Differences between dualism and non-dualism

[Apech]

6 minutes ago, steve said:

 

In Bön and Buddhism, the word that we generally translate as wisdom is yeshé. "Ye" means 'primordial' or 'from the beginning.' "Shé" means 'to know' or 'consciousness.' The basis of our consciousness and all life experience is considered to be unborn and undying, primordial wisdom. Perhaps it means something different in the teachings you are studying. Even in Buddhism, the understanding of wisdom varies a bit depending on one's path and proclivity. I was referring to the Buddhist meaning of wisdom because you were quoting a Buddhist discussion, not a Hindu one. 

 

PS - I'm not pointing, both hands are in my pockets

yeshe = prajna

[ralis]

9 minutes ago, steve said:

 

In Bön and Buddhism, the word that we generally translate as wisdom is yeshé. "Ye" means 'primordial' or 'from the beginning.' "Shé" means 'to know' or 'consciousness.' The basis of our consciousness and all life experience is considered to be unborn and undying, primordial wisdom. Perhaps it means something different in the teachings you are studying. Even in Buddhism, the understanding of wisdom varies a bit depending on one's path and proclivity. I was referring to the Buddhist meaning of wisdom because you were quoting a Buddhist discussion, not a Hindu one. 

 

PS - I'm not pointing, both hands are in my pockets

Hands in the pockets implies pointing at something or things. 🤣🤣🤣

 

There are a few terms that are undefined. I.e, unborn, undying, will lead to discussions of eternal, forever etc.

 

A better way is Ein Sof or totality, unmanifest. 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by ralis
Additional text.

[doc benway]

12 minutes ago, Apech said:

the wisdom which arises from Buddha hood is prajna - all words with the root jna in them indicate knowing/gnosis in fact they are all connected as words.  The pra part can mean ‘movement towards’ and by extension ‘beyond’ since you have to be  beyond to move towards.  So you could translate prajna as ‘beyond knowing’ - and is ‘explained’ in the Mahayana prajna paramita ‘perfection of wisdom sutra’ .  So arising from the buddhamind is an awareness beyond knowing and as a motivation a compassion which is beyond duality (I.e. not sentimental compassion) and expression of inseparability of all sentient beings.

 

PS I was your mother once and also you were mine.

 

Wait a minute, if that’s true we are all incestuous louts!

 

I just hope you were never my daughter...

 

I find you quite attractive

[Apech]

18 minutes ago, steve said:

 

Wait a minute, if that’s true we are all incestuous louts!

 

I just hope you were never my daughter...

 

I find you quite attractive

Bed with no supper!

[silent thunder]

22 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

Isn't wearing underwear terribly dualistic? 🤔

Pretty sure it's only if the underwear has two leg holes instead of one...

[mrpasserby]

On 5/18/2022 at 5:57 PM, Bindi said:

I don’t see why that would be. Energies exist, they flow stronger as obstructions are removed, and they make their way eventually to the central channel, No nondual recognition required. Nondual understanding will arise afterwards, but the understanding of it before entering the central channel would be a mere shadow, all to often mistaken to be the “cosmic Truth”, and no tools to see the error. 
Read Sri Aurobindo’s disclaimer:

At this stage the necessary knowledge and experience are usually lacking which would tell him that this is only a very uncertain and mixed beginning; he may not realise at once that he is still in the cosmic Ignorance, not in the cosmic Truth, much less in the Transcendental Truth, and that whatever formative or dynamic idea-truths may have come down into him are partial only and yet further diminished by their presentation to him by a still mixed consciousness. He may fail to realise also that if he rushes to apply what he is realising or receiving as if it were something definitive, he may either fall into confusion and error or else get shut up in some partial formation in which there may be an element of spiritual Truth but it is likely to be outweighted by more dubious mental and vital accretions that deform it altogether.

Wake up nondualists!

And what good is a light body? 

 

I have enjoyed reading this thread, most of the subject matter is over my head, however this question by @Bindi "And what good is a light body? ", is something that I have experience with, and in the past I have posted some similarities to my practice, that are within the context of Taoist Neidan.

Some of the things that a light body can be used for:

Spend time in otherworld temples

Conversing with other witches, mages, sorcerers, in England or other countries, to learn about references, information to arcane lineage.

Visit other mages to collect or pay otherworld debts
Work with damaged spirits to help them evolve to the next level of evolution

Passing through earth gates, to explore otherworld

Participating in otherworld initiations

Work to build otherworld domain 

 

Neidan, or internal alchemy (simplified Chinese: 內丹术; traditional Chinese: 內丹術; pinyin: nèidān shù), is an array of esoteric doctrines and physical, mental, and spiritual practices that Taoist initiates use to prolong life and create an immortal spiritual body that would survive after death (Skar and Pregadio 2000, 464 https://www.google.com/search?q=Taoist+neidan+def&oq=Taoist+neidan+def&aqs=chrome..69i57.3582j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[ralis]

45 minutes ago, steve said:

 

Wait a minute, if that’s true we are all incestuous louts!

 

I just hope you were never my daughter...

 

I find you quite attractive

 

What I have trouble with is that these teachings were developed and taught by men. More of the same old patriarchy for thousands of years. Priests in skirts.

[silent thunder]

11 minutes ago, ralis said:

Priests in skirts.

wow. 

 

just wow.

[manitou]

8 hours ago, ralis said:

Ken Wilbur has written on this in books or discussed in interviews. If I remember correctly he is in agreement with the disconnection of morality and non-dual awakening.

 

 

I love Ken Wilbur.  As I see it, there is no connection between morality and non-dual awakening.  Morality infers a subject and an object, the observer and the observed.  Non-dual awakening is to accept without judgment, just see what is.  I think it's as it says in the DDJ, that we can either embrace life in duality (ride one horse) or disconnect from duality and live in the essence (ride the other horse).  We are, essentially, Annie Oakley.  Both horses are needed for participating in the Wild West Show.

 

In non-duality, there is no emotion because there is no attachment.  Attachment is formed from prior conditioning.  The Force is an Impersonal one.  Hence, straw pups.

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by manitou

[liminal_luke]

37 minutes ago, manitou said:

 

 

As I see it, there is no connection between morality and non-dual awakening.  

 

In non-duality, there is no emotion because there is no attachment.  

 

 

I think there's a connection between morality and non-dual awakening.  It's not that awakened people can do no wrong (because they certainly can) or unawakened people can do no right (because they certainly can).  It's just that there's a quality of not being attached that comes with non-duality, and so many of the things we do wrong spring from our attachments.  No attachment, no temptation to misbehave.  

 

If I'm not attached to my partner acting a certain way, it's easier to appreciate him for the beautiful person he is.  I'm less likely to feel angry or jealous.  People without attachments don't shoplift clothes at JC Penny.  Who needs that blouse anyway?  The unattached can walk away from internet arguments without feeling the need to get in the last word -- a beautiful quality.  In general, it's way easier to mind one's own business when you dont have attachments, and minding one's own business is often the moral thing to do.

Edited May 20, 2022 by liminal_luke

[Bindi]

1 hour ago, ralis said:

 

What I have trouble with is that these teachings were developed and taught by men. More of the same old patriarchy for thousands of years.

 

 

If it is accepted that we are male/female as in Yin and Yang, I think men are more comfortable expressing the Yang side of themselves and women are more comfortable expressing the Yin side of themselves, very broadly speaking. Then the problem becomes that teachings tend to have that polarised spin to them, and unbiased truth gets lost. 
 

Though some formal systems of spiritual development make some sense to me, in general I’ve thrown everything out and prefer to start from scratch.

 

Quote

Priests in skirts.

 

Sexual abuse in patriarchal spiritual systems, surely more the male factor than the specific system, and in Tibet I gather it was overtly written into the spiritual system. 

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by Bindi

[Bindi]

1 hour ago, mrpasserby said:

I have enjoyed reading this thread, most of the subject matter is over my head, however this question by @Bindi "And what good is a light body? ", is something that I have experience with, and in the past I have posted some similarities to my practice, that are within the context of Taoist Neidan.

Some of the things that a light body can be used for:

Spend time in otherworld temples

Conversing with other witches, mages, sorcerers, in England or other countries, to learn about references, information to arcane lineage.

Visit other mages to collect or pay otherworld debts
Work with damaged spirits to help them evolve to the next level of evolution

Passing through earth gates, to explore otherworld

Participating in otherworld initiations

Work to build otherworld domain 

 

Neidan, or internal alchemy (simplified Chinese: 內丹术; traditional Chinese: 內丹術; pinyin: nèidān shù), is an array of esoteric doctrines and physical, mental, and spiritual practices that Taoist initiates use to prolong life and create an immortal spiritual body that would survive after death (Skar and Pregadio 2000, 464 https://www.google.com/search?q=Taoist+neidan+def&oq=Taoist+neidan+def&aqs=chrome..69i57.3582j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I don’t know if “light body” equals “immortal spiritual body”, I tend to think not. There’s the astral light body but this is quite limited, I feel the immortal spiritual body must be something more than this.

[Bindi]

31 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

I think there's a connection between morality and non-dual awakening.  It's not that awakened people can do no wrong (because they certainly can) or unawakened people can do no right (because they certainly can).  It's just that there's a quality of not being attached that comes with non-duality, and so many of the things we do wrong spring from our attachments.  No attachment, no temptation to misbehave.  

 

If I'm not attached to my partner acting a certain way, it's easier to appreciate him for the beautiful person he is.  I'm less likely to feel angry or jealous.  People without attachments don't shoplife clothes at JC Penny.  Who needs that blouse anyway?  The unattached can walk away from internet arguments without feeling the need to get in the last word -- a beautiful quality.  In general, it's way easier to mind one's own business when you dont have attachments, and minding one's own business is often the moral thing to do.

Are you trying to have your nondual cake and eat it too? 

[doc benway]

1 hour ago, ralis said:

 

What I have trouble with is that these teachings were developed and taught by men. More of the same old patriarchy for thousands of years. Priests in skirts.

 

True, lots of paternalism in the culture and religion.

The attitudes are slowly changing.

The first group of Bön geshemas graduated this year - it's been a long time coming. 

I'm involved in my own sangha by serving on a council that sets standards of conduct and address any complaints.

The other two members are female. 

Our organization is committed to ethical standards but we can't change the past or the system at large. 

We do the best we can.

 

 

 

[liminal_luke]

3 minutes ago, Bindi said:

Are you trying to have your nondual cake and eat it too? 

 

I don't understand your point but, in general, I try to eat as much cake as I can.

[dawn90]

j

Edited May 20, 2022 by dawn90

[Bindi]

2 hours ago, Apech said:

the wisdom which arises from Buddha hood is prajna - all words with the root jna in them indicate knowing/gnosis in fact they are all connected as words.  The pra part can mean ‘movement towards’ and by extension ‘beyond’ since you have to be  beyond to move towards.  So you could translate prajna as ‘beyond knowing’ - and is ‘explained’ in the Mahayana prajna paramita ‘perfection of wisdom sutra’ .  So arising from the buddhamind is an awareness beyond knowing and as a motivation a compassion which is beyond duality (I.e. not sentimental compassion) and expression of inseparability of all sentient beings.

 

PS I was your mother once and also you were mine.

Yikes!

 

[dawn90]

9 minutes ago, Bindi said:

There’s the astral light body but this is quite limited, I feel the immortal spiritual body must be something more than this.

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CdJzqYlJYcT/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

[Bindi]

3 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

I don't understand your point but, in general, I try to eat as much cake as I can.

There is no connection between morality and non-dual awakening, but you prefer morality and therefore create a scenario in which morality remains alongside nonduality. 

[Apech]

6 minutes ago, Bindi said:

There is no connection between morality and non-dual awakening, but you prefer morality and therefore create a scenario in which morality remains alongside nonduality. 

 

Morality is about following and promoting the good.  There is nothing more beneficial to oneself and others than becoming enlightened and/or immortal - and even more so if you then teach others.  The idea that there is some 'nondual' state which floats around untouched by this is pure fantasy.

[dawn90]

Masculinity and rape, have nothing to do with one another.

 

The reason people might think so is for the simple reason, that, female perpetrators are never denounced.

It's for the same reason we tend to associate domestic violence with violent men and never think of more passive forms of violence.

Women do it just as much as men.

Whether they get caught, is another question.

[liminal_luke]

9 minutes ago, Bindi said:

There is no connection between morality and non-dual awakening, but you prefer morality and therefore create a scenario in which morality remains alongside nonduality. 

 

Now I really am going to have that cake.

[Mark Foote]

16 hours ago, Bindi said:

BHIKKHU BODHI

Dhamma and Non-duality
 

... The teaching of the Buddha as found in the Pali canon does not endorse a philosophy of non-dualism of any variety, nor, I would add, can a non-dualistic perspective be found lying implicit within the Buddha’s discourses…

 

... Thus the Theravada makes the antithesis of samsara and Nibbana the starting point of the entire quest for deliverance. Even more, it treats this antithesis as determinative of the final goal, which is precisely the transcendence of samsara and the attainment of liberation in Nibbana. Where Theravada differs significantly from the Mahayana schools, which also start with the duality of samsara and Nirvana, is in its refusal to regard this polarity as a mere preparatory lesson tailored for those with blunt faculties, to be eventually superseded by some higher realization of non-duality. From the standpoint of the Pali Suttas, even for the Buddha and the arahants suffering and its cessation, samsara and Nibbana, remain distinct.

 

https://buddho.org/dhamma-and-non-duality/

 

Stirling, that I can make sense out of a thread in the Pali Suttas is a miracle, as far as I'm concerned.  Why there is so little acknowledgement that Gautama's teaching is a teaching about the cessation of "determinate thought" in action, I can't say. 

 

Yes, there's a great deal about rebirth, and the release from this existence (something beyond "never returning").  But as far as the cessation of habit and volition in action, there is also a thread without these concepts.  

 

I think there's a good argument to be made that the "equanimity with respect to the multiplicity of the senses" of the material concentrations involves many things, and the "equanimity with respect to the uniformity of the senses" of the non-material states involves one thing.

Here's a description I made of the teaching with regard to the non-material states:

 

In some of his lectures, Gautama went from the four initial or “material” concentrations to four “non-material” concentrations without mention of the survey-sign. The four further states, he said, marked a transition from “equanimity with respect to the multiplicity of the senses” to “equanimity with respect to the uniformity of the senses”.

 

The first of the further states was “the infinity of ether”. Gautama identified the state with “the excellence of the heart’s release” through the extension of “the mind of compassion”. He described a particular method for the extension of the mind of compassion, a method that began with the extension of “the mind of friendliness”:

 

[One] dwells, having suffused the first quarter [of the world] with friendliness, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth; just so above, below, across; [one] dwells having suffused the whole world everywhere, in every way, with a mind of friendliness that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence. [One] dwells having suffused the first quarter with a mind of compassion… with a mind of sympathetic joy… with a mind of equanimity that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence.

 

(MN I 38, Pali Text Society volume I pg 48)

 

The second of the further states (“the infinity of consciousness”) Gautama identified with “the excellence of the heart’s release” through the extension of “the mind of sympathetic joy”, and the third (“the infinity of nothingness”) he identified with “the excellence of the heart’s release” through the extension of “the mind of equanimity”.

 

The fourth of the further states Gautama described as “neither perception nor yet non-perception”. He gave no specific instruction on the transition from the third state to the fourth, but equanimity with respect to the uniformity of the senses is still present in the fourth.

 

Gautama studied the third and fourth further states under two of the masters of his day (MN I 165-166, Pali Text Society volume I pg 209-210). He remained unsatisfied, but by means of “a lack of desire”, he arrived at “the stopping of perception and feeling” and the freedom and knowledge that “done is what was to be done, there is no more of being such or so” (MN III 220, Pali Text Society Vol III pg 269).

 

(The Early Record)

 

 

"Done is what was to be done"--we act from habit and volition, until we realize action without it.  "There is no more of being such or so":

And again … a good [person], by passing quite beyond the plane of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, enters on and abides in the stopping of perception and feeling; and when [such a person] has seen by means of wisdom [their] cankers are caused to be destroyed. And… this [person] does not imagine [his or her self] to be aught or anywhere or in anything.

(MN III 42-45, Pali Text Society Vol III pg 92-94; emphasis added)

 

I can say that the extension of a spirit of friendliness or compassion throughout the room I'm in and through the walls helps my feet to dance, sometimes.  The bhikku is prohibited by his vows from dancing--I don't know where I'd be without it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bindi]

28 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

Morality is about following and promoting the good.  There is nothing more beneficial to oneself and others than becoming enlightened and/or immortal 

 

I think there is a lot of difference between ‘enlightened’ and creating an ‘immortal body’, though I do agree there is nothing more beneficial to oneself and others than doing this. 

 

Quote

- and even more so if you then teach others.  The idea that there is some 'nondual' state which floats around untouched by this is pure fantasy.

 

BHIKKHU BODHI on morality:

 

Quote

 

In regard to virtue the distinction between the two teachings is not immediately evident, as both generally affirm the importance of virtuous conduct at the start of training. The essential difference between them emerges, not at the outset, but only later, in the way they evaluate the role of morality in the advanced stages of the path. For the non-dual systems, all dualities are finally transcended in the realization of the non-dual reality, the Absolute or fundamental ground. As the Absolute encompasses and transcends all diversity, for one who has realized it the distinctions between good and evil, virtue and non-virtue, lose their ultimate validity. Such distinctions, it is said, are valid only at the conventional level, not at the level of final realization; they are binding on the trainee, not on the adept. Thus we find that in their historical forms (particularly in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra), philosophies of non-duality hold that the conduct of the enlightened sage cannot be circumscribed by moral rules. The sage has transcended all conventional distinctions of good and evil. He acts spontaneously from his intuition of the Ultimate and therefore is no longer bound by the rules of morality valid for those still struggling toward the light. His behavior is an elusive, incomprehensible outflow of what has been called “crazy wisdom.”

 

For the Ariyan Dhamma, the distinction between the two types of conduct, moral and immoral, is sharp and clear, and this distinction persists all the way through to the consummation of the path: “Bodily conduct is twofold, I say, to be cultivated and not to be cultivated, and such conduct is either the one or the other” (MN 114). The conduct of the ideal Buddhist sage, the arahant, necessarily embodies the highest standards of moral rectitude both in the spirit and in the letter, and for him conformity to the letter is spontaneous and natural. The Buddha says that the liberated one lives restrained by the rules of the Vinaya, seeing danger in the slightest faults. He cannot intentionally commit any breach of the moral precepts, nor would he ever pursue any course of action motivated by desire, hatred, delusion, or fear.

 

Some sort of moral code has to exist before we ourselves become intrinsically moral or there’d be mayhem. I think any system that hasn’t gone far enough to get in touch with intrinsic morality is half-baked and dangerous, and this is one of the reasons why I dislike ‘nonduality’ as the end result. 
 

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by Bindi

[Michael Sternbach]

"Every misfortune and crime, whatever kind it may be, usually happens out of a lack of knowledge and out of ignorance, but it serves a higher purpose as a link in the chain of fate."

 

Elsbeth Ebertin (1880-1944), German astrologer