XPost: alt.philosophy.zen, alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, alt.zen   
   From: peter@dharma.dyndns.info   
      
   Dhamma and Non-duality   
   by   
   Bhikkhu Bodhi   
   © 1998–2012   
      
   One of the most challenging issues facing Theravada Buddhism in recent years   
   has been the encounter between classical   
   Theravada vipassana meditation and the "non-dualistic" contemplative   
   traditions best represented by Advaita Vedanta   
   and Mahayana Buddhism. Responses to this encounter have spanned the extremes,   
   ranging from vehement   
   confrontation all the way to attempts at synthesis and hybridization. While   
   the present essay cannot pretend to   
   illuminate all the intricate and subtle problems involved in this sometimes   
   volatile dialogue, I hope it may contribute a   
   few sparks of light from a canonically oriented Theravada perspective.   
      
   My first preliminary remark would be to insist that a system of meditative   
   practice does not constitute a self-contained   
   discipline. Any authentic system of spiritual practice is always found   
   embedded within a conceptual matrix that defines   
   the problems the practice is intended to solve and the goal toward which it is   
   directed. Hence the merging of   
   techniques grounded in incompatible conceptual frameworks is fraught with   
   risk. Although such mergers may appease a   
   predilection for experimentation or eclecticism, it seems likely that their   
   long-term effect will be to create a certain   
   "cognitive dissonance" that will reverberate through the deeper levels of the   
   psyche and stir up even greater confusion.   
      
   My second remark would be to point out simply that non-dualistic spiritual   
   traditions are far from consistent with each   
   other, but comprise, rather, a wide variety of views profoundly different and   
   inevitably colored by the broader   
   conceptual contours of the philosophies which encompass them.   
      
   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. From the standpoint of the highest   
   realization, only one ultimate reality exists — which is simultaneously   
   Atman and Brahman — and the aim of the   
   spiritual quest is to know that one's own true self, the Atman, is the   
   timeless reality which is Being, Awareness, Bliss.   
   Since all schools of Buddhism reject the idea of the Atman, none can accept   
   the non-dualism of Vedanta. From the   
   perspective of the Theravada tradition, any quest for the discovery of   
   selfhood, whether as a permanent individual self   
   or as an absolute universal self, would have to be dismissed as a delusion, a   
   metaphysical blunder born from a failure to   
   properly comprehend the nature of concrete experience. According to the Pali   
   Suttas, the individual being is merely a   
   complex unity of the five aggregates, which are all stamped with the three   
   marks of impermanence, suffering, and   
   selflessness. Any postulation of selfhood in regard to this compound of   
   transient, conditioned phenomena is an instance   
   of "personality view" (sakkayaditthi), the most basic fetter that binds beings   
   to the round of rebirths. The attainment   
   of liberation, for Buddhism, does not come to pass by the realization of a   
   true self or absolute "I," but through the   
   dissolution of even the subtlest sense of selfhood in relation to the five   
   aggregates, "the abolition of all I-making, mine-   
   making, and underlying tendencies to conceit."   
      
   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. The validity of conventional   
   dualities is denied because the ultimate nature of all phenomena is emptiness,   
   the lack of any substantial or intrinsic   
   reality, and hence in their emptiness all the diverse, apparently opposed   
   phenomena posited by mainstream Buddhist   
   doctrine finally coincide: "All dharmas have one nature, which is no-nature."   
      
   The teaching of the Buddha as found in the Pali canon does not endorse a   
   philosophy of non-dualism of any variety, nor,   
   I would add, can a non-dualistic perspective be found lying implicit within   
   the Buddha's discourses. At the same time,   
   however, I would not maintain that the Pali Suttas propose dualism, the   
   positing of duality as a metaphysical hypothesis   
   aimed at intellectual assent. I would characterize the Buddha's intent in the   
   Canon as primarily pragmatic rather than   
   speculative, though I would also qualify this by saying that this pragmatism   
   does not operate in a philosophical void but   
   finds its grounding in the nature of actuality as the Buddha penetrated it in   
   his enlightenment. In contrast to the non-   
   dualistic systems, the Buddha's approach does not aim at the discovery of a   
   unifying principle behind or beneath our   
   experience of the world. Instead it takes the concrete fact of living   
   experience, with all its buzzing confusion of   
   contrasts and tensions, as its starting point and framework, within which it   
   attempts to diagnose the central problem   
   at the core of human existence and to offer a way to its solution. Hence the   
   polestar of the Buddhist path is not a final   
   unity but the extinction of suffering, which brings the resolution of the   
   existential dilemma at its most fundamental   
   level.   
      
   When we investigate our experience exactly as it presents itself, we find that   
   it is permeated by a number of critically   
   important dualities with profound implications for the spiritual quest. The   
   Buddha's teaching, as recorded in the Pali   
   Suttas, fixes our attention unflinchingly upon these dualities and treats   
   their acknowledgment as the indispensable basis   
   for any honest search for liberating wisdom. It is precisely these antitheses   
   — of good and evil, suffering and happiness,   
   wisdom and ignorance — that make the quest for enlightenment and deliverance   
   such a vitally crucial concern.   
      
   At the peak of the pairs of opposites stands the duality of the conditioned   
   and the Unconditioned: samsara as the   
   round of repeated birth and death wherein all is impermanent, subject to   
   change, and liable to suffering, and Nibbana   
   as the state of final deliverance, the unborn, ageless, and deathless.   
   Although Nibbana, even in the early texts, is   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)