No concept is more important in Asian philosophical and religious thought than nonduality (Sanskrit advaya and advaita, Tibetan gÑismed, Chinese pu-erh, Japanese fu-ni), and none is more ambiguous. The term has been used in many different although related ways, and to my knowledge the distinctions between these meanings have never been fully clarified. These meanings are distinct, although they often overlap in particular instances. This chapter distinguishes these different meanings, explores the relationships among them, demonstrates their importance for what I call “the nondualist systems,” and reflects on the significance of all the above.
The following types of nonduality are discussed here: the negation of dualistic thinking, the nonplurality of the world, and the nondifference of subject and object. In subsequent chapters, our attention focuses primarily on the last of these three, although there will be occasion to consider two other nondualities which are closely related: first, what has been called the identity of phenomena and Absolute, or the Mahāyāna equation of saṁsāra and nirvāṇa, which can also be expressed as “the nonduality of duality and nonduality”; second, the possibility of a mystical unity between God and man. No doubt other nondualities can be distinguished, but most of them can be subsumed under one or more of the above categories. As the negative construction of the word in all languages suggests, the meaning of each nonduality can be understood only by reference to the particular duality that is being denied. We shall quickly see that each of these negations has both an ontological and a soteriological function; the term is used to criticize our usual dualistic experience (or understanding of experience) as both delusive and unsatisfactory, and the corresponding nondual mode is recommended as both veridical and superior.
It is because there is “is” that there is “is not”; it is because there is “is not” that there is “is.” This being the situation, the sages do not approach things on this level, but reflect the light of nature.
— Chuang Tzu8
Our first nonduality is a critique of “dualistic thinking,” that is, of thinking which differentiates that-which-is-thought-about into two opposed categories: being and nonbeing, success and failure, life and death, enlightenment and delusion, and so on. The problem with such thinking is that, although distinctions are usually made in order to choose one or the other, we cannot take one without the other since they are interdependent; in affirming one half of the duality we maintain the other as well.
Without relation to “good” there is no “bad,” in dependence on which we form the idea of “good.” Therefore “good” is unintelligible. There is no “good” unrelated to “bad”; yet we form our idea of “bad” in dependence on it. There is therefore no “bad.” (Nāgārjuna)9
This abstract point becomes more relevant when, for example, we consider the problem of how to live a “pure” life. The implication of Nāgārjuna’s argument is that attempting to live a pure life involves a preoccupation with impurity. In order to have only pure thoughts and actions, one must avoid impure ones, and this means determining to which of the two categories each thought and action belongs. It is generally claimed that this dichotomizing tendency of mind keeps us from experiencing situations as they really are in themselves, when no such dualistic categories as pure and impure, good and bad, and so on, are applicable. These warnings are especially common in Mahāyāna Buddhism:
Dānapāramitā [literally, perfect or transcendental generosity] means relinquishment . . . of the dualism of opposites. It means total relinquishment of ideas as to the dual nature of good and bad, being and non-being, love and aversion, void and not void, concentration and distraction, pure and impure. By giving all of them up, we attain to a state in which all opposites are seen as void.
Thinking in terms of being and non-being is called wrong thinking, while not thinking in those terms is called right thinking. Similarly, thinking in terms of good and evil is wrong; not to think so is right thinking. The same applies to all the other categories of opposites — sorrow and joy, beginning and end . . . all of which are called wrong thinking, while to abstain from thinking in those categories is called right thinking. (Hui Hai)10
The second passage contains a claim that negates itself, as Hui Hai must have realized: dualistic thinking is criticized as wrong thinking, but the distinction between right and wrong thinking is itself dualistic. So, in fact, is the very distinction between dualistic and nondualistic thinking, or between duality and nonduality generally. Carried to this extreme, “the perfection of wisdom (prajñāpāramitā) should not be viewed from duality nor from non-duality.”11 Therefore such teaching naturally tends toward self-negation and paradox, due to its apparent violation of logic, especially the law of identity:
Q: The Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra says: “Whosoever desires to reach the Pure Land must first purify his mind.” What is the meaning of this purifying of the mind?
A: It means purifying it to the point of ultimate purity.
Q: But what does that mean?
A: It is a state beyond purity and impurity. . . . Purity pertains to a mind which dwells upon nothing whatsoever. To attain this without so much as a thought of purity arising is called absence of purity; and to achieve that without giving that a thought is to be free from absence of purity also. (Hui Hai)12
In other words, “purity is not purity; that is why it is purity.” This paradox — A is not A, therefore it is A — is found in its clearest form in the Prajñāpāramitā literature. The Diamond Sutra, for example, contains many instances:
Subhūti, the so-called good virtues, the Tathāgata says, are not good, but are called good virtues.
Subhūti, when [the Tathāgata] expounds the dharma, there is really no dharma to teach: but this is called teaching the dharma.13
This paradox finds its “purest” philosophical expression in Mādhyamika. Nāgārjuna insisted that the Buddha himself had no philosophical views, and his own approach was solely concerned to demonstrate that all philosophical positions are self-contradictory and untenable. In the process he had occasion to employ the term śūnyatā (emptiness), but woe to him who grasps this snake by the wrong end and takes śūnyatā as making some positive assertion about the nature of reality: “The spiritual conquerors have proclaimed śūnyatā to be the exhaustion of all theories and views; those for whom śūnyatā is itself a theory they declare to be incurable.”14 Insofar as the assertion of any philosophical position negates the opposite view, Mādhyamika may be said to have developed the critique of dualistic thinking to its most extreme philosophical conclusions. Ch’an (Zen) took this one step further and eliminated even Nāgārjuna’s antiphilosophy:
The fundamental dharma of the dharma is that there are no dharmas, yet that this dharma of no-dharma is in itself a dharma; and now that the no-dharma dharma has been transmitted, how can the dharma of the dharma be a dharma? (Huang Po)15
The result of this was that no teaching whatsoever — not even anti-teaching — remained to be taught. Instead, Ch’an masters used various unconventional and illogical techniques to awaken a student, which in this context means to make the student let go of any dualities that he or she still clings to.
But isn’t it the general nature of all reasoning to move between assertion and negation, between “it is” and “it is not”? The critique of dualistic thinking thus often expands to include all conceptual thinking or conceptualization.
You can never come to enlightenment through inference, cognition, or conceptualization. Cease clinging to all thought-forms! I stress this, because it is the central point of all Zen practice. . . .
. . . You must melt down your delusions. . . . The opinions you hold and your worldly knowledge are your delusions. Included also are philosophical and moral concepts, no matter how lofty, as well as religious beliefs and dogmas, not to mention innocent, commonplace thoughts. In short, all conceivable ideas are embraced within the term “delusions” and as such are a hindrance to the realization of your Essential-nature. (Yasutani)16
This expanded version of the critique seems to encompass all thinking whatsoever, obliterating Hui Hai’s distinction between wrong thinking and right thinking. Now the problem with dualistic categories is that they are part of a conceptual grid which we normally but unconsciously superimpose upon our immediate experience and which deludes us by distorting that experience. Yasutani’s admonition is so absolute that is seems to condemn all possible thought-processes, but such a radical “inflation” only strengthens the obvious objection to this type of critique: whether it is (more narrowly) dualistic thinking or (more generally) conceptual thinking that is problematic and to be rejected, what is the alternative? What kind of thinking remains? If all language seems to dualize, in distinguishing subject from predicate/attribute, how can there be such a thing as nondual, or nonconceptual, thinking? Can we get along without dualistic categories? And even if we can, is it desirable? The nature of any alternative — or is it no thinking whatsoever? — needs to be explained, and its feasibility defended. But the issue cannot be resolved at this stage in our inquiry. We return to the question of nondual thought in chapter 4.
What is here, the same is there; and what is there, the same is here. He goes from death to death who sees any difference here.
By the mind alone is Brahman to be realized; then one does not see in It any multiplicity whatsoever. He goes from death to death who sees any multiplicity in It.
— Kaṭha Upaniṣad17
It is due to the superimposition of dualistic thinking that we experience the world itself dualistically in our second sense: as a collection of discrete objects (one of them being me) causally interacting in space and time. The negation of dualistic thinking leads to the negation of this way of experiencing the world. This brings us to the second sense of nonduality: that the world itself is nonplural, because all the things “in” the world are not really distinct from each other but together constitute some integral whole. The relation between these two senses of nonduality is shown by Huang Po at the very beginning of his Chun Chou record:
All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and undestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought about in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you — begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error.18
This asserts more than that everything is composed of some indefinable substance. The unity of everything “in” the world means that each thing is a manifestation of a “spiritual” whole because the One Mind incorporates all consciousness and all minds. This whole — indivisible, birthless, and deathless — has been designated by a variety of terms; as well as the One Mind, there are the Tao, Brahman, the Dharmakāya, and so on.
There is a beginning which contains everything.
Before heaven and earth it exists:
Calm! Formless!
It stands alone and does not change.
It pervades everywhere unhindered.
It might therefore be called the world’s mother.
I do not know its name; but I call it the Tao. (Tao Tê Ching)19
Now, all this [universe] was then undifferentiated. It became differentiated by name and form: it was known by such and such a name, and such and such a form. Thus to this day this [universe] is differentiated by name and form; [so it is said:] He has such a name and such a form.” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad)20
Changes in one’s train of thought produce corresponding changes in one’s conception of the external world. . . .
As a thing is viewed, so it appears.
To see things as a multiplicity, and so to cleave unto separateness, is to err. (Padmasaṁbhava)21
The mechanism of differentiation identified in this passage from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad — nāmarūpa (name and form), which is a common Vedāntic description of māyā — is also mentioned in the first chapter of the Tao Tê Ching (discussed in chapter 3), where it serves the same function in differentiating the Tao. Compare too the following quotation from Chuang Tzu:
The knowledge of the ancients was perfect. How perfect? At first, they did not know that there were things. This is the most perfect knowledge; nothing can be added. Next, they knew that there were things, but did not yet make distinctions between them. Next they made distinctions among them, but they did not yet pass judgements upon them. When judgements were passed, Tao was destroyed.22
Thus we have passages from four different traditions — the Upaniṣads, Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen — which explicitly affirm the same relationship between these first two senses of nonduality: that dualistic conceptual thinking is what causes us to experience a pluralistic world.
If we compare the following two passages with the long quotation from Huang Po at the beginning of this section, we have our first encounter with a controversy that develops into a major theme of this book:
This Self is that which has been described as not this, not this. It is imperceptible, for It is not perceived; undecaying, for It never decays; unattached, for It is never attached; unfettered, for It never feels pain and never suffers injury. (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad)23
Gaze at it; there is nothing to see.
It is called the formless.
Heed it; there is nothing to hear.
It is called the soundless.
Grasp it; there is nothing to hold onto.
It is called the immaterial. . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Invisible, it cannot be called by any name.
It returns again to nothingness.
Thus, we call it the form of the formless
The image of the imageless. (Tao Tê Ching)24
These selections claim that the Ātman/Tao is not perceptible. Huang Po agrees that the One Mind is formless, colorless, and without appearance, yet he also says “it is that which you see before you.” In the next chapter Śaṅkara is quoted to the same effect: “the universe is an unbroken series of perceptions of Brahman.” This brings us to the inevitable question about the relationship between the nonplural Ātman/Tao/One Mind and the multiple sensible particulars of this world. Are phenomena merely delusive māyā (illusions) that obscure this attributeless Mind, or are they manifestations of It? Strictly speaking, perhaps the former view cannot be said to maintain nonplurality as the unity of phenomena, but rather postulates a monistic ground that “underlies” them. This seems to create another duality — between phenomena and Mind, between duality and nonduality — which becomes problematic, as we shall see. In contrast, the latter view does not necessarily imply monism at all, depending on how monism is defined. A weaker version of pluralism, that there are many things, may be compatible with a weaker version of monism, that there is only one type of thing (e.g., Mind), of which the many particulars are manifestations — a perspective which is important for understanding Mahāyāna metaphysics.
The Upaniṣads and the Tao Tê Ching also contain passages which imply another intermediate position between monism and pluralism: that the Ātman/Tao functions as a first cause which created the phenomenal world and then pervades it as a kind of spiritual essence. The first passage quoted above from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad continues:
This Self has entered into these bodies up to the very tips of the nails, as a razor lies [hidden] in its case, or as fire, which sustains the world, [lies hidden] in its source.25
There is the same claim in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad:
As the same nondual fire, after it has entered the world, becomes different according to whatever it burns, so also the same nondual Ātman, dwelling in all beings, becomes different according to whatever It enters. And It exists also without.26
Such a view may be criticized as incomplete — as tending toward, but stopping short of, complete nonduality in the second sense; despite differences in their perspective, neither Huang Po nor Śaṅkara would accept such a distinction between pervader and pervaded. Perhaps the difference is due to the unrigorous nature of these early works, for both the Tao Tê Ching and the Upaniṣads are collections of mystical insights rather than systematic philosophical works.
It is noteworthy that, although there are many references to the Tao in Taoist texts and to Ātman/Brahman in Vedānta, there are fewer such references in Buddhism. There is not even any agreed-upon term; a variety of expressions are used: dharmadhātu, dharmakāya, tathatā, vijñāptimātratā, and so on. These are all Mahāyāna terms; there is no good equivalent in Pāli Buddhism because early Buddhism is more pluralistic in its preoccupation with the interrelations of dharmas. Generally, Buddhism, with the exception of Yogācāra, is hesitant to assert a nondual whole in this second sense, preferring to emphasize that everything is empty (śūnya) while offering admonitions against dualistic thinking. This inverse proportion is quite logical: dualistic thinking in the broad sense includes any conceptual labeling, hence one should not name even the nondual whole. After all, any Tao that can be Tao’d is not the real Tao.
I came to realize clearly that mind is no other than mountains, rivers, and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars.
–Dōgen27
We have seen the connection between the first two dualities: it is because of our dualistic ways of thinking that we perceive the world pluralistically. The relationship between the corresponding nondualities is parallel: the world as a collection of discrete things (including me) in space and time is not something objectively given, which we merely observe passively; if our ways of thinking change, that world changes also for us. But there is still something lacking in this formulation. By itself it is incomplete, for it leaves unclarified the relation between the subject and the nondual world that the subject experiences. It was stated earlier that the nondual whole is “spiritual” because the One Mind includes my mind, but how consciousness could be incorporated has not been explained. The world is not really experienced as a whole if the subject that perceives it is still separate from it in its observation of it. In this way the second sense of nonduality, conceived objectively, is unstable and naturally tends to evolve into a third sense. This third sense, like the other two, must be understood as a negation. The dualism denied is our usual distinction between subject and object, an experiencing self that is distinct from what is experienced, be it sense-object, physical action, or mental event. The corresponding nonduality is experience in which there is no such distinction between subject and object. However extraordinary and counterintuitive such nonduality may be, it is an essential element of many Asian systems (and some Western ones, of course). Since the primary purpose of this work is to analyze this third sense of nonduality, it is necessary to establish in detail the prevalence and significance of this concept.
■ ■ ■ ■
We begin with Vedānta. Several of the most important passages in the Upaniṣads assert this nonduality; for example, these famous ones from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka:
Because when there is duality, as it were, then one smells something, one sees something, one hears something, one speaks something, one thinks something, one knows something. [But] when to the knower of Brahman everything has become the Self, then what should one smell and through what, what should one see and through what, [repeated for hearing, speaking, thinking, and knowing]? Through what should one know That owing to which all this is known — through what, O Maitreyī, should one know the Knower?
And when [it appears that] in deep sleep it does not see, yet it is seeing though it does not see; for there is no cessation of the vision of the seer, because the seer is imperishable. There is then, however, no second thing separate from the seer that it could see. [To emphasize the point, this verse is repeated, in place of seeing substituting smelling, tasting, speaking, hearing, thinking, touching, and knowing.]28
The nonduality of subject and object also constitutes the heart of the short Īśā Upaniṣad: “To the seer, all things have verily become the Self: what delusion, what sorrow, can there be for him who beholds that oneness?”29 The Taittirīya Upaniṣad concludes with it:
He [who knows Brahman] sits, singing the chant of the nonduality of Brahman: “Ah! Ah! Ah!”
“I am food, I am food, I am food! I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food! I am the uniter, I am the uniter, I am the uniter!
“. . . He who eats food — I, as food, eat him.”30
So many other passages could be cited that I can say, with no exaggeration, that asserting this third sense of nonduality constitutes the central claim of the Upaniṣads. It is most often expressed as the identity between Ātman (the Self) and Brahman, implied by the most famous mahāvākya (great saying) of all: tat tvam asi (that thou art).31 Such an interpretation is of course crucial to Advaita (lit., nondual) Vedānta, and the great Advaitin philosopher Śaṅkara devoted an entire work to expounding it, the short Vākyavṛtti. A stanza from the Ātmabodha gives a clear and succinct expression of his view:
The distinction of the knower, knowledge, and the goal of knowledge does not endure in the all-transcendent Self. Being of the nature of Bliss that is Pure Consciousness, it shines of Itself.32
In his commentary on passages from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka quoted above, Śaṇkara insists that our usual sense of subject–object duality is delusive:
When, in the waking or dream state, there is something else besides the self, as it were, presented by ignorance, then one, thinking of oneself as different from that something — though there is nothing different from the self, nor is there any self different from it — can see something.33
The phrase “as it were” (Sanskrit, iva) emphasizes that the appearance to the subject of something objective is what constitutes avidyā, ignorance or delusion. This claim is by no means unique to Vedānta; it is found in virtually all the Asian philosophies that assert this third sense of nonduality: our experience not only can be but already is and always was nondual; any sense of a subject apart from that which is experienced is an illusion. According to this view, it is not correct to say that our usual experience is dualistic, for all experience is actually nondual. The spiritual path involves eliminating only the delusion of duality. However variously the different systems may otherwise characterize this nondual reality, the goal is simply to realize and live this nondual nature.
The foremost Advaitin of the twentieth century supports and restates the traditional Vedāntic position on nonduality:
The duality of subject and object, the trinity of seer, sight and seen can exist only if supported by the One. If one turns inward in search of that One Reality, they fall away.
The world is perceived as an apparent objective reality when the mind is externalized, thereby abandoning its identity with the Self. When the world is thus perceived the true nature of the Self is not revealed; conversely, when the Self is realized the world ceases to appear as an objective reality. (Ramana Maharshi)34
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Advaita Vedānta clearly asserts nonduality in our third sense, to the extent of making it the central tenet. The case of Buddhism is more complicated. Ontologically, Pāli Buddhism, which bases itself on what are understood to be the original teachings of the Buddha, seems pluralistic. Reality is understood to consist of a multitude of discrete particulars (dharmas). The self is analyzed away into five “heaps” (skandhas) which the Abhidharma (the “higher dharma,” a philosophical abstract of the Buddha’s teachings) classifies and systematizes. So early Buddhism, while critical of dualistic thinking, is not nondual in the second, monistic, sense. Regarding the nondifference of subject and object, the issue is less clear. While the second sense of nonduality logically implies some version of the third, it is not true that a denial of the second sense implies a denial of the third. The world might be a composite of discrete experiences which are nondual in the third sense. I am not acquainted with any passage in the Pāli Canon that clearly asserts the nonduality of subject and object, as one finds in so many Mahāyāna texts. But I have also found no denial of such nonduality. One may view the anātman (no-self) doctrine of early Buddhism as another way of making the same point; instead of asserting that subject and object are one, the Buddha simply denies that there is a subject. These two formulations may well amount to the same thing, although the latter may be criticized as ontologically lopsided: since subject and object are interdependent, the subject cannot be eliminated without transforming the nature of the object (and vice versa, as Advaita Vedānta was aware). This issue is discussed in chapter 6 as part of a broader consideration of the ontological differences between Buddhism and Vedānta.
Mahāyāna Buddhism abounds in assertions of subject–object nonduality, despite the fact that the most important Mahāyāna philosophy, Mādhyamika, cannot be said to assert nonduality at all, since it makes few (if any) positive claims but confines itself to refuting all philosophical positions. Mādhyamika is advayavāda (the theory of not-two, here meaning neither of two alternative views, our first sense of nonduality) rather than advaitavāda (the theory of nondifference between subject and object, our third sense).35 Prajñā is understood to be nondual knowledge, but this again is advaya, knowledge devoid of views. Nāgārjuna neither asserts nor denies the experience of nonduality in the third sense, despite the fact that Mādhyamika dialectic criticizes the self-existence of both subject and object, since as relative to each other they must both be unreal.
Nāgārjuna holds that dependent origination is nothing else but the coming to rest of the manifold of named things (prapañcopaśama). When the everyday mind and its contents are no longer active, the subject and object of everyday transactions having faded out because the turmoil of origination, decay, and death has been left behind completely, that is final beatitude. (Candrakīrti)36
In comparison, Yogācāra literature contains many explicit passages asserting the identity of subject and object. These from Vasubandhu are perhaps the best known:
Through the attainment of the state of Pure Consciousness, there is the non-perception of the perceivable; and through the non-perception of the perceivable (i.e., the object) there is the non-acquisition of the mind (i.e., the subject).
Through the non-perception of these two, there arises the realization of the Essence of Reality (dharmadhātu).37
Where there is an object there is a subject, but not where there is no object. The absence of an object results in the absence also of a subject, and not merely in that of grasping. It is thus that there arises the cognition which is homogeneous, without object, indiscriminate and supermundane. The tendencies to treat object and subject as distinct and real entities are forsaken, and thought is established in just the true nature of one’s thought. (Vasubandhu)38
The Yogācāra claim of cittamātra (mind-only), that only mind or consciousness exists, predictably gave rise to the misinterpretation (corrected in recent works) that Yogācāra is a form of subjective idealism. But subjectivism is not an aspect of any Buddhist school, nor, given the vital role of the anātman doctrine, could it be. As these two passages imply, for Yogācāra the apparently objective world is not a projection of my ego-consciousness. Rather, the delusive bifurcation between subject and object arises within nondual Mind. So in the pariniṣpanna-svabhāva (absolutely accomplished nature), which is the highest state of existence, experience is without subject–object duality. In Yogācāra the claim that experience is nondual, in all three of our senses, attains full development and explicitness, and so it is fitting that with that claim Buddhist philosophy may be said to have reached its culmination. What followed were derivative elaborations and syntheses (popular in Chinese Buddhism, e.g., T’ien T’ai and Hua Yen) and the application of these philosophical perspectives to practice (especially Pure Land, Ch’an, and tantric Buddhism). What is most significant for us is that the third sense of nonduality, the nondifference between subject and object, was essential to all of them. (Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, the term nonduality will always refer to this third sense.)
The nonduality of subject and object is also the central concept of both Hindu and Buddhist tantra, according to S. B. Dasgupta:
The ultimate goal of both the schools is the perfect state of union — union between the two aspects of the reality and the realization of the nondual nature of the self and the not-self. The principle of Tantricism being fundamentally the same everywhere, the superficial differences, whatever these may be, supply only different tone and colour.
The synthesis or rather the unification of all duality in an absolute unity is the real principle of union, which has been termed Yuganaddha . . . the real principle of Yuganaddha is the absence of the notion of duality as the perceivable (grāhya) and the perceiver (grāhaka) and their perfect synthesis in a unity.39
Evans-Wentz’s translations of Tibetan Buddhist texts provide examples to support Dasgupta’s view. From the “Yoga of Knowing the Mind,” attributed to Padmasaṁbhava:
There being really no duality, pluralism is untrue.
Until duality is transcended and at-one-ment realized, enlightenment cannot be attained.
The whole Sangsara and Nirvana, as an inseparable unity, are one’s mind. . . .
The unenlightened externally see the externally-transitory dually.40
We find this exemplified in the Mahāmudrā (Yoga of the Great Symbol), which provides a set of graded meditations. The final two practices are, first, “the Yoga of Transmuting all Phenomena and Mind, which are inseparable, into At-one-ment (or Unity).” This involves meditations on the nonduality between sleep and dreams, water and ice, water and waves. Finally, there is “the Yoga of Non-Meditation,” which simply signifies the end of effort, since with the above transmutation into nonduality one has completed the Path: “one obtaineth the Supreme Boon of the Great Symbol, the Unabiding State of Nirvana.”41
More recently, the Italian scholar Giuseppe Tucci has summarized the final objective of Tibetan Buddhist soteriology as follows:
Higher cognition is the penetrating to, and cognizing of, the true nature of these appearances, of these forms created by our discursive knowledge, these products of a false dichotomy between subject and object. . . . The final objective remains the awakening of that higher cognition, that shes rab, Sanskrit prajñā, in the adept’s consciousness, which enables him to survey the ultimate nature of all things with the clarity of direct insight; in other words, the transcending of the subject–object dichotomy.42
In his voluminous writings on Zen, D. T. Suzuki repeatedly emphasized that the satori experience is the realization of nonduality. For example, in the first series of his Essays on Zen Buddhism, during a discussion of “original Mind,” he states that “there is no separation between knower and known.” Zen is “the unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived in the confusion of the dualistically-trained mind.”43 There are many traditional Zen dialogues to support this:
Monk: “If Self-nature is pure, and belongs to no categories of duality such as being and non-being, etc., where does this seeing take place?”
Chih of Yun-chu (8th Century): “There is seeing, but nothing seen.”
Monk: “If there is nothing seen, how can we say there is any seeing at all?”
Chih: “In fact there is no trace of seeing.”
Monk: “In such a seeing, whose seeing is it?”
Chih: “There is no seer, either.”
Another monk asked Wei-kuan: “Where is Tao?”
Kuan: “Right before us.”
Monk: “Why don’t I see it?”
Kuan: “Because of your egotism you cannot see it.”
Monk: “If I cannot see it because of my egotism, does your reverence see it?”
Kuan: “As long as there is ‘I and thou’, this complicates the situation and there is no seeing Tao.”
Monk: “When there is neither ‘I’ nor ‘thou’ is it seen?”
Kuan: “When there is neither ‘I’ nor ‘thou’, who is here to see it?”44
What is arguably the most famous of all Zen stories — purporting to describe how Hui Neng became the Sixth Patriarch — presents the Zen concept of “no mind” (Ch. wu-hsin, Jap. mushin), which asserts, in effect, the nonduality of subject and object. According to the autobiographical first part of the Platform Sutra, Shen Hsiu, head monk at the Fifth Patriarch’s monastery, submitted a stanza comparing the mind to a mirror which must be constantly wiped free of all concept-dust. In response, Hui Neng composed a stanza denying that there is any such mind-mirror: “since all is empty from the beginning, where can the dust alight?” The Fifth Patriarch publicly praised Shen Hsiu’s verse as showing the proper way to practice, but privately criticized it as revealing that Shen Hsiu had not yet become enlightened. His view was still dualistic, conceiving of the mind as a mirror which reflects an external world. Hui Neng’s verse points out that there is no such mind apart from the world.
In his explanation of “no mind,” D. T. Suzuki emphasizes the significance of this story for Zen.
Hui Neng and his followers now came to use the new term chien-hsing instead of the old k’an-ching [to keep an eye on purity]. Chien-hsing means “to look into the nature (of the Mind).” K’an and chien both relate to the sense of sight, but the character k’an, which consists of a hand and an eye, is to watch an object as independent of the spectator; the seen and the seeing are two separate entities. Chien, composed of an eye alone on two outstretched legs, signifies the pure act of seeing. . . . The seeing is not reflecting on an object as if the seer had nothing to do with it. The seeing, on the contrary, brings the seer and the object seen together, not in mere identification but the becoming conscious of itself, or rather of its working.45
The teachings of contemporary Zen masters also support the centrality of nonduality in Zen experience. Here are excerpts from Yasutani-rōshi’s private interviews with Westerners during a meditation retreat:
There is a line a famous Zen master wrote at the time he became enlightened which reads: “When I heard the temple bell ring, suddenly there was no bell and no I, just sound.” In other words, he no longer was aware of a distinction between himself, the bell, the sound, and the universe. This is the state you have to reach.
Kenshō [self-realization] is the direct awareness that you are more than this puny body or limited mind. Stated negatively, it is the realization that the universe is not external to you. Positively, it is experiencing the universe as yourself.46
Devotional Pure Land Buddhism, which emphasizes dependence upon Amitābha to help one be reborn in Sukhāvatī (the Western paradise of Mahāyāna), is not treated in detail in this work. But Shinran’s development of Pure Land Buddhism into Shin Buddhism, a school that has been more popular in Japan than Zen, is relevant to my purpose. Shinran redefined Pure Land doctrine in the direction of nonduality. Rebirth in the Pure Land is not a stepping-stone to nirvana but is itself “complete unsurpassed enlightenment.” Faith for Shinran was not merely belief in the power and benevolence of some external force; in the words of one commentator, “The awakening of faith in Shin Buddhism is an instant of pure egolessness.”47 This happens when we surrender to the infinite compassion of Amitābha, who is not an external God or Buddha but Reality itself, which is also our own true nature.
The Compassion of all the Buddhas, though transcending all the categories of thought, including those of subject and object, appears to our ego-oriented perception as a force which acts upon us externally — as the Other Power [tariki]. This Shinran makes quite clear when he says “What is called external power is as much as to say that there is no discrimination of this or that.” To surrender to the Other Power means to transcend the distinction between subject and object. As we identify ourselves with Amida, so Amida identifies himself with us. (Sangharakshita)48
Unfortunately, the emphasis upon tariki (Other Power) has too often led to minimizing the importance of any personal meditation practice, continuing the traditional division between Pure Land and Zen, which emphasizes jiriki (self-effort). This disagreement is due to a misunderstanding: nonduality seems to imply the negation of the opposition between tariki and jiriki in an effort which is not identified as either mine or another’s. We might say, instead, that the effort Amida exerts to identify with me is at the same time my effort to identify with him.
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None of the three classical Taoist texts — Tao Tê Ching, Chuang Tzu, and Lieh Tzu — is as definitive as Vedānta and Mahāyāna in denying subject–object duality. There are several passages in the Tao Tê Ching (e.g., in chapter 13) which may hint at such nonduality, but they are unclear. The Chuang Tzu is less ambiguous. “The perfect man has no self; the spiritual man has no achievement; the true sage has no name.” “If there is no other, there will be no I. If there is no I, there will be none to make distinctions.”49 In chapter 6, “The Great Teacher,” Nu Chü teaches the Tao to Pu Liang I:
After three days, he [Pu Liang I] began to be able to disregard all worldly matters. After his having disregarded all worldly matters, seven days later he was able to disregard all external things; after nine days, his own existence. Having disregarded his own existence, he was enlightened . . . was able to gain vision of the One . . . able to transcend the distinction of past and present . . . able to enter into the realm where life and death are no more.50
This and other passages refer to the negation of duality while in meditative trance. We find the same in the Lieh Tzu, where Lieh Tzu learns to “ride on the wind” by meditating until “Internal and External were blended into Unity.”51 Such passages strongly imply, but do not explicitly state, that the goal, the resulting experience of Tao, is also nondual. Some other Chuang Tzu passages, however, are more explicit. The first quotation in this chapter is from the Chuang Tzu, criticizing dualistic thinking; it continues:
Thereupon, the “self” is also the “other”; the “other” is the “self”. . . . But really are there such distinctions as “self” and “other,” or are there no such distinctions? When “self” and “other” lose their contrariety, there we have the very essence of the Tao.
Chuang Tzu repeatedly urges: “Identify yourself with the infinite”; “hide the universe in the universe.”52 But how are we to do this? “With the state of pure experience,” explains Fung Yu-lan in the introduction to his translation of the Chuang Tzu:
In the state of pure experience, what is known as the union of the individual with the whole is reached. In this state there is an unbroken flux of experience, but the experiencer does not know it. He does not know that there are things, to say nothing of making distinctions between them. There is no separation of things, to say nothing to the distinction between subject and object, between the “me” and the “non-me.” So in this state of experience, there is nothing but the one, the whole.53
Another contemporary commentator, Chang Chung-yuan, agrees: “the awareness of the identification and interpenetration of self and nonself is the key that unlocks the mystery of Tao.”
Chih [intuitive knowledge] is the key word to understanding Tao and unlocking all the secrets of nonbeing. In other words, intuitive knowledge is pure self-consciousness through immediate, direct, primitive penetration instead of by the methods that are derivative, inferential, or rational. In the sphere of intuitive knowledge there is no separation between the knower and the known; subject and object are identified.54
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Having established the significance of subject–object nonduality for Taoism, the presentation of nondualities comes to an end. I have offered a number of passages from Vedāntic, Buddhist, and Taoist sources and have referred to the opinions of many respected scholars commenting on these traditions. The point of this exercise has been to establish, indubitably and in detail, the central importance of the concept of nonduality for these three traditions, which we now see can well be called “nondualist traditions.” Various meanings of the term nonduality have been determined. The chapter began by distinguishing five such meanings and has analyzed three of them: the negation of dualistic (more generally, conceptual) thinking, the nonplurality of the world, and the nondifference of subject and object. Given the interrelations among these three meanings, it is significant that all three of them are important for all three of our nondualist traditions, although there are differences in emphasis. For example, Buddhist texts contain more admonitions against dualistic thinking and fewer claims about the nonplurality of the world, as we have seen. Generally, explicit assertions of subject–object nonduality are less common in China than in metaphysical India, reflecting their different philosophical interests, and as a consequence Indian sources are cited more often in the chapters that follow. My emphasis continues to be on the third sense of nonduality, but the relationships among all three also continue to be important. Many other passages could be quoted, and other traditions incorporated, both non-Western (e.g., Sufism) and Western (e.g., Plotinus and other examples of the philosophia perennis). These are not included partly for reason of space but primarily because our three nondual philosophies are the ones that have developed the concept of nonduality in the greatest detail, providing more than sufficient material on the topic.
When we put together the claims embodied in these three meanings of nonduality, what do we end up with? Due to our dualistic, conceptual ways of thinking, we experience the world as a collection of discrete objects interacting in space and time. One of these objects is me: I experience myself as a subject looking out at an external world and anxious about my relationship with it. Expressed in this way, the peculiarity of such an understanding becomes more obvious, for certainly I must be “in” my world in a different way than this pen I am writing with. The nondualist systems agree that this way of experiencing is not the only possible way, and not the best way, because it involves delusion about the true nature both of the world and of ourselves, and that delusion causes suffering. If our thinking changes, if our dualistic ways of thinking are transformed in some as yet unspecified manner, we shall experience the world as nonplural and, most important of all, we shall overcome our alienation in realizing our nondual unity with it. This spiritual experience will reveal to us for the first time our true nature, which is also the true nature of the world: formless, indivisible, birthless and deathless, and beyond the comprehension of the intellect. But we have also noticed what may be a serious disagreement about the precise relationship between this imperceptible One and sensible phenomena.
This is provocative, but of course it is not much. So far, it is too vague to be very meaningful, much less persuasive — only the bare bones of a hypothesis, which needs much fleshing in to become a living theory. Developing this hypothesis into a core doctrine of nonduality, finding the common ground largely agreeable to all three nondualist systems, is the concern of the next three chapters. Each one takes a specific mode of our experience — perceiving, acting, and thinking — and asks: what does the claim about nonduality actually mean in this context? For example, in the following chapter we attempt to determine what nondual perception is, by integrating what the nondualist systems say about perception and by considering in what ways this is or is not consistent with our own experience.
In these three chapters, I hope to describe a theory about nondual experience that not only is consistent with the major claims of Buddhism, Vedānta, and Taoism but also speaks to our condition.