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#3385 - Thursday, December 18, 2008
- Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Who Am I?
When the vision of Reality comes,
the veil of ignorance is completely removed.
when our false perception is corrected,
misery ends.....
The treasure I have found
cannot be described in words,
I am one with Brahman.
-Shankara-
posted by Orva Schrock to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Realization
James Corrigan
Taking up a challenge that Jerry laid down
a while ago in one of his
blog posts, I have come up with the following 'elevator speeches'
on
what nonduality means. The problem is, I cannot see how to do it
with
just one version, since different folks are, well, different :)
Here they are:
What is Nonduality?
Simple Answer:
Nonduality is the state or condition of not being separate and
distinct
while appearing to be so. It is the condition which allows us to
say
that there is no true separation between ourselves and anyone
else or
anything else in the world, for instance. When we say things like
"We are all one," or "God is in all things,"
we are
asserting that the condition we call `reality' is a nonduality.
Nondualism is the systematic description of Nonduality, or the
systematic practice of Nonduality.
More Complicated Answer:
Nonduality is the state that one arrives at when all distinctions
and
relations between `things' are removed. Nonduality is thus a
simple wholeness, rather than an "all in one" whole. It
is very
difficult to clearly contemplate such a simple wholeness, because
by
thinking about it and `conceptualizing' it, we have lost the
simple wholeness that is the real Nonduality that we were trying
to
grasp.
Nondualism according to this understanding is an error.
The `As True As You Are Going to Get' Answer:
Nonduality is ineffable.
Nondualism according to this understanding must be an apophatic*
performance. In order to say that Nonduality is ineffable, we
first
posit 'Nonduality', making `Nonduality' a creature of reason and
thus positively identifying `Nonduality' as some thing that can
be reasoned about, and then in the same breath we take away this
assertion by adding that this `what' of which we speak is
ineffable and thus beyond the reach of reason. The point is that
Nonduality is not nothing, because then we would not even speak
of
`it'; but it is not something either, because if it were it
could not be Nonduality; yet it is all things and no thing
itself. Thus
the name "Nonduality" is used to indicate a denial of
multiplicity, yet
the mind, seeing this denial may assume that it means 'one' as
that is
the opposite of multiplicity and in reasoning the mind is locked
into
certain forms of thought, amongst them the form of
contradictories. But
the name "Nonduality," while it denies multiplicity,
also denies its
contradiction and subsumes both. These words are an apophatic
performance. If you can `see' their meaning, you do not need any
more definitions.
* Apophasis - the Greek designation for language that 'speaks
away' or
'unsays' what it first affirms.
James
An Introduction to Awareness
http://www.anintroductiontoawareness.com/Awareness/Introduction.html
On Defining Nonduality
Nora
That makes a good explanation to me.
While I enjoy all the various
discussions of nonduality, I never expected to find any final
definition of it
because, as you have pointed out, it is possible to simply
"see" what it is if one
has experienced this moment of seeing it.
And, as happened to me, it quite clearly required no prior
knowledge on my
part and happened regardless of any of the particulars of my life
or my
person. The experience was devoid of any sense of
personhood. It was also one
that required no level of education, literacy, or religious
beliefs. The
experience was the explanation for itself.
So why keep discussing it? In my case, it interests me and
I have not
learned to stay in a state of awareness, which does appear to
require some effort.
We have more distractions than perhaps any group of people
in history. I
don't mean the distractions of doing some work; one can do
a lot of physical
work on auto-pilot. But a life of constant
interruption from ringing phones,
time in traffic, blaring TV sets and a variety of other
ambient noises and
demands, all competing for our attention, can easily turn
us away from
awareness, crowd it out.
And then there is the issue that perhaps we don't really want to
be aware at
all times. There is definitely a certain draw to carnal
pleasures or
thrills of the body and the mind. It seems to be a somewhat
normal state that
people wish to secure at least a certain amount of material
comfort for
themselves and this takes energy in most cases. Being
social animals, we also have to
invest energy in others in order to supply our needs for
companionship and
mutual cooperation, since few of us can meet all of our
needs on our own.
Also, one may be willing to accept more modesty in life than they
are
willing to impose on their families. Thus, even parents who
are neither greedy nor
selfish may be tempted to behave this way in the belief that
it will benefit
their spouses, children or other members of their family or
social groups
which they are aligned with. There's no shortage of
"reasons" to behave in
ways that are somewhat less than enlightened.
In fact, a great deal of evil is done under the guise of
"helping" others,
so that's obviously an easy trap to fall into as well.
While nonduality may
be apophatic, putting the lessons of it into practice does
require some
rational rigor and ethical framework as guidelines to
living an enlightened life.
As long as we are human, we have to deal with both our
nonduality and our
duality on physical as well as spiritual planes.
If there is a way around this, I have yet to see it.
Nora