Waving, not Drowning

This blog is another starting from a question asked within our small meditation group last night. What is the difference between dual and non-dual? Brilliant. The most obvious questions that go back to basics are always the best. Actually, I say basics but this is a really difficult question to answer without disappearing down a hole into incredibly complex ideas that probably won’t help at all. It’s as profound as it gets.

Thinking about it again now I have just come up with a metaphor that at least works for me. If I imagine myself to be a wave on the sea, when I look out I see other waves as well as myself. We all seem separate and by and large individual. This way of seeing - ‘me’ and ‘other waves’ is dualistic, subject and object, and it is of course how most of us experience everything all of the time. However, if I as a wave, investigate my true nature I quickly realise that I am nothing but an energetic movement of the sea, not separate in any way, and furthermore, the other waves are exactly the same, we are the same water. So in this sense we are really ‘non-dual’, everything is the energetic expression of water. Waves endlessly rising out of the sea and sinking back in.

If we want to translate this into Buddhist speak then we are talking about the simultaneous existence of relative and ultimate truth. Relative truth is the existence of the waves who feel they are all different and can be identified by names - big wave, small wave - and ultimate truth is the sea that equates with emptiness. That the nature of reality is one seamless process of being in manifestation, everything ceaselessly coming and going.

Another obvious question just waiting to be asked is why do we in our little group make such a big thing about this? Do all Buddhist traditions concern themselves with ‘doing nothing’ meditations that disclose the presence of non-dual spacious awareness? The answer to this is probably no - but with the caveat that they may approach the same thing using different language so it is difficult to know. This is where a specific point of view comes in and makes its case. The argument is that anything that is created through effort is an impulse - we could say karmic - that will always end when the energy is exhausted. This is obvious - push away a ball and it will stop rolling at some point. So for a indestructible awakening that goes on forever to occur it cannot be created through effort and intentionality - these will finally decay - it must be discovered as something that is already there by doing nothing whatsoever. We do not make, create or generate awakening through things we do, but rather simply recognise our buddha-nature that is already there. The wave does not make the sea, it simply discovers its true nature by recognising it is not just a wave.

NW. with the help of HS. 12 October 2023