Nonduality and The Middle
Way
21 Nov 2014 The Endless
Further
About a year and a half ago,
the Washington Post noted:
“Sociologists say that we are increasingly
divided over religion’s place in public life but that when it comes
to language, Americans are moving in one direction: toward a new
vernacular. We’re no longer “religious.” We’re “holy.” We’re
“faithful.” We’re “spiritual.”
I’ve begun to notice that
“nonduality” has become a key word in this new
vernacular.
An example is an
organization I recently became aware of called Science and
Nonduality. They have a cool acronym (SAND) and a cool logo.
According to their website, “The mission of Science and Nonduality
(SAND) is to forge a new paradigm in spirituality, one that is not
dictated by religious dogma, but rather is based on timeless wisdom
traditions of the world, informed by cutting-edge science, and
grounded in direct experience.”
Last month SAND held a
conference in San Jose California that featured a bunch of
participants I’ve never heard of before. But they’re having a
“retreat”called “The Sutras of Science” at Esalen in February that
will feature Deepak Chopra and Robert Thurman, among
others.
It seems rather obvious to
me that they are using Nonduality as a substitute for the word
“religion.” You notice in the mission statement above they mention
religious dogma, and this is a group that seems informed by Eastern
philosophy which to my mind is rather non-dogmatic. I think we
sometimes have a tendency to overlay our issues with Western
religion onto Eastern spirituality, and that’s a shame.
Several of the speakers at
the SAND 2014 conference are described as “nonduality teachers.” I
wasn’t aware that nonduality had become a field all its own. I
guess I haven’t been paying attention. I wonder if the pay for
nonduality teachers is good. If so, I’d like to give it a try. I
think I’d qualify.
Nonduality has been around
quite a while. Although Chinese philosophy has always had a
non-dual view, what we think of as nondualism more or less got its
start with the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna and his teaching on
the two truths. In Fundamental Verses on the
Middle Way,
he calls nonduality (advaya) “the gate of security, the
destruction of false views; the path walked by all buddhas, the
‘dharma of no-self-nature.’”
On the SAND website they
write, “nonduality is the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific
understanding of non-separation and fundamental oneness. Our
starting point is the statement ‘we are all one’.” This is true,
and yet I wonder if they understand that this “oneness” belongs to
the relative truth. In his Treatise on
The Maha Prajna-paramita Sutra, Nagarjuna says,
“All
things enter the non-dual dharma. Although things are not two, they
are not one either.”
They do, however, posses one
nature: they “are in truth sunya (empty).” For Nagarjuna, the
non-dual dharma is like space (akasa) in that it is “completely
unobstructive.”
I also occasionally see
folks write something like this: “The message of nonduality is that
the true nature of reality is non-dual.” Well, that is certainally
part of the message and nonduality is an aspect of the true nature of
reality, but not the whole thing. What I mean is that often people
take nonduality to be the ultimate truth.
Actually, duality and
nonduality both belong to the realm of relative truth.
Neither-duality-nor-nonduality
is the ultimate
truth. In other words, the ultimate truth is neither extreme, it is
the middle. Here’s one reason why Nagarjuna’s philosophy is called
Madhyamaka or Middle Way.
Let’s take the example of a
coin. The point is not that we have one and only one coin. The
point is that the coin has two sides. As K. Venkata Ramanan points
out in Nagarjuna’s
Philosophy,
“The
extinction of ignorance does not leave us in a blank; it is not an
act separate from the arising of knowledge. The two are
simultaneous; they are two different sides of the same act, two
phases of one principle. [Nagarjuna’s treatise] observes that in
their ultimate nature there is no difference between ignorance and
knowledge, even as there is no difference in the ultimate truth
between the world of the determinate and Nirvana, the unconditioned
reality.”
The ultimate truth is not
emptiness because ultimately emptiness is empty. The ultimate truth
is not nonduality because duality and nonduality are merely two
sides of one thing. So what is this one thing? If we have to name
it, let us name is Nirvana. And yet, Nagarjuna reminds us that
“Nirvana is not any one thing.” This is the Middle Way.