Duality

The language I am using is dualistic. It accepts that there is always a subject that does something (verb), to another (object). So, from the very start the topic of duality is confused by the language used to explain it.

To give an example, let’s take the following very common instruction a beginning meditator receives. The instructor will say something like, “When we meditate, we should follow our breath.” In that short sentence a number of incorrect dualistic assumptions are made. First, that there is a “we” that does things. In fact, there isn’t. There are bodies, but no “we” possesses them or makes them operate. Also, we do not meditate. Meditation is our natural state; as a result, it is redundant and superfluous to say a we accomplishes what we have always been. Also, breath like body is not ours, and there is no “we” to follow it. To say the sentence correctly from a Buddhist standpoint, one would say something like, “In meditation, breath,” which most people find unhelpful.

Duality confuses our life as well. Most of us believe the world and its objects are separate from us, when in fact, they are us. The ancient Sanskrit saying is true: Tat Tvam Asi, meaning Thou Art That. We are everything we see, hear, taste, touch and feel. The perception is not separate from the perceiver, they are one. Also, the basis of all existence is emptiness. We and the world are an undifferentiated emptiness that extends throughout limitless space. As a result, in the most fundamental sense there is no difference between you and me. However, when we split emptiness into you and me, this and that, we create tremendous problems in the world. We then approach what we now consider as other in a wanting, rejecting or ignoring fashion; the source of much of the world’s suffering.

It is possible to see through dualistic experience. By traveling the Buddhist path we can find there is no self, see the world is not different from our mind, and discover through the emptiness of mind that we are all one, or actually none. Realizing there is no duality is the solution to the world’s problems, any other approach is polluted by the sense of us and them, dooming it from the start.