviously a Freudian slip! Alright then, have another one...

 

 

I'm a soft touch. 

 

Salted caramel okay?

 

On 11.5.2022 at 4:12 PM, liminal_luke said:

I don't think people become more blob-like as their sense of self widens.  Just the opposite.  You know how salt has the magical quality of making a tomato taste even more tomato-esque?  Enlightenment is like salt.  It makes people taste like themselves.

 

23 hours ago, natural said:

Might I be invited/included?

I would love the company!

 

23 hours ago, dwai said:

There is always room for more in the not-two   

 

 

Sure, you guys are all welcome to my TDB ice cream stand! (Vouchers valid till the end of this week.)

 

[liminal_luke]

3 hours ago, natural said:

now that's unusual if not weird?

 

3 hours ago, Apech said:

 

it takes a sophisticated and refined intellect to grasp the meaning of the poetry of the non-dual.

 

 

 

Luke, who never misses a chance to ridicule the antics of brilliant but incomprehensible nondualists, invites Natural out for a beer.  Do you like ranch sauce with your fries?

 

(Just kidding, @Apech.  You're quite comprehensible.  I just wanted an excuse to go to lunch with Natural.)

Edited May 12, 2022 by liminal_luke

[stirling]

15 hours ago, Bindi said:

This post describes the first stage of my belief system

 

First - thank you for being open and sharing the system you are working in. I confess after the reading the first page I'm not clear where it is going, but I think that is more down to google translate than anything else?

 

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Finding true yin in yang and finding true yang in yin. A nondualist has no need to be digging around in dualism hoping to find anything there because they have leapt ahead to the great prize of nonduality. BUT… What if there is a prize to be found in duality first, to really make your basket full? 

 

Something I feel I haven't imparted clearly enough is that duality is ALWAYS present in non-duality.

 

This is most obviously exemplified in such documents as the Heart Sutra:

 

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“Form is emptiness; emptiness is form. Form is not different than emptiness; emptiness is not different than form.” - Buddha, Heart Sutra

 

Without the field of duality, non-duality has nowhere to obviously manifest. They co-exist, though it is always obvious that non-duality is the deeper base-level reality. There ARE prizes in duality - I have a wife, family, pets, friends. There is deeper more beautiful non-duality obviously visible in nature, love, music. If anything non-duality makes duality even MORE stunning and precious. It doesn't surprise me that you would look in duality. Perhaps the teachings you work with, or the movement/visualization/meditation you do is also precious to you.

 

Still, understanding the non-dual nature of reality isn't "leaping ahead". You CAN'T leap ahead. Non-dual understanding isn't the product of someone's hard work... it just happens. 

 

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To me Yin has its own beauty and true Yin is very powerful, Yang has its own beauty and true Yang is very wise. Sure once found True Yin and True Yang need to be disidentified from, but they keep operating without me being in control, and without their operating I would be less. Beyond True Yin and True Yang, there is the prize of actual nondual bliss, but having practiced and strengthened the ability to disidentify from limiting states, this too will be disidentified from.

Yes! Setting Yin and Yang aside, it ALL operates without you in control. Nonduality is disidentification, so I applaud your intended goal. The difference between your typical awakened person and one that has realized no-self IS this disidentification. 

 

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This dual path I tread can only be dismissed as folly by the nondualist, at best necessary folly for my own development stunted as it is, but I will never be persuaded that the currently popular path to nonduality is anything but a dead end. We can discuss our differences, but we are highly unlikely to ever agree.

 

It might be dismissed by someone who is a non-dual philosophy fan, but no-one with realization thinks that any particular practice was what precipitated understanding non-duality completely. I certainly don't dismiss you. Whether or not you have realization, your path is your path. You will pursue what you are driven to pursue. There ARE no dead ends. There are no enlightened people, just the recognition of enlightenment  by itself. 

 

Thank you for sharing your experience and practice. 

[ralis]

4 minutes ago, stirling said:

 

First - thank you for being open and sharing the system you are working in. I confess after the reading the first page I'm not clear where it is going, but I think that is more down to google translate than anything else?

 

 

Something I feel I haven't imparted clearly enough is that duality is ALWAYS present in non-duality.

 

This is most obviously exemplified in such documents as the Heart Sutra:

 

 

Without the field of duality, non-duality has nowhere to obviously manifest. They co-exist, though it is always obvious that non-duality is the deeper base-level reality. There ARE prizes in duality - I have a wife, family, pets, friends. There is deeper more beautiful non-duality obviously visible in nature, love, music. If anything non-duality makes duality even MORE stunning and precious. It doesn't surprise me that you would look in duality. Perhaps the teachings you work with, or the movement/visualization/meditation you do is also precious to you.

 

Still, understanding the non-dual nature of reality isn't "leaping ahead". You CAN'T leap ahead. Non-dual understanding isn't the product of someone's hard work... it just happens. 

 

Yes! Setting Yin and Yang aside, it ALL operates without you in control. Nonduality is disidentification, so I applaud your intended goal. The difference between your typical awakened person and one that has realized no-self IS this disidentification. 

 

 

It might be dismissed by someone who is a non-dual philosophy fan, but no-one with realization thinks that any particular practice was what precipitated understanding non-duality completely. I certainly don't dismiss you. Whether or not you have realization, your path is your path. You will pursue what you are driven to pursue. There ARE no dead ends. There are no enlightened people, just the recognition of enlightenment  by itself. 

 

Thank you for sharing your experience and practice. 

Could you attribute the quotes from the person you are quoting? You have four and are they from Bindi’s post? 

[doc benway]

2 hours ago, ralis said:

Defining non-dual etc. will take an infinite length of time. An argument of this magnitude will fill every server on the planet, just for starters. 

 

And politics is different?

At least we won’t blow each other up!

😁

 

[ralis]

12 minutes ago, steve said:

 

And politics is different?

At least we won’t blow each other up!

😁

 

No difference at all. 

[stirling]

1 hour ago, ralis said:

Could you attribute the quotes from the person you are quoting? You have four and are they from Bindi’s post? 

 

Yes. Unless otherwise noted, all posts proceeding a first will be in answer to the specific poster initially mentioned.

 

[ralis]

19 minutes ago, stirling said:

 

Yes. Unless otherwise noted, all posts proceeding a first will be in answer to the specific poster initially mentioned.

 

Ok.

[ralis]

It’s all phenomena and not phenomena. What lies in between?  

[Mark Foote]

13 minutes ago, ralis said:

 

It’s all phenomena and not phenomena. What lies in between?  

 

The movement of breath encounters the location of self-awareness and the influence of the senses on the location of self-awareness at the turn of the breath.  Gautama stated that those who correctly practice “mindfulness of death” apply his teachings “for the interval that it takes to swallow having chewed up one morsel of food”, or “for the interval that it takes to breathe out after breathing in, or to breathe in after breathing out”.

What lies between, indeed!

 

 

[doc benway]

36 minutes ago, ralis said:

It’s all phenomena and not phenomena. What lies in between?  

and

[Bindi]

5 hours ago, steve said:

 

 

I don’t feel troubled.

I enjoy your challenges and the discussion it stimulates. It’s been a fun thread.

 

The topic of non-duality is always a difficult one to discuss in a public forum. It’s a very tricky and subtle subject and it’s been actively disputed by many high level scholars and practitioners for millennia. You’re in good company. It’s been kept very secretive for most of that time in the Bön and Buddhist communities for this very reason. 

 

 

🙏

 

5 hours ago, steve said:

 

Believe me or not, there is something very special to it. If you are not drawn to it, best to follow what calls you as I have no doubt you will. Warning - the complimentary nature of Yin and Yang is non-dual at its very core so I expect you will bump into it again sooner or later. It can’t hurt to keep an open mind.

I don’t follow any theory, so ‘the non-dual nature of Yin and Yang at its core’ may or may not be true. What I do see instead of nonduality for me at the moment is a triplicity based on the three main channels, with the middle channel a bit higher. “The true I is my subtle energy body functioning properly”?  I think this is my holy grail, and just one more limiting attachment to the nondualist.
 
 

[Bindi]

5 hours ago, Apech said:

 

is two too many

the hearts clasp is non-jewel

someone robbed my ring.

 

 

 

Two is not enough

To wield the splendiferous non-jewel

only three rings will suffice

[doc benway]

Whether we personally connect with nonduality directly, conceptually, or not at all science is already embracing it in several fields. For example, in biology and ecology there is no way to separate an organism from its environment, there simply is no such thing in existence. Organism-environment is a non-dual continuity and yet we can speak of properties of each. Both ways of looking at the system have merit and validity.

 

If we look at ourselves closely we can find no separation from our environment. We can move around and exist within a bag of skin which makes us feel separate but have never for an instant not been directly connected in a life or death fashion to everything around us. We are a specialization of our environment, a symptom as Alan Watts has said, we are its sensory apparatus and agency of “intentional” activity. 

 

In physics, a relatively recent theory of quantum mechanics, championed by Carlo Rovelli, called the relational theory, brings us to a non-dual foundation of reality. There are no discrete objects, all observations represent relationships and there is no boundary between observer and observed. Essentially for me this is a discovery of karma and dependent origination through the vehicle of quantum physics. 

 

I thoroughly enjoy reading this stuff, when I can follow it. Here are some things to check out if interested.

 

General overview:

https://www.science20.com/train_thought/blog/dualitynonduality_duality-75423

 

Biology, excellent series of articles, the first and last in particular:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10333975/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10333976/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10485609/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10885546/

 

Physics:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_quantum_mechanics

All the published articles I can find are too technical for me but Carlo Rovelli’s book Helgoland is a good layperson’s intro.

 

https://seop.illc.uva.nl/entries/qm-relational/

https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9609002.pdf

 

 

 

 

[Michael Sternbach]

1 hour ago, Bindi said:

Two is not enough

To wield the splendiferous non-jewel

only three rings will suffice

 

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

That's three-in-One. 

 

However, that's not where the story ends...

 

 

But that's still not where it ends!

 

For it's a Neverending Story... 

Edited May 13, 2022 by Michael Sternbach

[Michael Sternbach]

11 hours ago, old3bob said:

I'd say shrinking other people (and non-dual and dual concepts) or putting them in a cast iron boxes is not going to solve the ages old quandaries that many of us find our selves in ...

 

Agreed. Shrinking people and putting them in a box is indeed not a nice thing to do.

 

 

[Michael Sternbach]

10 hours ago, awaken said:

如果把非二元當成宇宙論或者哲學

那還不如去看中國神仙動畫

可能更有趣些

 

 

If one think of non-duality as cosmology or philosophy

 

The human being is a microcosm.

 

As above, so below.

As within, so without.

 

It's All One.

 

Truth can be found everywhere...

 

10 hours ago, awaken said:

It's better to watch Chinese fairy animation

maybe more interesting

 

 

 

Not least in mythology (modern and ancient).

 

Thanks, I love anime.

[Bindi]

Nonduality is the ultimate trump card. 

[doc benway]

19 minutes ago, Bindi said:

Nonduality is the ultimate trump card. 

Definitely, I have a very close friend and confidante. We discuss deep matters often and I used to have a tendency to play the non-dual card. It would piss him off and he was very direct so I learned how irritating and unhelpful it can be through his feelings. I try to be sensitive to that.

[ralis]

5 hours ago, steve said:

and

And what? I don’t have any answers. Do you?

Edited May 13, 2022 by ralis

[ralis]

There may be no difference except in one's perception.

[Michael Sternbach]

10 hours ago, stirling said:

 

When you meditate, and the mind is quiet and empty listen carefully. Does a birds call sound like it comes from your ear, or from out in the forest, or down the street somewhere. 

 

I did my homework: The sounds that things make sound like they come from where those things that make those sounds are located.

 

How does this prove that my senses are empty, now? (Apart from the obvious conclusion that, if my ears were clogged, I wouldn't be hearing anything. )

 

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I am saying that your mental model of how you perceive reality is wrong.

 

How so? Please enlighten me!

 

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I would also suggest that reality AS YOU UNDERSTAND IT is has illusory elements that you fill in.

 

This may well be the case.

 

On the other hand, the conscious mind filters out MOST of the data the senses receive, as its processing capabilities are rather limited. Temporarily lifting the veil comes with an unforgettable shock, IME.

 

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It isn't the philosophical understanding you are after but the experiential understanding. Your experience isn't an abstraction is it?

 

Again, if you have any useful suggestions  to make how I could experience my the 'emptiness' of my senses - I'm all ear.

 

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Right. Why should any of your senses get a pass?

 

Mind you, I did not claim that I am living in a continuous state of non-dual perception in the first place.

 

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As a conceptual overlay it is difficult to fathom, but doesn't seem impossible. As an experiential understanding it is much easier to apprehend, though it require the complete remediation of your world view.

 

In other words, it requires that I would become a Buddhist.

 

Hey, guess what? Been there, done that! (Well, at least I gave it a fair try.)

 

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Sounds much like many spiritual propositions designed to back the mind into a corner! Could be useful, I imagine. 

 

 

Is the Coulomb force something you can touch or apprehend with your own experience, or merely a philosophical construct that does a fine job of explaining a phenomena?

 

Science indeed creates models and theories for explaining reality. And yes, the 'problem' with that is that a theory can never be rigorously proven right (though it may be possible to prove it wrong). You just never know what you don't know!

 

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Science has a way of treating it's models as realities that isn't healthy... or is unintentionally hilarious. This once recently made me laugh out loud:

 

https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/36726/20220322/dark-matter-evidence-anti-universe-running-backward-through-time-mirrors.htm

 

So... we need to create a conceptual universe in which time runs backwards in order to make the entirely theoretical existence of dark matter work? 

 

I fully agree that when scientists, in order to support a theory, must introduce too many additional assumptions, they end up with nothing but a fruitless act of mental masturbation.

 

Ironically, most of the arguments that non-dualists (especially of the Buddhist variety) make strike me as little more than that.

 

More ironically yet, they tend to go to great lengths defending their concepts as evident, even when it's quite clear that they are simply regurgitating what they learned from some teacher. But they never see themselves (perhaps because they have 'no self' in the first place )!

 

This was a general rant, not aimed at anyone in particular - just talking from my personal experience.

 

And I find Buddhist studies quite worthwhile in some respects nevertheless.

 

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Science as a religious experience! I don't think you are alone in having such experiences. 

 

The experience I made was neither a scientific nor a religious one.

 

For modern science, stars are hardly more than dumb gas balls with thermonuclear processes happening inside them. You seemed to consent, that's what incited me to tell you about my experience.

 

Since that's what it was, when I fortunately got a glimpse at the higher-dimensional 'mental' activity of the Sun: A perceptual experience taking place in an altered state of consciousness. It totally took me by surprise and was not conceptually based in any way.

 

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This is the beauty of Dependent Origination. If all things exist dependent on other things for their existence, how many independently existing things ARE there?

 

Well, I didn't suggest that things exist independently - only that they can correctly be perceived as having boundaries.

 

And I already agreed that looking at them as parts of a continuum of interconnecting forces is possible too.

 

As I said, it's a matter of what aspect you would focus on. Both perspectives are viable in my view.

 

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It is less important what a Zen priest thinks of your theory, and MORE important what your experiential knowledge tells you. Keep looking!

 

 

The thinking mind seems to have endless facility to obfuscate what can be seen. It is as it is.

 

Believe it or not, the things I am sharing on this board are not mere speculations, but based on my deep-felt personal experiences (unless I would expressly state otherwise, of course).

Edited May 13, 2022 by Michael Sternbach

[Michael Sternbach]

2 hours ago, Bindi said:

Nonduality is the ultimate trump card. 

 

Please try to avoid the 'T' word.

[Bindi]

31 minutes ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

Please try to avoid the 'T' word.

Nonduality is the ultimate ex-president of the United States card

[Bindi]

3 hours ago, steve said:

Definitely, I have a very close friend and confidante. We discuss deep matters often and I used to have a tendency to play the non-dual card. It would piss him off and he was very direct so I learned how irritating and unhelpful it can be through his feelings. I try to be sensitive to that.

You used to have a tendency?