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#4185 -
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Today's issue is an
excerpt, featuring Greg Goode, from the
Nonduality America site. Greg responds to the question, What Is
Nonduality?
Visit Nonduality America at
http://nondualityamerica.wordpress.com/
What Is
Nonduality?
GREG GOODE: In the last few years I’ve encountered
more and more people who don’t resonate with the usual
teachings in which nonduality is explained as singularity, unity
or awareness. They feel a deep yearning to realize that they
aren’t limited to an objective, pre-existing body or mind,
but don’t have the intuition that the basis of everything is
awareness. The idea can seem arbitrary.
So for these folks, I’ve used the emptiness teachings
descended from Nagarjuna. There has been great and intuitive
response where the awareness teachings didn’t hit the spot.
Since these are fairly different from the teachings on awareness,
I’ll switch gears here and discuss these round-table
questions as from the emptiness teachings. The awareness
teachings are already quite well represented here on NDA
(Nonduality America)!
For more on the background to the emptiness teachings click here:
http://nondualityamerica.wordpress.com/emptiness-teachings/
In the emptiness teachings, nonduality is a mode of existence.
It’s how things exist. They exist like the jewels in
Indra’s Net or like a magician’s illusion. Things
aren’t substantial and they aren’t lacking. Things
don’t exist in an independent, self-powered way, and they
don’t utterly lack existence either. Things are contextual;
they’re present in a way that can perform functions.
Emptiness-style nonduality avoids both of these extremes.. Things
exist in a sort of pragmatic way. When I was in the Army, we said
we were done with a project not because it had an absolute, fixed
endpoint, but rather when it was “good enough for government
work!”
The direct realization of emptiness is a non-conceptual nondual
experience in which subject and object don’t appear, not
even in the most subtle way. After this experience, the self and
world of phenomena return, but forever changed. There are no more
afflictive emotions, no more metaphysical or cosmic yearnings,
and no more gestalt that says things are really truly there or
truly missing. Instead, things are free, light, and joyful.
~ ~ ~
Greg Goode is one of the original members of Nonduality Salon and
the author of the popular book, Standing As Awareness:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0956309151?ie=UTF8&tag=nondualitysal-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0956309151