The joy of non-duality

(For an inter­est­ing ‘take’ on today’s topic, have a look at Steve Pavlina’s blog. He just wrote an arti­cle on objec­tive vs. sub­jec­tive accuracy.)

In my book, This End­less Moment, I make men­tion of the Rad­i­cal Con­struc­tivists and the line, (para­phrased) real­ity in quotes. In other words, “real­ity.” The gist of the argu­ment is that, while one can argue philo­soph­i­cally for an inde­pen­dent “real­ity,” – a world of things, this is an abstraction.

Exper­i­ment: think of some­one you just met. Does “she” have an inde­pen­dent “real­ity” apart from you? And, what’s her ‘real’ story?

Now, before you leap too quickly to get­ting the but­ter­fly net, think about it.

• ‘She’ did not exist, for you, before you met her.
• Now that you have met her, she becomes ‘real,’ and exists in your world.
• What you know of her, how­ever, is data con­tained in you.
• In other words, ‘she’ (log­i­cally, empir­i­cally, a pri­ori, objec­tively) exists sep­a­rately from you, (out there, some­where,) but you can never prove it.

Why? Because every­thing you learn about her is a part of you! What you see are your obser­va­tions, and then you inter­pret them (she’s tall, she’s pretty, she comes from a deprived child­hood. Whatever.)

Now, imag­ine that her brother shows up and tells you sto­ries about her child­hood. Now, it’s even weirder. He is telling you sto­ries about what he observed (thus, they are about his obser­va­tions, not about her,) and you are lis­ten­ing and eval­u­at­ing him and his sto­ries, while no doubt think­ing you are learn­ing more about ‘her!’

In all of this, what is ‘real,’ and what is ‘true?’

Before you leap in and say, “She is real, and her brother is real!” (and I agree that this is so, despite the fact that we’re argu­ing about an exam­ple I just made up…) what can you know of her, or of any­one else?

You can only know your inter­pre­ta­tion of what you “observe.” In other words, what you see, hear, taste, smell, feel, or ‘cog­nate.’
That last one is, in Bud­dhism, the sixth sense. Cog­na­tion, or defin­ing, is a mind game going on in your head.

All inter­pre­ta­tions are the same. Sen­sory data comes in, and you inter­pret it and give it a mean­ing. In other words, if you see a box, and say, “It’s a small box,” the “real” part is the box. Small is rel­a­tive, as it means, “Small, com­pared to…” The box does not have “small” as a characteristic—it is not a part of its nature. Small (red, rough, etc.) are descrip­tors you have added. The same is so for your inter­nal inter­pre­ta­tions. (Nice, cold, angry, bad, good, fat, smart, stu­pid, etc.) Inter­pre­ta­tions made in your head about some­one are not ‘true.’ They’re just your stories.

How does non-duality fit in?

Well, when you inter­pret (and we all do this, all the time, with every object we come into con­tact with) you are cre­at­ing a dual­ity. If the woman is pretty, this is a sub­jec­tive judge­ment, and implies, ‘pret­tier than…” It also means, “Not ugly.” Same with any char­ac­ter­is­tic you put on a thing. A char­ac­ter­is­tic you invent to define some­thing is not true and ‘real.’ It is a label you have invented, and it always is like this:

A is ‘x’.

There­fore,
a is not the oppo­site of ‘x.’

This is impor­tant. The idea that “real­ity” is fixed is the cause of every prob­lem you and the world has. I am right, you are there­fore wrong. This behav­iour is good, you are doing some­thing else, you are bad.

Things are actu­ally every­thing and empty of every­thing — in other words, non-dual

You must under­stand that this eval­u­a­tive process is who we are as human beings. It’s the one and only thing we do as we inter­act with the world. Just like meet­ing some­one for the first time, no one (or thing) exists in our world until we begin to describe it.

Go ahead, try. Name one thing you have never expe­ri­enced, but think is ‘real.’ Let’s say you came up with a vil­lage in Mon­go­lia. You shout, “See! That exists, and I’ve never been there!’ Nope. The vil­lage you saw in your mind exists only in your mind (let’s say you saw a pic­ture of it…) and it began to exist in your mind when you expe­ri­enced it (saw the pic­ture.) Prior to your actual involve­ment with the pic­ture, you had no knowl­edge of it. AND, you only know the pic­ture, which may be of a vil­lage that no longer exists.

What we need to get is the idea that, just because we believe some­thing about some­one or some thing, that doesn’t make it ‘real’ or ‘true.’ Think George Bush and Weapons of Mass Destruction…

It’s like the Ele­phant story:

Six blind men were taken to ‘see’ an ele­phant. Each walked for­ward and touched a part of the elephant.

• “Hey, the ele­phant is a pil­lar,” said the first man who touched his leg.
• “Oh, no! it is like a rope,” said the sec­ond man who touched the tail.
• “Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
• “It is like a big hand fan” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
• “It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
• “It is like a solid pipe,” Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

The wise per­son rec­og­nizes that each blind per­son has cre­ated a “real­ity” called ‘ele­phant.’ Each “real­ity” was based upon what each per­son had observed (in this case, touched,) and upon each one’s inter­pre­ta­tion.

Now, in some ver­sions of this story, a Mas­ter comes along and says some­thing about reli­gious argu­ments being like this.

In a Jain ver­sion, the ver­dict is that an ele­phant is all of the things observed.

This begs the ques­tion. Is it pos­si­ble com­pletely to define ‘elephant?’

Of course not.

One could spend one’s life watch­ing, observ­ing, dis­sect­ing, dig­ging into an ele­phant. Then, you would have gen­eral data you might (care­fully) apply to ‘all ele­phants.’ But you see the flaw. Each time a new char­ac­ter­is­tic pops up in another ele­phant, (this ele­phant is taller!) you have to change the definition.

But, you argue, at least I know one elephant.

Wrong.

You were never able to enter the ele­phant, and be the ele­phant. Thus you will never ‘know’ even the one ele­phant. All you have is data con­cern­ing what you think you observed. Another blind man, feel­ing up an elephant.

Nor will you ever know anyone.

Includ­ing yourself.

All you will ever expe­ri­ence is ‘this, now.’
And you will add your descrip­tion of what you observed
to your data base,
as we are wont to do.

The wise soul makes no judge­ment regard­ing their judgements.

And surely, it is best to never have the judge­ment that what one believes is either ‘true’ or ‘real.’ It’s just what you inter­pret, today.

For me, non-dual think­ing is this:

• I am here , in this moment, and this is how I am judg­ing and eval­u­at­ing the expe­ri­ences I am appar­ently hav­ing. I watch myself judg­ing and eval­u­at­ing, include my eval­u­a­tions in what I know of me, and let that be enough as far a judg­ing goes.
• Next, I choose what to do next (obvi­ously, my actions can only be based upon my judge­ments and eval­u­a­tions, and based upon what I know how to do. We learn every­thing incre­men­tally, based upon some action that came before.)

This non-dual approach is one of accep­tance. I accept all of my expe­ri­ence. I accept the under­stand­ing that I’m mak­ing it up as I go along.

Thus, all there is, is me, and me is defined by how I inter­act with other indi­vid­u­als whose story I incor­po­rate into my being.

The only part I can mod­ify, how­ever, (and this is the hard part)
is me and my story.