*DUAL/*DUALITY/*DUALISM - also see TRINITY, POLARITY, OPPOSITE, DIVERSITY, SEPARATE, MYSTERY, PARADOX
Antonyms: ONENESS, CONNECTED, WHOLE, COMPLETE, UNITY, TAOISM, YIN-YANG, BOTH, NOT-TWO, MONISM, COMPLETE, TRUTH
To be or not to be. (Shakespeare)
In Zen, the practitioner is strictly admonished to transcend all dualistic relativism. The more he advances, the more he breaks down the dualistic point of view. (Zen & Bible, p79)
God is not a relative being and therefore cannot be grasped relatively. God is immanently transcendent. Thomas Aquinas says "God is immanent in us while containing us." St. Augustine said "God is closer to me than I am to myself." God's wishes are wishes that come from a self that is more truly me than the one from which my own ordinary desires do. If we really abandon all attachments, then that which is our center is realized as 'nearer to me than I am to myself'. (Zen & Bible, p143-4)
We cannot be saved until we cut off all dualistic concepts. As mumon says: "To attain marvellous enlightenment, you must completely cut off all the delusive thoughts of the ordinary mind." (Zen & Bible, p173)
Not only are we distracted by dualism, but we succumb to overspecialization. Concentrating our knowledge in one area, we ignore the entire picture. (Tao Peace, p148)
|--------------------DUALISM (World)-------------|----Non-Dual (Monism)---
| Goddess, female | God, male | sexual embrace
| left, west | right, east | amdexterious
| interior,in,inside | exterior,out,ourside | balance
| I, individual | we, collective | unity, union, united
| one, part | many, whole | completeness
| one to many | many to one | harmony
| simple | complex | fullness
| subjective, I, we | objective, it | equally
| immanent | transcendent | all in all
| differentiate | integrate | calculus
| descend, lower | ascend, raise, higher |
| goodness,love,Agape | truth, wisdom, Eros | values, ethics
| matter,sense,empirical| mind, interpretive | spirit
| emptiness | form | creativity, evolution
| earth, worldly | heaven, other worldly | universe
| source | destination | alpha and omega
| time | eternity |
|-----------------------|------------------------|----------------------
| I | God | All in All
| profane | sacred | all
| ordinary | extraordinary | emptiness
| deceit | truth | omni-science
| weak | strong | omni-potent
| valueless, shallow | value, depth | goodness
| ugly | beauty |
| negative, evil | positive, good |
|-----------------------|------------------------|----- (Everything, p?)
After years of training, the disciple begged his Master to give him Enlightenment. The Master lead him to a bamboo grove and said to him. "See that bamboo how tall it is. See that bamboo how short it is." At that very moment the disciple was enlightened. (The Song of the Bird by Anthony deMello, The Bamboos, p20-21) I wonder if the answer to the above is: nothing (absolutely/non-dually speaking) since they are both bamboo, the difference (dualism) between tall and short is meaningless. (Randy)
'There is no duality, no "I and Thou", no "God and myself." All is one.
(Zen, p?)
Once a real breakthrough occurs, there is no longer a duality of one who experiences and one who is experienced. As Eckhart puts it, "the hearer is the same as the heard in the eternal Word. The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God's eye are one, one seeing, one knowing, and one love." Things have no substance in themselves [ wothout God] because they are empty. Eckhart caslls them pure nothinness: "All things are nothing in themselves." The ego sees them as objects, but this duality is deceptive illusion. Those who have been enlightened see immediately through this self-deception and understand that the life of God is a single reality, a continous creation. (Contemplation, p32-34)