BIG PICTURE
You cannot have solid without space, day without
night, life without death. Such
opposites, though, only APPEAR to be opposites when in fact they are two
aspects of one reality. They are two side of the same coin. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c.a. 535-475
B.C.) used the analogy "the road down and the road up are the same
road."
These opposites arise mutually, called the coincidence
of opposites, so that you cannot have one without the other. Taoism states that
within every opposite lies its counterpart. In the yin-yang symbol there is a dot of yin
in yang, and a dot of yang in yin. Within
sickness lies health and within health lies sickness. This, according to Taoism, is because all
opposites are manifestations of the single Tao and are therefore not
independent of one another.
Advaita Vedanta speaks of the seeming duality of
things in terms of the soul, or Atman, and the godhead, or Brahman. When a person tries to know Brahman through
his objective mind, Brahman appears to be separate from him. In reality, there is no difference between
Brahman and Atman. They are the same
thing. Liberation lies in realizing his.
Buddhism addresses this issue as well, but regarding
Subject and Object generally. This is stated by the Buddha in verses such as
“In seeing, there is just seeing. There
is no seer and nothing seen. In hearing,
there is just hearing, no hearer, nothing heard.” Non-Duality in Buddhism does not mean a
merging with a supreme Brahman as in Vedanta, but, instead, an understanding
that the duality of a self/subject/agent/watcher/doer in relation to the
object/world is an illusion.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home