What does Nonduality correspond to in Buddhism?
score:8
There's an article on that subject Dhamma and Non-duality by Bhikkhu Bodhi.
The following is basically all direct quotes from that article, except very summarized (I'm extracting sentences and sentence fragments).
Non-dual system
For the Vedanta, non-duality (advaita) means the absence of an ultimate distinction between the Atman, the innermost self, and Brahman, the divine reality, the underlying ground of the world.
The Mahayana schools, despite their great differences, concur in upholding a thesis that, from the Theravada point of view, borders on the outrageous. This is the claim that there is no ultimate difference between samsara and Nirvana, defilement and purity, ignorance and enlightenment. For the Mahayana, the enlightenment which the Buddhist path is designed to awaken consists precisely in the realization of this non-dualistic perspective.
Not a non-dual system
As for the Theravada tradition:
Virtue
- Non-duality: the adept isn't bound by rules because "The sage has transcended all conventional distinctions of good and evil"
- Theravada: "the liberated one lives restrained by the rules of the Vinaya, seeing danger in the slightest faults"
Meditation:
- Non-duality: defilements are mere appearances devoid of intrinsic reality
- Theravada: hindrances are "causes of blindness, causes of ignorance, destructive to wisdom, not conducive to Nibbana"
Wisdom:
- Non-duality: concrete phenomena, in their distinctions and their plurality, are mere appearance, while true reality is the One: either a substantial Absolute (the Atman, Brahman, the Godhead, etc.), or a metaphysical zero (Sunyata, the Void Nature of Mind, etc.). For such systems, liberation comes with the arrival at the fundamental unity in which opposites merge and distinctions evaporate like dew
- Theravada: wisdom not in the direction of an all-embracing identification with the All, but toward disengagement and detachment, release from the All
So to answer your question, if I understand the article, it's saying that "non-duality" in Buddhism includes statements like "nirvana and samsara are the same" and "everything is equally empty" ... but non-duality is not a feature of Theravada Buddhism (it's a feature of Mahayana Buddhism, and of Tantrayana).
Upvote:2
The experience of form is very sobering, that is when we encounter a person who is angry or destitute, we experience the wrath or the suffering of the person.
When we experience the world as empty we see that the angry or destitute person is empty in that its physical existence is dependent on conditions and the the way we see the situation is dependent on our own conditioned mind, created by our own conditioned mind.
Supposing we do not understand what the person is saying then our experience would be totally different.
And supposing that someone tell us that some of these destitute persons are actually some stingy millionaires and we believe those stories, then our perspectives become different.
These are just simple examples on how the world is illusory because it is perceived in a way that is conditioned by the mind.
Now if we pursue further we can say that since physical forms are empty and the visual forms are also empty because it is illusory. The world is empty!
If we just engaged with just the formless then we become complacent and stay at equanimity, if we see emptiness correctly; if we did not see emptiness correctly, it becomes coldness, or even cruelty.
Engaging with just the formless is an extreme. Just try saying to a tree, falling in your direction that it is empty and see what the result is!
Engaging with just the form is what most people do that, believing things to be solid, that there is a "person" purposely doing all those things to annoy us.
When we see the middle way, both the form and the formless as being the true aspects of reality (both conventional and absolute), then we can act compassionately, or with the perception of oneness.
How? Is another question!
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